So which story is it?

Los Angeles Times: President Bush's declaration Wednesday that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaida ties but that there was "no evidence" he was linked to 9/11 had an Alice-in-Wonderland quality. Only a few days earlier, Vice President Dick Cheney on national television had expanded the administration's claims, hinting darkly that Saddam's security forces might have been involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and that Iraq was at "the heart of the base" of the terrorist threat that culminated in Sept. 11.
Who is the public supposed to believe, Bush or Cheney? In delivering a different message depending on the day of the week, the administration is shredding the remains of its credibility on Iraq.
On Thursday, Hans Blix, the former U.N. weapons inspector who has patiently watched as the United States and Britain fruitlessly search for weapons they said Blix was too incompetent to discover, finally decried "the culture of spin, the culture of hyping." Both Blix and his successor at the United Nations, Demetrius Perricos, say Saddam probably destroyed any weapons of mass destruction a decade ago.
The administration's flip-flops aren't trivial, but rather are symptomatic of wider disarray. At a moment when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is trying to win the cooperation of wary allies for a U.N. resolution that will internationalize the occupation and bring in foreign troops and money, Cheney went out of his way to antagonize Europeans. Cheney made an impassioned case Wednesday at the Air Force Association's annual convention for an America goes-it-alone policy -- pre-emptive strikes abroad whenever and wherever Bush sees fit. The unspoken premise is that the United States doesn't need the United Nations or other countries to help rebuild invaded countries.
Failure to plan
With Iraq in danger of meltdown, however, it's clear that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon have failed to properly plan for the postwar period. Bush not only needs Europe on board, he also must listen to Republican lawmakers, led by Sen. Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., and Sen. Charles Hagel, R-Neb., who are urging the White House to shift control of Iraq's reconstruction from the Pentagon to the State Department.
In April, Congress went on record stating that it wanted Powell, not Rumsfeld, to oversee reconstruction. It backed down after lobbying by Cheney but shouldn't make the same mistake again.
Better yet, Bush could make clear his full and total support of the internationalization of the reconstruction in Iraq when he addresses the United Nations on Tuesday. It's the first step toward restoring the administration's credibility.