Bush : "You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror."
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Cheney : Iraq is "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
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Bush : "We're rolling back the terrorist threat, not on the fringes of its influence but at the heart of its power."
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QUESTION: When I was in Iraq, some of the soldiers said they believed they were fighting because of the Sept. 11 attacks and because they thought Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda. You've repeatedly cited such links. . . . I wanted to ask you what you'd say to those soldiers, and were those soldiers misled at all?
Cheney : [waffles]
QUESTION: So you stand by the statements?
Cheney : Absolutely. Absolutely.
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American soldier serving in Iraq : "There's a picture of the World Trade Center hanging up by my bed and I keep one in my Kevlar. Every time I feel sorry for these people I look at that. I think, 'They hit us at home and, now, it's our turn.' I don't want to say payback but, you know, it's pretty much payback."
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Bush (in the "mission accomplished" speech) : "We have not forgotten the victims of September the eleventh-the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got."
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USA Today : "Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe it is likely that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, says a poll out almost two years after the terrorists' strike against this country. Sixty-nine percent in a Washington Post poll published Saturday said they believe it is likely the Iraqi leader was personally involved in the attacks carried out by al-Qaeda."
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Powell in February 2001 : "[Saddam Hussein] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours."
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Bush : "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
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Cheney : "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
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Cheney : ""But we do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon."
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Cheney : "We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."
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Rumsfeld, (two months after the previous quote) : "I don't believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons."
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Downing Street Memo : "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
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Bush "The best way for peace is for Mr. Saddam Hussein to disarm. It's up to him to make his decision."
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Bush : "Even though [
sic] what I know today about the stockpiles of weapons, I still would have called upon the world to deal with Saddam Hussein."
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Rumsfeld : "We know where they [the weapons] are."
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Bush : "But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them."
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Cheney : "The streets in Basra and Baghdad are sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans. Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of Jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart."
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Downing Street Memo : "There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
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Bush : "In a free Iraq, there will be no more torture chambers and rape rooms."
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Bush : "When Iraqi civilians looked into the faces of our service men and women, they saw strength and kindness and good will."
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Bush on campaign, 2000 : "I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I'm missing something here. I mean, we're going to have kind of a nation-building corps from America? Absolutely not."
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Fleischer : "During the campaign, the president did not express, as you put it, disdain for nation-building."
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Rumsfeld : "The infrastructure of that country was not terribly damaged by the war at all."
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Rumsfeld : "You know, I just came in from Baghdad, and there are now over 100 newspapers in the free press in Iraq in a free Iraq, where people are able to say whatever they wish."
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NYT : "The scene for the uprising was set a week ago, when the American authorities closed a popular Baghdad newspaper, Al Hawza, that was the mouthpiece for Mr. Sadr, because of what they called inaccurate reporting in the paper that incited hatred for the Americans."
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Rumsfeld : "It has has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil."
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Wolfowitz : "This is not a war about oil."
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Wolfowitz : "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."
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Rumsfeld ""Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that."
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Bush : "The credibility of the United States is based upon our strong desire to make the world more peaceful, and the world is now more peaceful."
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Bush : "I know what I'm doing when it comes to winning this war."
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Rumsfeld : "Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"
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