Hearst Newspapers via SFGate
Washington -- Vice President Dick Cheney, lashing out at Democrats for the first time since the felony conviction of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, his former top deputy, resumed his controversial claims Monday that the war in Iraq is the central front in the worldwide U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Cheney linked Iraq and al Qaeda even though post-invasion reports by the Senate Intelligence Committee and the presidential Commission on Intelligence Capabilities found no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda before the U.S.-led invasion on March 19, 2003.
In remarks to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, Cheney contended that U.S. Marines face al Qaeda operatives in Anbar province, that the U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown has unmasked al Qaeda car bomb operations in Baghdad and that Osama bin Laden has promised to make Baghdad the capital of a radical Islamic empire reaching from Indonesia to Spain.
"As we get farther away from 9/11, I believe there is a temptation to forget the urgency of the task that came to us that day, and the comprehensive approach that's required to protect this country against an enemy that moves and acts on multiple fronts," Cheney told the annual conference of the pro-Israel group, which interrupted his speech at least 27 times with applause.
"Iraq's relevance to the war on terror simply could not be more plain," Cheney said. He said al Qaeda terrorists have made Iraq the central front in the U.S. war against terrorism.
The U.S. invasion, occupation and counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq over the past four years has claimed the lives of at least 3,193 U.S. soldiers,
...Cheney has long contended that the U.S. invasion of Iraq four years ago this month was justified in part because of suspected ties between Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. ....
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