Kilmeade of Fox whitewashes Bush's lies on Iraq & Al Qaida

On the August 6 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade falsely claimed that "the president of the United States never even said there's a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq," and that "[t]hat wasn't the premise for going in there."

In fact, President Bush, and several other members of his administration, repeatedly said there was such a link, and that the United States should invade because Saddam might give his purported weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda, which could use them to attack the United States.



Media Matters has documented numerous instances where Bush tried to link Al Qaida and Iraq. Bush linked Al Qaeda to Iraq many times during the lead-up to the war.

Kilmeade made the claim while discussing Pulitzer prize winning author Ron Suskind's report in his new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism (Harper), that "[t]he White House had concocted a fake letter from [Iraqi intelligence chief Tahir Jahil] Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001. It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq -- thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda."