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Whopper: George W. BushOh, that letter to Congress linking Saddam and 9/11 ...

By Timothy Noah
Posted Thursday, June 17, 2004, at 6:32 PM ET

This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda.
—President Bush, in an exchange with reporters, June 17, 2004

[A]cting pursuant to the Constitution and [the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002] is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. [Italics Chatterbox's.*]
—President Bush, in a letter to Congress outlining the legal justification for commencing war against Iraq, March 18, 2003

Got a whopper? Send it to chatterbox@slate.com. To be considered, an entry must be an unambiguously false statement paired with an unambiguous refutation, and both must be derived from some appropriately reliable public source. Preference will be given to newspapers and other documents that Chatterbox can link to online.

Whopper Archive:
June 4, 2004: George W. Bush
April 11, 2004: Condoleezza Rice
March 15, 2004: John Kerry
Feb. 7, 2004: George Soros
Jan. 30, 2004: Howard Dean
Jan. 10, 2004: President Bush
Jan. 5, 2004: Laura Bush

(Click here to access the Whopper Archive for 2003, here to access the Whopper Archive for 2002, and here to access the Whopper Archive for 2001.)

Correction, June 18, 2004: An earlier version of this item neglected to indicate that the italics were not in the original. (Return to corrected sentence.)

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