9/11, The War On Terror, and Iraq

President Bush's speech on Tuesday night was an update on the War on Terror. The most recent battlefield in that war is Iraq. Despite the assertions of the Left following the speech, the president did not link 9-11 and Iraq, except that the Iraq is a battle in the War on Terror. If you missed the speech, you can read the transcript here.

Andrew McCarthy of National Review Online wrote an excellent article on the speech, and how Iraq and al-Qaeda are linked and were involved prior to 9-11.

Here is an excerpt:

"It was good to hear the commander-in-chief remind people that this is still the war against terror. Specifically, against Islamo-fascists who slaughtered 3000 Americans on September 11, 2001. Who spent the eight years before those atrocities murdering and promising to murder Americans — as their leader put it in 1998, all Americans, including civilians, anywhere in the world where they could be found.

It is not the war for democratization. It is not the war for stability. Democratization and stability are not unimportant. They are among a host of developments that could help defeat the enemy.

But they are not the primary goal of this war, which is to destroy the network of Islamic militants who declared war against the United States when they bombed the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993, and finally jarred us into an appropriate response when they demolished that complex, struck the Pentagon, and killed 3000 of us on September 11, 2001.

That is why we are in Iraq."