I would suggest that on 9/11/01..... nearly everyone in America was a day or two away from knowing that Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11.
Bush told us he would crawl into every cave, look under every rock to find him and bring him to justice.
By the late summer of 2002, the trail had grown cold. We had let him slip away from us at Tora Bora when we decided to outsource his capture to Afghan warlords who went up into the hills looking for him and came out with their pockets stuffed with bribes and shaking their heads wondering where he went.
Then, in that August, Team Bush all began giving speeches that all had the same small group of words clumped together within sentences of one another ...over and over and over again : "Al Qaeda... Saddam.... 9/11... weapons of mass destruction... gassed his own people.... mushroom clouds over American cities.... Al Qaeda... Saddam.... 9/11... weapons of mass destruction... gassed his own people.... mushroom clouds over American cities....Al Qaeda... Saddam.... 9/11... weapons of mass destruction... gassed his own people.... mushroom clouds over American cities...." ..AND NEVER ONCE SPEAKING THE NAME OF OSAMA BIN LADEN. Bush hardly ever thought of him.
Oddly enough, by January of '03, over 65% of the American people had apparently forgotten what they had all known by 9/13/01...because by January of '03, those people believed that Saddam Hussein had planned and executed 9/11. And by then, team Bush was also telling them that there was absolute certainty that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and the ability to deliver them to the eastern seaboard.
I find this interesting since I never believed any such thing, nor do I know of anyone who did. Apparently, only those who didn't support invading Iraq heard it.
The fact that Saddam Hussein possessed and used chemical and bio weapons -- WMD's -- is indisputable. As far as delivery to CONUS, the words used to caveat the statements were "pursuing weapons delivery systems capable of ..."
I would also suggest that since Hussein couldn't even reliably deliver a SCUD to a point target in Israel, that anyone hearing he could do more not only wasn't listening to what was actually said, but was obviously not thinking for him/herself.
Here is a guy that a significant majority of the American people think was responsible for 9/11. Here is a guy that the president tells us WITHOUT A DOUBT has WMD's.....And what did America think of that? A terrible combination of fear.....revenge...payback.... let's go get some.... let's go invade Iraq and let's do it NOW!!!!
You're overplaying the 9/11/Hussein card, and who and how many people believed something again, I never heard stated as anything but speculation. I don't recall ONCE hearing anything other than "may have been part of." When someone says "may have been part of" and does not later produce evidence to support it, my conclusion is that he was not "part of."
and ever since the truth became apparent. ever since America figured out there were no WMD's and there was no connection to 9/11.... the republican party has been tapdancing and calling anyone who disagreed with them a traitor.
They make me sick.
