During the January 24 broadcast of 630 KHOW-AM's The Caplis & Silverman Show, co-host Dan Caplis made the dubious claim that, “just as the resolution [authorizing military force in Iraq] was being voted on” in Congress, President Bush “affirmatively disavow[ed] [the] suggestion that Saddam had been involved in 9-11.” However, aside from brief statements thanking the House and Senate for their affirmative votes on the war resolution, there is no record on the White House “Presidential News and Speeches” webpage for October 2002 of Bush giving an address, holding a press conference, or issuing a statement about Iraq on the dates the House voted on the resolution (October 10, 2002) or when the Senate did so (October 11). The president did address the threat from Iraq in a speech on October 7, 2002, and during his weekly radio address on October 5, 2002, but in neither case did Bush “affirmatively disavow[]” the connection that Vice President Cheney and other administration officials repeatedly had made linking Iraq with the attacks of September 11, 2001.

During the broadcast, Caplis had disputed co-host Craig Silverman's suggestion that the American people supported the March 2003 invasion of Iraq in part because the administration had suggested that Iraq coordinated with the leader of the 9-11 plot, Mohamed Atta:

SILVERMAN: Did the American people support going into Afghanistan? You bet, but they view Iraq as a diversion, an unnecessary diversion that handed a victory to Iran. It was just, in hindsight, foolish.

CAPLIS: But -- but wait a sec. That misstates history. The American people overwhelmingly supported going into Iraq not on a belief that Al Qaeda was operating in Iraq, but on the belief there were weapons of mass destruction. So -- so Americans will support actions on many fronts, under many circumstances. You can't just limit it to Al Qaeda.

SILVERMAN: And that Saddam Hussein's man met with Mohamed Atta in Prague.

CAPLIS: No, that's -- that's just rewriting history. That was never, ever used by the president. In fact, I specifically remember the president, just as the resolution was being voted on, completely disavowing -- affirmatively disavowing that suggestion that Saddam had been involved in 9-11 and saying, “I don't believe Saddam was involved in 9-11. I'm worried about the next 9-11.”

SILVERMAN: Well, right. Hey, that mushroom cloud scared me. Turned out it wasn't true. But -- maybe I had a dream that Dick Cheney said that on Meet the Press. About Mohamed Atta meeting with Saddam Hussein's man in Prague.

CAPLIS: And you're forgetting -- I mean, do you really forget the president specifically coming out and saying, no, there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11? You don't recall him saying that?

SILVERMAN: I do, after -- you don't recall Cheney --

CAPLIS: Oh, yeah --

SILVERMAN: -- saying that Atta met with an Iraqi official in Prague?

CAPLIS: Well right, but your point is that we were led into war on the representation by the Bush administration that there was a connection between Iraq and 9-11. The president specifically disavowed that to the American people and the Congress.

In his October 7 speech, Bush argued that there was a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda but, contrary to Caplis' assertion, did not disavow the suggestion that Iraq and/or Saddam played a role in the 9-11 attacks:

We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.

In his October 5 radio address, Bush asserted that “Iraq has longstanding ties to terrorist groups, which are capable of and willing to deliver weapons of mass death” -- but again did not “disavow” the theory that Iraq played a role in the 9-11 attacks.

Based on the official texts of Bush's speeches, the first time that Bush appears to have denied that Iraq played a role in the 9-11 attacks was at an August 21, 2006, press conference during which Bush was asked specifically: “What did Iraq have to do with ... [t]he attack on the World Trade Center?” He replied: “Nothing ... ”

Other administration officials were not as circumspect as Bush about the specific suggestion that Iraq was involved in the 9-11 attacks, and Bush himself asserted links between Iraq and Al Qaeda as a justification for invading Iraq. The September 8, 2006, report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded not only that Iraq was not complicit in the 9-11 attacks, but also that this had been the intelligence community's pre-war assessment as well:

Conclusion 7: Postwar information supports prewar Intelligence Community assessments that there was no credible information that Iraq was complicit in or had foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks or any other al-Qa'ida strike. These assessments discussed two leads which raised the possibility of ties between Iraqi officials and two of the September 11 hijackers. Postwar findings support the CIA's January 2003 assessment, which judged that “the most reliable reporting casts doubt” on one of the leads, an alleged meeting between Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague, Czech Republic, and confirm that no such meeting occurred. Prewar intelligence reporting cast doubt on the other lead as well.

Nevertheless, as Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) noted in a floor statement upon the release of the report, during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq (and afterward), Cheney and other administration officials made statements asserting a connection between Iraq and the 9-11 plot that classified reports from the intelligence community had repudiated:

Today the Senate Intelligence Committee is releasing two of the five parts of Phase II of the Committee's inquiry into prewar intelligence. One of the two reports released today looks at what we have learned after the attack on Iraq about the accuracy of prewar intelligence regarding links between Saddam Hussein and al Qa'ida. The report is a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts to convince the American people that Saddam Hussein was linked with al Qa'ida, the perpetrators of the 9-11 attack.

The President said just this week that “one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.” That shouldn't surprise anybody. The President's decision to ignore Intelligence Community assessments prior to the Iraq war and to make repeated public statements that gave the misleading impression that Saddam Hussein's regime was connected to the terrorists who attacked us on 9-11 cost him any credibility he may have had on this issue.

President Bush said that Saddam and al Qa'ida were “allies” and that "[Y]ou can't distinguish between al-Qa'ida and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror." The bipartisan report released today directly contradicts that linkage which the President has consistently made in his effort to build public support for his Iraq policy.

[...]

The intelligence assessments contained in the Intelligence Committee's unclassified report are an indictment of the Administration's unrelenting and misleading attempts to link Saddam Hussein to 9-11. But portions of the report which Intelligence Community leaders have determined to keep from public view provide some of the most damaging evidence of this Administration's falsehoods and distortions.

At another point in the broadcast, Caplis asserted that the November 7, 2006, re-election of U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (CT) as a pro-war candidate against an anti-war opponent proves that the election was not “a mandate for surrender in Iraq”:

[...]

CAPLIS: The election was a mandate for change. And -- and here's my evidence for factual support. I understand you have your opinion, and you presented it articulately, and I appreciate that. But, but -- here's where I offer you real evidence. If the election was a mandate for surrender in Iraq, then why does the Democrat who most strongly supports the war win? Joe Lieberman. In fact, even against a Democratic anti-war candidate who favors surrender. And why does the Republican who is most opposed to the war lose? I mean, so this was not a mandate for defeat. It was a mandate for “hey-you're-not-doing-this-right” change.

In making this claim, Caplis repeated a right-wing talking point. As Media Matters for America has noted (here and here), exit polls indicate that Connecticut voters re-elected Lieberman as an independent candidate in 2006 despite his longtime support of the war; further, in the weeks leading up to the election, Lieberman took pains to portray himself as a critic of the war.