All right, I know a lot of you have already jumped to a conclusion about what I am going to talk about here and are wondering why I am still harping on about it. But I am not talking about the myth that Saddam was behind 9/11, I am talking about the myth that GWB promolgated the Saddam myth.

New research by Scott Althaus, a professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Devon Largio, a law student at Vanderbilt University shows that, whilst the Bush Administration was happy to leverage of the myth, they did not in fact create it.

At the time of 9/11 they point to the fact that there was a high level of predisposition by the American public to believe that Saddam was behind most of the dasterdly deeds that were arising at the time. Also analysis of the questions asked in the polls conducted at the time indicated that the wording of the questions overstated the involvement of Saddam reflecting, one presumes, the bias of the organisations conducting the polls. Neither of these two aspects were under the control of the Bush Administration.

There is no doubt however that the climate and the poll results were seized upon by the Bush Administration to bolster the case for launch a preemptive strike against Iraq. Devon Largio identified 27 different rationales the Bush Administration used during the lead up to the war to justify it's desire to launch the war. These changed during the prewar period. She looked at three distinct periods.

1 - 12 Sept 2001 - Dec 2001
2 - State of the Union Address - Apr 2002
3 - 12 Sept 2002 - Oct 2002

In the first period talk of Iraq and their potential involvement in 9/11 was almost exclusively raised by reporters in the form of questions to the Administration. Senator John McCain was the only congressman to actively initiate consideration of Iraq during this period. It is in the second period when Bush does an almost complete change of focus from bin Laden to Hussein. This occured in January 2002 and was adopted by the media in February 2002.
By phase three the Bush Administration was wholeheartedly pushing the line that launching a war on Iraq was the right and appropriate thing to do.

Through the campaign five of the 27 rationales were consistently used

-War on Terror
-WMD
-Lack of Inspections
-Removal of Hussein Regime
-Saddam was not a nice person.

She claims that analysis shows that new rationales were being thought up and introduced through the campaign. The rationale that Tony Blair hung his hat upon, that there was an "imminent threat" emerged in phase 3 in Bush's address to the UN. Rapidly this rationale was adopted by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Lott, Dashle, the Congressional Record and, of course Tony Blair.

Read more of Devons research here. It is quite well written, unlike so many academic papers.
Read more on the bias of Americans against Saddam here.