One of the many claims in Halperin and Heileman's new book Game Change is that during a briefing session, Sarah Palin said several times that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were behind the 9/11 attacks. Although this particularly story is new, we've already known for quite some time that Palin believed Iraq was behind 9/11.
As you'll see in this video, even though Palin now denies ever having made the connection, she made at on at least two occasions during the 2008 campaign, first on September 11 when she said Iraq was home to "the enemies who planned and carried out" 9/11 and again on September 25 when, standing at Ground Zero, she said we were fighting in Iraq "to not let them attempt again what they accomplished here, and that was some destruction, terrible destruction on that day".
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So yes, even though she now claims otherwise, if you're going to be completely fair and balanced, Sarah Palin did link 9/11 and Iraq. Moreover, while Halperin and Heileman do shed new light on Palin's complete ignorance, we've known the basic facts since the 2008 election, because she was making the claim while on the campaign trail.
Perhaps the strangest aspect of this whole thing is Sarah Palin's new spin. She's adamant that she never said what the video proves she said, but she does now concede that until the 2008 presidential campaign she didn't know where the 9/11 hijackers came from and had to ask McCain staffers to find out.
I did talk a lot to Steve Schmidt about the history of the war, and about where, perhaps, the 9/11 terrorists came from, and could there have been any connection to Saddam. So I admit that I asked questions.
That is a shocking fact. In Palin's own words, she didn't know where the 9/11 hijackers came from. Basically, her defense is that she was a total moron who had no idea who attacked us on 9/11. As bad as that makes her look, it reflects even more poorly on John McCain and his staffers whose thirst for power was so great that they were willing to put this utter fool within a heartbeat of the presidency.