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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Bitter partisan squabbles engulfed Capitol Hill on Tuesday sparked by President Bush's 9/11 speech Monday night that was not supposed to be political.
Eight weeks before elections that will determine control of the House and Senate, Democrats charged that the president was "playing election-year politics" with the memories of 9/11, and Republicans questioned whether Democrats are more interested in protecting terrorists than the country.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, on Tuesday accused President Bush of trying to tap into the emotions renewed by the 9/11 anniversary to boost flagging support for the war in Iraq.
In his speech, Bush portrayed the war in Iraq as part of a "struggle for civilization" with terrorists -- one on par with the World War II struggle against fascism and the Nazis. Democrats strongly contest that idea, saying that the Iraq war is a distraction from the global drive to stop terrorism.
"We learned that America must confront threats before they reach our shores, whether those threats come from terrorist networks or terrorist states," Bush said. "I am often asked why we are in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat."
White House spokesman Tony Snow said Tuesday the president wasn't "picking fights" when he brought up the Iraq war, according to The Associated Press.
"This was not a speech that was designed to single out anybody for partisan reasons, but gave the president's honest reflections and reactions to what has happened since September 11, 2001," Snow said, according to the AP. "The president decided that yesterday wasn't a day for partisanship."
But the speech, Reid charged, was partisan, meant only for his administration. Bush did not speak for the nation, Reid said, unlike the time the president stood on the rubble of the World Trade Center five years ago and used a bullhorn to promise a quick response to the September 11 attacks.
"No bullhorn, only the bully pulpit of his office, which he used to defend an unpopular war in Iraq and to launch clumsily disguised barbs at those who disagree with his policies there," Reid said.
"By focusing on Iraq in the manner he did, the president engaged in an all-too-familiar administration tactic: conflate and blur the war in Iraq with the response to 9/11," he added.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, also denounced Bush's speech, citing a Senate Intelligence Committee report released last week that said that the CIA had dismissed ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
"In fact, the war in Iraq has made our effort to defeat terrorism and terrorists more difficult," Pelosi said in a written statement. "Last night's speech demonstrated that the president will go to any lengths to distract attention from his failures in Iraq, which have diverted focus from the war on terrorism."
Republicans question Democrats' motives
Sen. Reid's speech provoked quick and angry responses from Republicans.
"I listen to the questions today and I listen to my Democrat friends, and I wonder if they are more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people," House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said "The fact is, these people want to kill Americans -- they have killed Americans. And if we do not go after them and defeat them they are going to continue to kill and injure more Americans."
Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pennsylvania, took the floor after Reid's comments and denounced them.
"The very people that planned the attacks are the people who are in Iraq -- al Qaeda in Iraq -- causing that sectarian violence," he said. "Should we ignore that, I ask the senator from Nevada?"
The group al Qaeda in Iraq was actually formed after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and was headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike June 7 north of Baghdad.
Al-Zarqawi's group initially was called Unification and Jihad, but he changed the name to al Qaeda in Iraq in December 2004 and soon after received a blessing from bin Laden.
Santorum also disagreed with Reid's characterization of the president's speech.
"The president did not give a political speech last night," he said. "He spoke of the reality of the conflict that is before us. It is not popular to do so, I know. It is not popular to stand up and support a conflict that is difficult ... to deal with every day."
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