Duke University (where I’m a graduate student) is holding a series of events commemorating the fifth anniversary of 9/11 that includes two movies about the war in Iraq:

The following events, which are all free and open to the public, will be held at Duke University to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks:

…A three-day film series, sponsored by several Duke units, will be held. The first film, “Underexposure,” is the first feature made on location in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein. It will be shown at 8 p.m. Sept. 11 at the Richard White Lecture Hall, on Duke’s East Campus.

…On Sept. 13, “Iraq in Fragments” will be shown beginning at 8 p.m. in the Griffith Film Theater. The award-winning documentary looks at the war in Iraq from Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish viewpoints.

The Bush administration has managed to confuse millions of Americans about this, but there is no credible evidence linking Iraq to 9/11. So why show films about the Iraq war on the anniversary of the attacks? Shouldn’t one of the nation’s leading universities be trying to correct this misperception rather than holding events that reinforce the linkage?

Update 9/10 2:32 PM: Commenters are suggesting that the Iraq war is the result of 9/11, so the program may be appropriate. But there is good evidence that the Bush administration wanted to go into Iraq long before 9/11. The Iraq war was sold using 9/11, but it was not a direct or necessary result of the terrorist attacks (like the war in Afghanistan), so I still object to the linkage.