Referring to a speech made by President Bush on October 7, 2002, Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) said that President Bush’s rhetoric was misleading the public toward war with Iraq: “These claims [of an Iraq/al-Qaeda connection] were effective. At the time, a poll showed that 70 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was involved in or directly responsible for the attacks of September 11; rather than disabusing people of the notion, the President tried to solidify it. Instead of using his presidency to teach America about the real terrorist threats we faced, Bush was using it to mislead the country in order to build support for a war against an unrelated threat.”
– Bob Graham with Jeff Nussbaum, Intelligence Matters, Page 193