I haven't read Bush's entire Air Force Academy commencement speech, but judging from the excerpts that appear here, he seems to have thrown in is lot with the hardest of the hard core -- the people who believe that the key to terrorism is state sponsorship:

But if democracy and prosperity flourish in the region, Mr. Bush went on, "the terrorist movement will lose its sponsors, lose its recruits and lose the festering grievances that keep terrorists in business." ...

Far from expressing any misgivings about the undertaking in Iraq, Mr. Bush restated his belief in pre-emption. "We can only imagine the scale of terrorist crimes were they to gain control of states of weapons of mass murder or vast oil revenues," he said. "So we will not retreat. We will prevent the emergence of terrorist-controlled states."...

Mr. Bush said that the entire United States commitment to the Middle East is being tested in Iraq. "We've removed a state sponsor of terror with a history of using weapons of mass destruction, and the whole world is better off with Saddam Hussein sitting in a prison cell," he said....

I don't even understand that second passage -- "were they to gain control of states of weapons of mass murder"? Hunh? What does that mean? Is it a typo, or an accurate transcript of a verbal stumble by Bush -- or is the word "state" so important to the Bush view of the Middle East that it gets shoehorned into sentences where it doesn't even fit? (On the other hand, the "vast oil revenues" part is crystal clear.)

It's a baby step from this speech to the view that 9/11 couldn't have happened without Saddam Hussein's help -- which, of course, is Laurie Mylroie's belief, Edward Jay Epstein's belief, and, apparently, Dick Cheney's belief.

Maybe this isn't a real change, but at the very least, Bush is speaking in code -- he's telling the true believers he's with them.