Bush's Press Conference

The transcript of Bush's Monday Press Conference is available at the White House's web site, wherein he reiterates that Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and Iraq did not have WMDs in the period prior to the invasion. He also repeated that "We're not leaving, so long as I'm the President. That would be a huge mistake."

Q: A quick follow-up. A lot of the consequences you mention for pulling out seem like maybe they never would have been there if we hadn't gone in. How do you square all of that?

BUSH: I square it because imagine a world in which you had a Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would -- who had relations with Zarqawi.

(snip...)

Now, look, I -- part of the reason we went into Iraq was -- the main reason we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn't, but he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction.

(snip...)

BUSH: You know, I've heard this theory about, you know, everything was just fine until we arrived and, you know, kind of -- the "stir up the hornet's nest" theory. It just doesn't hold water as far as I'm concerned. The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East. They were --

Q: What did Iraq have to do with that?

BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

Q: The attack on the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing, except for it's part of -- and nobody's ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a -- Iraq -- the lesson of September the 11th is take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody's ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.

So, given that Bush supporters think the reasoning behind going to war in Iraq is solid, how many countries would the Bush supporters have us invade? Well, lets look at the criterion for invasion. We invaded Iraq to disarm a threat from weapons that didn't exist, before those arms could potentially be manufactured. Also, Iraq had had nothing to do with killing any Americans, but Saddam had to be removed because terrorists with no ties to Saddam had killed Americans. All of this is according to our President. Brilliant.