Bush's Iraq justification defies logic

Let me finish tonight with George W. Bush. Years ago, a member of the British cabinet got caught in an embarrassment and, of course, denied it.   To which his accuser said, "Well, he would, wouldn't he?" Denial is the norm of political life, especially of the awful.   President Bush says that the Iraq War was justified because it prevented "another 9/11"? 9/11 was a network operation involving cells in Germany, heavy recruitment in Saudi Arabia, and flight training in Florida.  The one country not involved was Iraq.  The attack of 2001 was conspired among a web of jihadists, religious fanatics without loyalty to a particular state. Saddam Hussein was a Baathist, a secular leader of a country. So how would a war with Iraq prevent another attack from worldwide elements of Al Qaeda?   Or is Bush arguing something that cannot be logically be denied for the simple reason that it has nothing to do with logic -- with discernable cause and effect, with anything tangible.   Is he saying that the war which cost 77,000 lives was justified because he thought it would help prevent another terrorist attack like 9/11?  In other words, if the connection between 9/11 and Iraq - which no one has ever been able to substantiate - was in his mental wiring, he is guiltless before history? There's reason to believe that Bush lives in this solipsistic world, a worldview built not of shared human knowledge of cause and effect or of tangible fact but of what George W. Bush sees out there.   He describes the "sickening feeling" that came to him when the arriving "coalition" forces couldn't find any of the biological, chemical or nuclear materials that he said were the reason for war.But if the weapons weren't there, how did the Iraq war prevent another 9/11?  Is Bush really arguing that the "motive" of that war by itself is what stopped us from getting hit again?  That we got protection from terrorism by fighting a war that turned out to kill tens of thousands of people?  That we stopped the use of terrorist weapons even though we didn't find them? Does he really live in this house of mirrors, where what he intends to be the truth "is" the truth?Read more about "Decision Points" here. NBC News’ Matt Lauer sat down with President George W. Bush in his first one-on-one television interview since leaving the Oval Office. The extensive interview will air Monday, November 8 at 8 p.m. ET on NBC as a primetime special “Decision Points: A Conversation with George W. Bush.” President Bush will then join Lauer live on “Today,” Wednesday, November 10.