On the July 12 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, during a report on President Bush's press conference about the administration's just-released Initial Benchmark Assessment Report, CNN White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux stated that according to Bush, U.S. troops “must now stay in Iraq to fight Al Qaeda, the terrorist group that was largely absent there before the U.S. invaded.” Malveaux then aired a clip of Bush asserting: “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th.” Malveaux reported Bush's assertion without challenge despite numerous recent news reports that have cited intelligence officials and other experts disputing the notion that the Sunni insurgent group “Al Qaeda in Iraq” is linked to the group led by Osama bin Laden, which was responsible for the 9-11 attacks. Indeed, as Media Matters for America has repeatedly noted, several members of the media have documented the Bush administration's efforts to conflate the two in order to misleadingly claim that the war in Iraq is now against bin Laden's Al Qaeda.

For example, a June 28 McClatchy Newspapers article -- with the headline “Bush plays Al Qaida card to bolster support for Iraq policy” -- noted that Bush's description of Al Qaeda as “the main enemy” in Iraq was “rejected by his administration's senior intelligence analysts”:

Facing eroding support for his Iraq policy, even among Republicans, President Bush on Thursday called al Qaida “the main enemy” in Iraq, an assertion rejected by his administration's senior intelligence analysts.

The reference, in a major speech at the Naval War College that referred to al Qaida at least 27 times, seemed calculated to use lingering outrage over the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to bolster support for the current buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq, despite evidence that sending more troops hasn't reduced the violence or sped Iraqi government action on key issues.

Bush called al Qaida in Iraq the perpetrator of the worst violence racking that country and said it was the same group that had carried out the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington.

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U.S. military and intelligence officials, however, say that Iraqis with ties to al Qaida are only a small fraction of the threat to American troops. The group known as al Qaida in Iraq didn't exist before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, didn't pledge its loyalty to al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden until October 2004 and isn't controlled by bin Laden or his top aides.

Additionally, the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post have recently published articles that distinguish between the two groups.

Malveaux made no mention of Bush's frequent conflation of the two groups, which reflects a rhetorical strategy identified by New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt in his July 8 column: “As domestic support for the war in Iraq continues to melt away, President Bush and the United States military in Baghdad are increasingly pointing to a single villain on the battlefield: Al Qaeda.” Hoyt wrote that this strategy has “political advantages” because the group “is an enemy Americans understand.”

In the McClatchy article, reporter Jonathan S. Landay provided further context for this reported strategy:

Bush's use of al Qaida in his speech had strong echoes of the strategy the administration had used to whip up public support for the Iraq invasion by accusing the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein of cooperating with bin Laden and implying that he'd played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks. Administration officials have since acknowledged that Saddam had no ties to bin Laden or 9-11.

A similar pattern has developed in Iraq, where the U.S. military has cited al Qaida 33 times in a barrage of news releases in the last seven days, and some news organizations have echoed the drumbeat. Last month, al Qaida was mentioned only nine times in U.S. military news releases.

New York Times reporters Michael R. Gordon and Jim Rutenberg addressed this issue in a July 13 article headlined “Bush Distorts Qaeda Links, Critics Assert”:

[Bush's] references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership.

There is no question that the group is one of the most dangerous in Iraq. But Mr. Bush's critics argue that he has overstated the Qaeda connection in an attempt to exploit the same kinds of post-Sept. 11 emotions that helped him win support for the invasion in the first place.

From the 4 p.m. ET hour of the July 12 edition of CNN's The Situation Room:

MALVEAUX: Here, lawmakers -- both Democrats and a growing number of Republicans -- are urging Mr. Bush to change course. The president accused them of crossing into his lane.

BUSH: I don't think Congress ought to be running the war. I think they ought to be funding our troops.

MALVEAUX: The troops, Mr. Bush says, must now stay in Iraq to fight Al Qaeda, the terrorist group that was largely absent there before the U.S. invaded.

BUSH: The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th.

MALVEAUX: And as for who's responsible for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq, Mr. Bush stressed several times his reliance on his military command and their belief that now is not the time to pull out forces.