Bush rules Saddam out of 9-11

PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH said there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, an idea held by 70% of Americans.

“There’s no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaida ties,” the US president said, but he added, “We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11 attacks.”

The president’s comment on Saddam was in line with a statement on Tuesday by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who said that he had not seen any evidence that the former Iraqi leader was involved in the attacks.

A new poll in the US found nearly 70% of respondents believed the Iraqi leader probably was personally involved.

Mr Rumsfeld said: “I’ve not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that.”

The US administration has argued that Saddam’s government had close links to al-Qaida, the terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden that masterminded the September 11 attacks.

On Sunday, for example, Vice-President Dick Cheney said that success in stabilising and democratising Iraq would strike a major blow at the “the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9-11”.

On Tuesday, on ABC television, White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said one of the reasons Mr Bush went to war against Saddam was because he posed a threat in “a region from which the 9-11 threat emerged”.

On NBC television, Mr Cheney was asked whether he was surprised that more than two-thirds of Americans in the Washington Post poll believed that Iraq was behind the attacks.

“No, I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection,” he said.

Ms Rice, asked about the same poll numbers, said: “We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9-11.”