While offering no direct evidence linking Hussein to the recent tainting of American spinach with E. coli, Bush said that intelligence sources indicated that “trying to destroy America by poisoning its spinach is just the kind of thing that Saddam Hussein would try to do, if given half a chance.”
He added that he would take action to maintain an uninterrupted flow of spinach by releasing America’s Strategic Spinach Reserve, millions of tons of spinach stored in huge underground salt caverns along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico.
Bush’s case against Saddam appears to have been persuasive, since a new poll taken after the president’s speech showed that a majority of Americans now believe that the former Iraqi leader was responsible for the tainting of America’s spinach, with a slightly smaller number believing he was somehow involved in the death of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin.
In Baghdad, Hussein did not address Bush’s accusations, but instead complained about conditions at his trial, telling reporters, “I can barely hear myself think with all that racket outside.”
“Every time I try to launch into an insane outburst, there’s some big boom, boom, boom outside that drowns it out,” he said. “I’m doing some of my finest work here and it’s going to waste.”
Elsewhere, the Space Shuttle Atlantis planned to return to Earth Wednesday, while Tom Cruise set no firm date.
