Dumbfounded
He's not an MBA for nothing. Fred Kaplan at Slate dissects the careful language that Bush has used this week and historically since 9/11 to suggest connections between Saddam and al Queda in order to make his sales pitch for invading Iraq.

Wasn't the claim of collaboration a rationale for invading Iraq? On Sept. 25, 2002, Bush said, "You can't distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror." On May 1, 2003, aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, beneath the "Mission Accomplished" banner, he declared, "We have removed an ally of al-Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist funding."

Again, look closely. He never said outright that Saddam had connections with 9/11. He suggested connections—and did so repeatedly until a majority of Americans believed Saddam was somehow involved in the attacks. But his comments were never more than calibrated suggestions—loose phrasings, words that seemed to be interchangeable but really weren't.

Kaplan also notes that while Bush has been careful, BullDog Cheney has not:

A final note: Bush has been careful in the way he's worded his charges and rationales. Dick Cheney has not. Last Sept. 14, on Meet the Press, Cheney said that a U.S. success in Iraq will mean "that we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

There's no getting around this one. Cheney wasn't merely suggesting, he was stating that the 9/11 terrorists' base was in Saddam's Iraq. Even Bush had to backpedal, admitting, "No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with Sept. 11." The president is just sneaky. The vice president lies.

But then again, as my friend Jeff pointed out after checking out this CNN report, maybe he isn't that snarky after all:

The president answered:"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."

Now that's logic that anyone can get behind.