Reid: Bush's comments on Qaeda and Iraq are 'misguided and dangerous'

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV-D) issued a sharp rebuke to the commander in chief on Tuesday, shortly after President Bush gave another speech defending his strategy in Iraq as a way to keep al Qaeda from attacking the United States.

"The President’s claim that the war in Iraq is protecting us from Al Qaeda is as misguided and dangerous as the conclusions that drove us to Iraq in the first place," Reid said in a statement sent to RAW STORY. "The fact is that our continued flawed strategy in Iraq is emboldening and unifying Al Qaeda, both in that country and elsewhere."

Earlier today, Bush told military personnel at the Charleston Air Force base, "Some say that Iraq is not a part of the broader war on terror. They claim that the organization called al Qaeda in Iraq is an Iraqi phenomenon, that it's independent of Osama bin Laden and it's not interested in attacking America. That would be news to Osama bin Laden."

However, Reid pointed out that al Qaeda in Iraq did not exist before the US invasion and ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003, and criticized the president for attempting to link the Iraq war with the fight against Osama bin Laden's terror network.

"Despite what the President would like us to believe, it has been established that Al Qaeda had no active cells in Iraq when we invaded, and we have long known that we were not attacked from Iraq on 9/11. Saying otherwise does not make it so," Reid said. "The Administration’s own National Intelligence Estimate reported last week that the war is Al Qaeda’s most effective tool for recruiting terrorists and raising money. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda is growing stronger and Osama bin Laden operates freely along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border nearly six years after the Sept. 11 attacks."

Democrats in the Senate so far have failed to garner enough votes to pass a slate of measures that have been introduced aimed at beginning a troop withdrawal. But Reid promised his party would "continue fighting for what the vast majority of the American people know we need: changing the mission in Iraq, bringing our troops home responsibly and refocusing our resources on al Qaeda."

During his Tuesday speech Bush claimed that "surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaeda would be a disaster to our country" but didn't mention a newly public US intelligence report that found Al-Qaeda had been reinvigorated and was plotting new attacks from a safe haven in remote tribal areas of Pakistan.

The report, a National Intelligence Estimate grouping the consensus findings of the US spy agencies, also declared that Al-Qaeda in Iraq was the terrorist network's "most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the Homeland," meaning the United States.

A previous NIE found that the war in Iraq was an effective recruiting tool for Islamist extremists including Al-Qaeda.

"Thanks for letting me come by today," Bush said Tuesday. "I've explained the connection between al Qaeda and its Iraqi affiliate. I presented intelligence that clearly establishes this connection. The facts are that al Qaeda terrorists killed Americans on 9/11, they are fighting us in Iraq and across the world, and they are plotting to kill Americans here at home again."

(With wire reports)

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