There's no "admission" by Rumsfeld that Iraq wasn't behind 9/11, because he'd never said that Iraq *was* behind 9/11. Neither Bush nor Cheney nor Rice nor Rumsfeld nor Wolfowitz nor Powell, nor anyone else in the US government ever made any claim that Iraq was behind the September 11 attacks. No, really, stop laughing. They never said any such thing.

You're right, none of "Team Bush" specifically fingered Saddam for 9/11. But in the build up to the war they allowed the gullible US public and its oppressive mass media to perpetrate the idea that Iraq and Osama were linked.

This is why 70 per cent of Yanks believe this now. This is why it was never clarified and officially denied before now. Its a lie which has outlived its usefulness, and that is why they're jettisoning it now, before it can unravel and make them look (more) stupid, like with Blair and his "45 minutes" claim.

What's the point though really? If it's the media's fault it's their fault, yet you blame the Bush Administration here. Can anything done actually be the fault of the media itself? We don't have a state media in this country. It may be patriotic but it's definetly not controlled by the state. And btw, even on fox news which is the worst example of "real news" in the minds of most I've seen like yourself, they never pushed this as something that was true. They may have mentioned that someone believed it, but they definetly didn't push a connection. I never saw this stated in any fashion on O'Reilly, Brit Hume, etc. So I don't get where the push is from. I think it has to do with a big problem we have had for a long time in having a very unsavy population. Most of them don't even watch the news, so small specks their hear from here and there are how they decide things. They hear Saddam, they hear terrorist, and they hear they are somehow involved and bang, he must have been involved in 9/11. Insane but it's the way it works for a great deal of people who don't even watch what can be bad news coverage.