Owen over at Boots and Sabers blogged approvingly about president Bush calling out Iran for being behind Hezbollah. I offered that, though I was pretty sympathetic to Israel’s present activities and had no real idea about Iran’s potential involvement, I would be thinking long and hard before trusting Mr. Bush again when he says he knows who’s behind what. (Obviously referring to the whole Iraq/al Qaeda non-link in the 9/11 attacks.) This is where the discussion got sticky.
Jed has this to say about why Americans believe there’s a link between Saddam and 9/11:
The reason average Americans, including many conservatives, believe the 9/11 connection is because the liberals in this country, including much of the press, have twisted Bush’s words in an attempt to show that Bush made some connection—which he clearly did not, when you read what he actually said.
So basically it’s the fault of liberals and the media that so many Americans believed that Saddam had something to do with 9/11! I have considerably more respect for Jed and Owen than I have for some other conservative bloggers I could name, but this struck me as “crazier than a snakes armpit,” and I told them so.
What do you think? Here’s a multiple choice question.
Many Americans erroneously believe that there was a substantive connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 terrorist attack. They believe this because:
a) Bush, Cheney, Rice and other administration officials continually paired the two events/organizations in their rhetoric, often explicitly stating there was “a connection” – even if they never explicitly claimed that Saddam was directly responsible for the attack.
b) Liberals, including the media [heh], continually accused the administration of making this false link, and it was their bringing this accusation to everyone’s attention that actually caused people to believe it to be true.
Not being from anywhere remotely southern, I’m rapidly running out of cute southern phrases to describe how silly choice “b” is. Help me out here.