\jeff{krimmel}

Did The President Just Say That?

The president held a press conference this morning, and he said something that I found particularly surprising. Here it is:

Q What did Iraq have to do with that?

THE PRESIDENT: What did Iraq have to do with what?

Q The attack on the World Trade Center?

THE PRESIDENT: Nothing…

Now, the president backtracked a little and explained in some sense how he sees Iraq being tied to what happened on September 11, but I thought it was fairly illuminating to hear him say straight up that Iraq had “nothing” to do with the destruction of the World Trade Center. I can’t recall him having publicly acknowledged that before.

I wrote last month about a Harris poll that showed half of all American adults believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when we invaded in 2003. The president this morning openly admitted, not for the first time, that Iraq definitely did not have weapons of mass destruction:

Now, look, part of the reason we went into Iraq was — the main reason we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn’t…

This information has reached the level of “common knowledge”, but how common can it be if half of all adults in the United States don’t believe it? It’s baffling to me.