Why the administration hasn’t stood behind these things absolutely befuddles me. They have gone out of their way to disassociate themselves with evidence of Iraq/Al Qaeda links and of WMD recipes, when they should have broadcast them loudly.
Cheney did finally line up with the Iraq/Al Qaeda links this past year.
It is absolutely true that they existed. Are you aware that Iraq, Iran, Syria met with the major terrorist organizations on a regular basis as late as Feb 2001 at the Beirut Conference?
It’s just a matter of record: reported in Time, Newsweek, CNN, etc.
I imagine they simply discussed dinner and dancing girls. Field theory says that if you can demonstrate regular proximity, then you can predict likelihood of contact.
I think at certain point they decided not to belabor the point because it was useless - the media and Democrats would simply keep repeating their "Big Lie" line.
Most normal people then were convinced that going in to remove Saddam was the right choice, as they have been before the invasion. The polls that may suggest that people now think removing Saddam and invading Iraq was not the right thing to do are usually a reflection of deliberately misleading poll questions and general disappointment and fatigue with "The Long War" that they hear "we are not winning", rather than any change of original opinion based on new "facts".
So Bush people likely decided that it's more important to convince people of importance of staying and "winning in Iraq" than to dwell on the reasons for going in. If things go well in Iraq, most people will be for going into Iraq in the first place, if things are still perceived as not going well, most people will say they are/were against invasion in Iraq. In other words, I think they decided to pick the battles they can win, and the PR battle will then (later?) take care of itself, based on situation in Iraq.