10/05/2004 06:08:00 AM|||Joe|||Whoops. First Bush slipped up and said that we can't win a war on terror. Which was true, but he took it back. Now Rumsfeld has done it:

Rumsfeld, during a question-and-answer session before the Council on Foreign Relations, had been asked to explain the connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network — one of the U.S. arguments for launching a war on Iraq.

He replied: “To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two.”

He has since taken that back:

“I have acknowledged since September 2002 that there were ties between al Qaeda and Iraq,” Rumsfeld said in a Web site statement issued following remarks he made to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York Monday.

This is getting comical. These guys are tripping over themselves to keep their story straight. They know what they've done — they know they misrepresented, exaggerated, and solicited favorable evidence to justify the attack and occupation of Iraq. They know this. I'm not saying that they outright lied — I'm just saying that they realize, in hindsight, that they really screwed up, at least politically. They know that there was no significant ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Certainly not as significant as those between, say, Saudi Arabia and al-Qaeda.

Now we're getting all these psychologically interesting misstatements. Both Rumsfeld and Bush have struggled with saying Osama bin Laden — they'll accidently say Saddam Hussein.

So, did they lie? I'll be honest — I kind of hope so. I'd rather think they lied about it than think that they honestly screwed up that bad.|||109698265599928377|||Slipped and Told the Truth...