Bush uses Osama to prove al Qaeda in Iraq is related

CNN:

President Bush insisted that al Qaeda and al Qaeda in Iraq are part of the same terrorist network, during a speech Tuesday at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina.

"Some say that Iraq is not a part of the broader war on terror," Bush said. "They claim that the organization called al Qaeda in Iraq is an Iraqi phenomenon -- that it's independent of Osama bin Laden and it's not interested in attacking America. That would be news to Osama bin Laden."

Bush made his case as a Democratically controlled Congress moves to set timetables for U.S. forces to pull out of the unpopular Iraq war and as the president's job-approval rating dips low in opinion polls.

"However difficult the fight is in Iraq, we must win it, and we can win it," Bush told members of the military who were clad in camouflage.

"Al Qaeda is in Iraq and they're there for a reason," Bush said. "Surrendering the future of Iraq for al Qaeda would be a disaster to our country." Watch Bush tie together al Qaeda and Iraq »

The president said "al Qaeda's top commander in Iraq" issued an audio statement saying "that he will not rest until he has attacked our nation's capital."

Ahead of the speech, a White House official said Bush would reveal "newly declassified information" about the links between al Qaeda and al Qaeda in Iraq.

"I presented intelligence that clearly establishes this connection," said Bush. "The facts are that al Qaeda terrorists killed Americans on 9/11, they're fighting us in Iraq and across the world, and they're plotting to kill Americans here at home again."

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The Democrats' denial of the connection is getting harder to maintain. In fact the main reason for the denial is to avoid the consequences of acknowledging that they are running a way from a fight that al Qaeda says is the central front in the war against us. They remind me of the kooks who claim 9-11 was and inside job and that al Qaeda had nothing to do with it despite al Qaeda's admission of responsibility. The President needs to continue to push the facts and hope that the people will listen.

Thomas Joscelyn has more of the evidence of al Qaeda's involvement in Iraq.

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Consider what bin Laden said about the importance of the war in Iraq in December 2004:

I now address my speech to the whole of the Islamic nation: Listen and understand. The issue is big and the misfortune is momentous. The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation. It is raging in the land of the two rivers. The world's millstone and pillar is in Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate.

The whole world is watching this war and the two adversaries; the Islamic nation, on the one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other. It is either victory and glory or misery and humiliation. The nation today has a very rare opportunity to come out of the subservience and enslavement to the West and to smash the chains with which the Crusaders have fettered it.

Likewise, here is how Ayman al Zawahiri described the war in Iraq in a letter to Abu Musab al Zarqawi, then al Qaeda's chief terrorist in Iraq, in 2005:

I want to be the first to congratulate you for what God has blessed you with in terms of fighting battle in the heart of the Islamic world, which was formerly the field for major battles in Islam's history, and what is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era.

According to Clinton and Obama, "this is not our fight."...

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It is hard to ignore, but the Democrats are working hard to do so.