Find the Discrepancy in This Picture

I'm sure this has been noted elsewhere, but see if you can fathom this chasm: Bill Clinton lied on the stand about getting head and got impeached. Bush and his cronies dissembled about the Saddam/Al-Qaeda/9-11 connection and the state of Iraq's nuclear program and capablities and got re-elected. They subsequently shamed the United States by opening the door to torture and then doing nothing to those ultimately responsible for it. 1700 Americans are dead. Thousands more are wounded. Many thousands of Iraqis are dead or wounded, the vast majority of them innocent civilians. Anyone see a discrepancy here?

UPDATE: Just a few Bush administration quotes either insinuating or explicitly stating links between Saddam Hussein (and Iraq) and Al-Qaeda. I would argue tentatively that mentioning Al-Qaeda post-9/11 implicitly includes 9/11; you may disagree. The point of the rhetoric was more to frighten the public about a possible future attack than to exact revenge. From AP (via USA Today):

2002

Rice, Sept. 25: "There clearly are contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented; there clearly is testimony that some of the contacts have been important contacts and that there's a relationship here. ... And there are some al-Qaeda personnel who found refuge in Baghdad."

Bush, Oct. 7: "We know that Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy—the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al-Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade" and "we've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases."

2003

Bush, State of the Union address, Jan. 28: "And this Congress and the American people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda."

Bush, Feb. 6: "Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and al-Qaeda have met at least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al-Qaeda" and "Iraq has also provided al-Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training."

2004

Cheney, Jan. 21: "I continue to believe—I think there's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government. I'm very confident that there was an established relationship there."

Cheney, Monday: Saddam Hussein "had long-established ties with al-Qaeda."

From the BBC:

US President George W Bush - 17 June 2004:

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda."
...
US Vice-President Dick Cheney - January 2004:

"There's overwhelming evidence... of a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq".
...
US Secretary of State Colin Powell - January 2004:

"I have not seen smoking gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I do believe the connections existed."

US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice - September 2003:

"Saddam was a danger in the region where the 9/11 threat emerged."

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - November 2002:

"Within a week, or a month, Saddam could give his WMD to al-Qaeda."

UPDATE II: I left out of the BBC quotes above the following two quotes, for consistency, because they are not from the administration and do not support what the administration repeatedly claimed.

9/11 Commission - 16 June 2004:

"We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda co-operated on attacks against the United States."

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - January 2004:

"The most intensive searching over the last two years has produced no solid evidence of a co-operative relationship between Saddam Hussein's government and al-Qaeda."

And just for fun, here's a reiteration of our previous quotation of Rickett's memo to Blair concerning Iraq prior to Blair's April visit with Bush in Crawford.

5. US scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al Aaida [sic] is so far frankly unconvincing. To get public and Parliamentary support for military operations, we have to be convincing that:

6. the threat is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to die for;

7. it is qualitatively different from the threat posed by other proliferators who are closer to achieving nuclear capability (including Iran).