"The president asked, I believe - though none of us recall the specific - conversation, the president asked a perfectly logical question. We'd just been hit and hit hard. Was - did Iraq have anything to do with this? Were they complicit in it? This was a country with which we'd been to war a couple of times, that were firing at our airplanes in - the no-fly zone. It made perfectly good sense to ask about Iraq. I will tell you, Ed, when we went to Afghani - to- Camp David to plan our response to the al Qaeda attack, it was the map of Afghanistan that was rolled out on the table. It was Afghanistan that became the focus of - the - American response. And - Iraq was - put aside with the exception of - worrying about whether Iraq might try and take - advantage of us in some way."
Condi Rice 60 Minutes 3/28
The first hightlight is very curious. It might make sense today, but today is not what's being discussed. This is about Bush's motivations on 9/12/01. We had not been to war a couple of times at that point.
It would have been accurate to say, "This is a country with which we fought a war 10 years earlier." You could argue that's a minor slip, but does a ten year old war really justify Bush's conversation with Clarke? Are they counting on our stupidity, or did they forget to check the timeline?
The second highlight speaks for itself. Afghanistan became the focus. This tells me Iraq was the focus and then put aside. If you aren't actively dealing with something, how do you put it aside? Sure they set it aside later. But up until then Iraq was the focus - just as Clarke and O'Neill have told us.