It’s Leon Panetta, who has decided to repeat the lies of Bush and His Evil Minions^™:

The joke got a round of appreciative laughs, but his comments Monday about al-Qaeda and the Iraq war raised eyebrows.

“The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked,” he told troops at Camp Victory, the largest U.S. military outpost in Baghdad. “And 3,000 Americans — 3,000 not just Americans, 3,000 human beings, innocent human beings — got killed because of al-Qaeda. And we’ve been fighting as a result of that.”

His statement echoed comments made by Bush and his administration, which tried to tie then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda. But it put Panetta at odds with Obama, the 9/11 Commission and other independent experts, who have said that al-Qaeda lacked a presence in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Pressed by reporters to elaborate, Panetta said: “I wasn’t saying, you know, the invasion — or going into the issues or the justification of that. It was more the fact that we really had to deal with al-Qaeda here; they developed a presence here and that tied in.” His aides then intervened and shooed the press corps away.

This mother f%$#er is secretary of Defense? He was head of the CIA? And he still thinks that Saddam Hussein was behind 911?

Un-dirtyword-believable!

^*Yes, he takes the title from this guy, the reigning champion.