Chris Mathews did an interview with Rumsfeld in which the Secretary of Defense denies, after several queries, that there was no link between Iraq and 9/11.
Here is the link to the transcript:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4865948/
Here are the pertinent parts:
MATTHEWS: You know, when you watch the culture of the country, there’s a great sense in country music, you remember how you felt. You’ve heard these songs. They’re so American. And they talk about the war in Iraq as being some kind of payback or justice for what happened to us on 9/11.
Do you think that’s a fair way to look at it morally and sort of sentimentally, the idea that we’re getting back at the people that hit us?
I mean, the soldiers are, maybe—probably think that. I’m just guessing. They think, “We’ve got to go back and hit them. They hit us.” Like Pearl Harbor. They hit us; we’re hitting them back.
Is that accurate in history?
RUMSFELD: I guess in life, things are never quite as simple as they seem. There’s no doubt but that we’re fighting terrorists in Iraq, there, and it’s part of the global war on terror. The direct connection between 9/11 and...
MATTHEWS: You feel there’s a connection?
RUMSFELD: There’s a different one. No.
MATTHEWS: You see one?
RUMSFELD: No.
MATTHEWS: You don’t see an al Qaeda-Iraq connection before 9/11?
RUMSFELD: Well, It’s not a matter for me to see it, but the—the Central Intelligence Agency and the director of central intelligence has testified to the relationships between Iraq and terrorists.
We know he would spend $25,000 to suicide bombers.
MATTHEWS: Sure. For the ones in Israel. Sure, those people.
RUMSFELD: Yes.
MATTHEWS: But in terms of 9/11, there’s no connection?
RUMSFELD: Is it?
MATTHEWS: Between Iraq and 9/11?
RUMSFELD: It’s too complex a subject for me to answer yes or no. George Tenet has testified publicly and privately on that subject before Congress, and that is the official position of the United States government.
MATTHEWS: Which one? There’s no connection?
RUMSFELD: No. You have to (UNINTELLIGIBLE), because it is a complex set of issues and implicit intelligence facts.
MATTHEWS: But the president said recently, when he was asked—it was with Tony Blair that time, the prime minister of Great Britain. And he said there’s no connection between 9/11 and Iraq.
RUMSFELD: If you’re asking whether Iraqis, who were (UNINTELLIGIBLE) people engaged in 9/11, the answer is no.
MATTHEWS: You believe there’s still a possibility that the Iraqi government had something to do with planning the attack on us, 9/11?
RUMSFELD: Not to my knowledge.
MATTHEWS: Therefore, this war is not payback? There was no direct 9/11?
RUMSFELD: The...
MATTHEWS: The Iraqi war is not getting even with the people that hit us 9/11?
RUMSFELD: No. I see your point.
MATTHEWS: Is that the case? It’s not...
RUMSFELD: It is, but in a different way.
MATTHEWS: Let me try, correctly. Is this payback—is this war, in the line—in the sentiments of the music, in the culture of that country, many people’s minds, this is somehow justice for what happened to us 9/11. Is it? Or is it unrelated? Or is it not directly related? How would you connect the two?
If you were hit in the Pentagon, we’re hitting them in Iraq, is that connected?
RUMSFELD: If you’re asking if there’s a direct link between 9/11 and Iraq, the answer is no. If you’re asking, is the United—the threat (ph) of the United States from terror that exists and that was demonstrated on 9/11, in that manifestation, but exists in a variety of manifestations, and is what we’re doing in Iraq today a part of that effort against terrorists, no, certainly it is.