NBC's Lauer failed to challenge Bush's suggestion, contradicted by multiple sources, that he "couldn't have" foreseen wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq in days after 9-11 attacks

NBC Today co-host Matt Lauer failed to challenge President Bush's suggestion, during an interview broadcast on the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, that he "couldn't have" envisioned at the time of the attacks that a response would include -- in the words Lauer used to phrase his question -- "two full-scale wars, Afghanistan and Iraq." In fact, multiple sources including several administration officials have reported that the Bush administration began planning for an invasion of Iraq before September 11 and discussed retaliatory strikes against Iraq in the immediate hours and days following the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.

From the September 11 broadcast of NBC's Today:

LAUER: Three days after the attacks, you came to New York, what we now call Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center. There's that famous moment, you grabbed the bullhorn.

BUSH [video clip]: I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

LAUER: When you said that, did you have a very clear understanding -- had you formulated a plan in your mind? And did you understand exactly what it was going to take to respond to those attacks?

BUSH: That was not a planned speech. It just came out. There was still smoke. And it was just a -- there was haze. The emotions were unbelievable. There were tears in people's eyes. There was hugging. There was exhaustion. And there was anger. I grabbed that bullhorn and those words reflected my view -- just pure emotion. Which is, we will stay on the offense to protect the country. We had begun to formulate a plan for Afghanistan. But, you know, look, this is a war in which we're constantly having to adjust. My strategy has not changed. The tactics to conduct this war do change. Whether it be in Iraq or Afghanistan or on the home front.

LAUER: At the time when you made that -- those remarks at the World Trade Center, could you have envisioned that the response would include two full-scale wars, Afghanistan and Iraq? The expenditure of some -- by some estimates $450 billion in the overall war on terror and the types of changes that we as Americans have seen in our daily lives over these past five years?

BUSH: You know, those -- that means I've got a pretty good crystal ball if I could anticipate all of that. I couldn't have. But I knew that we were gonna have to be a nation of resolve. And I knew that we were dealing with cold-blooded killers, the likes of which we hadn't seen in a long period of time.

Bush did not respond to Lauer's question directly about whether he could have foreseen two wars. And notwithstanding Bush's explicit reference to plans to attack Afghanistan, at no point in the discussion did Lauer ask Bush about reports that he responded to the 9-11 attacks by initiating plans to attack not only Afghanistan but also Iraq.

Former National Security Council counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke reported in his book Against All Enemies: Inside the White House's War on Terror -- What Really Happened (Free Press, 2004) and during a March 2004 interview on CBS' 60 Minutes that President Bush ordered him to find a link between Saddam Hussein and 9-11 when Bush returned to the White House after the attacks. Also, according to Clarke, at the same time, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld advocated for bombing sites in Iraq despite Clarke's insistence that "Iraq had nothing to do with" the September 11 attacks. Clarke reported that planning for a strike against Iraq continued on September 12 and the days following.

In addition, an April 20, 2004, Salon.com article by David Sirota cited numerous reports that corroborated Clarke's disclosure that the Bush administration began planning for an invasion of Iraq immediately after the attacks:

CBS News reported on Sept. 4, 2002, that "barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq -- even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks."

The Washington Post reported on Jan. 12, 2003, that six days after Sept. 11 Bush signed an order "directing the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq."

Former British ambassador Christopher Meyer confirmed that "President Bush first asked British Prime Minister Tony Blair to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power at a private White House dinner nine days after" Sept. 11.

Ambassador Meyer reported on Dec. 2, 2001, that "President Bush has ordered the CIA and his senior military commanders to draw up detailed plans for a military operation" against Iraq that could involve "U.S. forces fighting on the ground."

[...]

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill published documents proving that the president "ordered the Pentagon to explore the possibility of a ground invasion of Iraq well before" Sept. 11 -- an account corroborated by another White House aide.

Sirota's article also noted that Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack (Simon & Schuster, 2004) provided further evidence that the administration began planning for war with Iraq immediately after the September 11 attacks. In Plan of Attack, Woodward reported that Bush told then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice five days after the attacks that military operations in Afghanistan would precede a strike against Iraq, and that Rumsfeld had argued that the attacks represented "an opportunity to take out Saddam Hussein."