I didn't say that there was a direct connection between September the 11th and Saddam Hussein." Bush reaffirmed the White House position in even stronger terms in a press conference on 21 August 2006. Ken Herman of Cox News asked, "What did Iraq have to do with ... the attack on the World Trade Center?" Bush replied, "Nothing." Bush elaborated on his answer and added, "Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq." Opponents of his Iraq policy charged that his statement was inconsistent with his letter to Congress of March 21, 2003 and a minority (Democrat) staff report by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform claimed that "in 125 separate appearances, they [Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice] made ... 61 misleading statements about Iraq's relationship with al-Qaeda." American public opinion Polls have shown that many Americans continued to believe that Saddam was linked to al-Qaeda, although the number who do so has slowly declined. This discrepancy has been attributed by some to the way in which the U.S. mainstream media presented facts and opinion regarding the war on terror. Skepticism of the Saddam–al-Qaeda link Conflicting goals and ideologies Saddam Hussein was a Ba'athist, and Ba'athism is a movement which combines pan-Arab nationalism with secularism and Arab Socialism. The ideological founder of Ba'athism, Michel Aflaq, was himself a Christian. It is therefore very much at odds with political Islamism, with which Saddam had long been at conflict; Saddam had kicked out Ayatollah Khomeini to France when he attempted to incite the Shias of Iraq to overthrow Saddam when Khomeini was in exile in Najaf which, ironically, was a catalyst for the Iranian Revolution and the resulting Iran-Iraq war. Khomeini pitted Saddam against a torrent of Islamic radicalism as Saddam faced his own people who were inspired by the Iranian Revolution and eight years of "Holy War" against Iranians who utilized suicide tactics, which wreaked havoc on the Iraqi armed forces (which ultimately solved this problem with chemical weapons). Even during the Lebanese Civil War, Saddam supported Michel Aoun and the Christian Maronite Forces as opposed to the Amal Movement or Hezbollah, which were funded by Iran and most other Arab countries. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Osama bin Laden offered to defend Saudi Arabia by sending mujahideen from Afghanistan to repel Saddam's forces. After the Gulf War,