President Bush distanced himself on Wednesday from comments by Vice President Dick Cheney that left the impression he saw a possible link between Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
"We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in Sept. 11," Bush told reporters as he met members of Congress on energy legislation.
[. . .]
Despite distancing himself from part of what Cheney said, Bush frequently suggested in speeches in the run-up to war that there was a link between Iraq and the al Qaeda network.
In recent speeches, he has called Iraq the "central front" in the war on terror despite the failure to find conclusive evidence that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction.