"President Bush said Wednesday that there was no proof tying Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks, amid mounting criticism that senior administration officials have helped lead Americans to believe that Iraq was behind the plot," the Los Angeles Times' Greg Miller writes. "Bush's statement was the latest in a flurry of remarks this week by top administration officials after Vice President Dick Cheney resurrected a number of contentious allegations about Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda in an appearance on NBC's 'Meet the Press' on Sunday. ... Bush's comments were his most direct on the issue to date. He drew a clear distinction between alleged Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda and the lack of evidence of Iraqi involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. That is a distinction administration officials did not emphasize in the months before the war. ...
A reading of the record shows that while senior administration officials stopped short of accusing Hussein of complicity in the attacks, they frequently alluded to the possibility of such a connection, and consistently cast the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda in stronger terms than many in the intelligence community seemed to endorse."