WHO SAYS THERE WAS NO IRAQ - AL QAEDA CONNECTION ?

I really liked the part of President Bush's speech today at the World Affairs Council (a private, non-profit, non-partisan educational organization in Philadelphia), when he reminded us of Osama Bin Laden's 1998 Fatwa. Here is what Bin Laden said in that document:

No one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone:

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

If some people have formerly debated the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it.

The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, still they are helpless. Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, in excess of 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

So now they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.

Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there.

The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.

In fact, if you read the entire paranoid rant, you will discover that one of the major justifications of the fatwa was Iraq. In Bin Laden's mind, the "aggression" against the Iraqi people after the 1991 war that contained Saddam and freed Kuwait from his invasion; gave him the right to order the indiscriminate murder of Americans.

As Bush so appropriately commented in his speech today (I'm paraphrasing and when I get a link I'll put it up), "It is Bin Laden and his followers who are inflicting devastation and ruthlessly killing and oppressing the people of Iraq."

No connection, huh?

UPDATE: Still no link, but look what the MSM considers the most important part of Bush's speech (this actually was spoken in a Q&A period after the speech). Typical.

UPDATE II: Here is another link to an article about the speech. It again emphasizes the death count of Iraqis; the allegations of abuse in Iraqi prisons, and makes these snide comments:

Bush needs a relatively smooth showing during Thursday's elections in Iraq to hold up as a sign of progress and try to counter daily news of suicide bombings and U.S. troop deaths that have soured the American public on the war.

Bush is fighting to get his second term back on track after a year in which Americans lost faith in his ability to manage the war and a growing number came to believe his administration misled them in making the case for the U.S.-led invasion.

Boy, I am sick to death of these yahoos. I'm glad I listened to the speech for myself and don't have to rely on them to tell me what was important.

UPDATE III: Here is the White House fact sheet on the speech, but no text yet OK, here is the text of his speech; and the part that particularly interested me is the following:

In a 1998 fatwa, Osama bin Laden argued that the suffering of the Iraqi people was justification for his declaration of war on America. Now bin Laden and al-Qaeda are the direct cause of the Iraqi people's suffering.

Too bad that the Muslim world didn't do anything about the suffering of the Iraqi people under Saddam and his brutal regime. Osama was silent then. And after Saddam invaded Kuwait, I don't remember hearing Osama condemn that either.