California Conservative

Just when Democrats start mounting an offensive based on what they’d like the NIE to confirm, President Bush and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani strike back at Democrats’ assertions. Here’s how President Bush hit back:

But at the White House, the president called critics who say the Iraq war was a mistake “naive.” “I think it’s a mistake for people to believe that going on the offense against people that want to do harm to the American people makes us less safe,” he said. He also took issue with the conclusion that the Iraq war is responsible for creating new terrorists, saying that those who “see a rosier scenario with fewer extremists joining the radical movement” if not for the Iraq war are ignoring 20 years of history.
“We weren’t in Iraq when we got attacked on September 11. We weren’t in Iraq when thousands of fighters were trained in terror camps,” Mr. Bush said. “We weren’t in Iraq when they first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993. We weren’t in Iraq when they bombed the Cole. We weren’t in Iraq when they blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.”

This fits nicely with Dr. Rice’s statement:

“Now that we’re fighting back, of course they are fighting back, too. I find it just extraordinary that the argument is, all right, so they’re using the fact they’re being challenged in the Middle East and challenged in Iraq to recruit, therefore you’ve made the war on terrorism worse. It’s as if we were in a good place on Sept. 11. Clearly, we weren’t.” (more…)