Here's what Bush said recently:
"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda," he told reporters.
"This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al-Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda."
Which is exactly how I remember it. The accusation that Bush said "Saddam was behind 9/11" is basically the left trying to put words in his mouth. He never said it, and no one can produce a quote of him saying it.
But Bush may still be misstating his case. There is NO question that Saddam's regime had contacts with numerous "terrorists" and "terror groups" -- but the key thing is that not every terrorist is affiliated with Al Qaeda.
Abu Nidal lived in Baghdad for years. Ramzi Yusef fled there immediately after the first WTC bombing in 1993 (which by the way happened exactly two years to the day after the end of hostilities over Kuwait . . . just a coincidence?) Those guys were clearly terrorists, and clearly had ties to Saddam, but there's no evidence they had anything to do with AQ. In fact a lot of this stuff goes back to before "Al Qaeda" even existed.
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