Cheney: "We were not in Iraq"

This one comes courtesy of Dick Cheney, from his Remarks at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention:

I know some have suggested that by liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein, we simply stirred up a hornet's nest. They overlook a fundamental fact: We were not in Iraq on September 11th, 2001, and the terrorists hit us anyway. As President Bush has said, the hatred of the radicals existed before Iraq was an issue, and it will exist after Iraq is no longer an excuse.

This argument has often been used when the President or vice-President are asked whether Iraq might not be making terrorism worse. But it is not, in fact, a valid argument: just because there was terrorism before the invasion - even very bad terrorism, as in 9-11 - this does not mean that the invasion might not have been ill-conceived, ill-executed, and possibly made terrorism worse.

Fascinatingly enough, the argument does manage to change the subject back to 9-11, while simultaneously highlighting the fact that there was no connection between 9-11 and Iraq.

And then, finally, to the "we were not in Iraq" line: Others have pointed out that this premise is, in fact, not quite true either. On 9-11, the US was enforcing a no-fly zone on two thirds of the country of Iraq, bombing assorted targets in the other third, and had been enforcing sanctions for a decade after the Gulf War ended. Not exactly the same as "not being there."