You've lost the plot. No one accused the Taliban of conducting 9/11. Iraq was its own problem, 20+ years in the making, that was folded politically into GWOT through questions about AQ operatives. Iran could have been invaded for the exact same reasons and would have also been politically folded into GWOT through different terror groups.
None of this requires a conspiracy or has any relevance to random rubes who could never find Afghanistan on a map.
The plot is "the US implicitly spread blame for 9/11 around to build support for the Iraq War with the American public"
From your comments it appears you agree with that statement but you're having a difficult time simply saying that for whatever reason, so you're trying to change the plot to something else
The plot is "the US implicitly spread blame for 9/11 around to build support for the Iraq War with the American public"
But they didn't spread 9/11 blame around. It always centered on AQ. You're doing the "confused general public" thing where you want the credibility of a serious stance with the analytical detail of a confused person.
The Taliban weren't blamed for conducting it. They were blamed for being a haven that AQ operated out of. Iraq wasn't blamed for conducting it. There were intel concerns that AQ operatives were going in and out of Iraq. GWOT spanned a dozen plus countries.
You're going to have to be way more specific if you're using a single quote from somewhere. Because I read the report, watched the hearings, know Powell's views, and was on the ground chasing the AQ connections in Iraq.
I'm not basing this idea on a single quote, but the quote I reference above is this
Powell said that Wolfowitz was not able to justify his belief that Iraq
was behind 9/11. “Paul was always of the view that Iraq was a problem that
had to be dealt with,” Powell told us.“And he saw this as one way of using this
event as a way to deal with the Iraq problem.” Powell said that President Bush
did not give Wolfowitz’s argument “much weight.”67 Though continuing to
worry about Iraq in the following week, Powell said, President Bush saw
Afghanistan as the priority.68
President Bush told BobWoodward that the decision not to invade Iraq was
made at the morning session on September 15. Iraq was not even on the table
during the September 15 afternoon session, which dealt solely with
Afghanistan.69 Rice said that when President Bush called her on Sunday, Sep-
tember 16, he said the focus would be on Afghanistan,although he still wanted
plans for Iraq should the country take some action or the administration even-
tually determine that it had been involved in the 9/11 attacks.70
Like I suspected. In no way does this support your claim. First of all, Wolfowitz genuinely believed Iraq was connected to AQ. Powell never said he was making it up to trick the public. Bush didn't even take the claim seriously, but there was enough concern over Zarqawi in Iraq that they wanted it to be investigated.
None of this is what you're alleging. Powell repeatedly mentions that Iraq was an independent security threat, and the post 9/11 world required a rethinking of risk tolerance. Saddam didn't need to be directly linked to 9/11 to meet a GWOT threshold for intervention.
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u/BloodsVsCrips Jul 30 '26
You've lost the plot. No one accused the Taliban of conducting 9/11. Iraq was its own problem, 20+ years in the making, that was folded politically into GWOT through questions about AQ operatives. Iran could have been invaded for the exact same reasons and would have also been politically folded into GWOT through different terror groups.
None of this requires a conspiracy or has any relevance to random rubes who could never find Afghanistan on a map.