Interestingly enough, the press is finally picking up on the way President Bush linked Iraq and 9/11 over and over during his speech last night. He’s only been doing it for, what, almost three years? We wrote all about it in All the President’s Spin. So have many other people. But the press frequently refuses to point it out since he tends to suggest a link between Iraq and 9/11 without stating the claim directly.

As recently as two weeks ago, in fact, Bush clearly linked Iraq to 9/11 during his radio address on June 18 (via Atrios):

We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens. Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but all of us can agree that the world’s terrorists have now made Iraq a central front in the war on terror.

Yet a Google News search shows no critical news reporting on his statement.

Today, however, a number of outlets covered his claims skeptically, including the Washington Post, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times and CNN. Why? Two obvious reasons: His approval ratings are low, and Democrats criticized Bush for using 9/11, which gives the press a news hook to justify reporting on the issue. Both were missing in the runup to the war in Iraq, which is why the administration got away with so much. Does this mean that the press is finally going to reassert itself? We’ll see.