Bush ties Al Qaeda in Iraq to Sept. 11

Bush's address to the 437th Airlift Wing contained oft-repeated assertions that the president and other officials have made in recent months to rally lagging support for the war. He mentioned Al Qaeda 95 times -- and of those, 29 were in references to the group Al Qaeda in Iraq. Bush also employed chilling new language to expand on his warnings that a pullout could have grave consequences in the United States, turning Iraq into a country like Afghanistan in 2001, from which Al Qaeda could plot devastating attacks on U.S. soil.

"If we were not fighting these Al Qaeda extremists and terrorists in Iraq, they would not be leading productive lives of service and charity," Bush said. "Most would be trying to kill Americans and other civilians elsewhere, in Afghanistan or other foreign capitals or on the streets of our own cities."

Some U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials said Bush's broader assertions were in line with analysts' views. They noted that Bush used careful wording and deliberate attribution in cases in which he was citing intelligence that had not been substantiated.

But other experts and former U.S. intelligence officials questioned those assertions.

They noted that the Iraq conflict had undoubtedly attracted Islamic extremists who were trained in Afghanistan and might have fought in other theaters. But some cited an official U.S. National Intelligence Estimate released last year that described Iraq as a "cause celebre" for Islamic radicals worldwide, fanning anger and resentment across the Muslim world and beyond.

"I think what the president is saying is in some sense fundamentally misleading," said Robert Grenier, former head of the counter-terrorism center at the CIA as well as the agency's mission manager for the war in Iraq. "If he means to suggest the invasion of Iraq has not created more jihadists bent on killing Americans, and that if Iraq hadn't been there as a magnet they would have been attracted somewhere else, that's completely disingenuous."

The war "has convinced many Muslims that the United States is the enemy of Islam and is attacking Muslims, and they have become jihadists as a result of their experience in Iraq," Grenier said.

Bush also said Al Qaeda in Iraq posed a threat to Americans at home. "We've already seen how Al Qaeda used a failed state thousands of miles from our shores to bring death and destruction to the streets of our cities, and we must not allow them to do so again," he said.