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Bush Forcefully Attacks Critics of His Strategy in Iraq
By MARIA NEWMAN
Published: November 11, 2005
President Bush lashed out today at critics of his Iraq policy, accusing them of trying to rewrite history about the decision to go to war and saying their criticism is undercutting American forces in battle.
President Bush challenged a new round of accusations by Democrats that he exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons programs.
"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decisions or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," the president said in a Veterans Day speech in Pennsylvania.
Mr. Bush delivered his aggressive and unusually long speech as part of an effort to shore up his credibility as he faces growing public skepticism about Iraq and accusations by Democrats and others that he led the nation into war on false pretenses.
Those accusations seem to be making a dent in public confidence in him, as public opinion polls show more people questioning the president's honesty about Iraq and about whether American troops should remain in the fight.
Today's remarks by the president, which painted his critics as hypocrites, drew quick and angry responses from Democrats, and quickly led to a back-and-forth with Republicans about who was exploiting Veterans Day by using it as a forum to voice their views on Iraq. The president's speech is part of a new strategy by the administration that will play out in the next few weeks in other presidential speeches and remarks by other leading Republicans, top senior administration officials said.
The president spoke at the Tobyhanna Army Depot near Wilkes-Barre. He talked not only about why Americans are at war - "the terrorists are as brutal an enemy as we've ever faced, unconstrained by any notion of our common humanity or by the rules of warfare" - something he has mentioned in almost every speech, but turned on his critics more directly than he usually does.
"The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges," he said. "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will."
Before going to war, Mr. Bush said, Democrats and Republicans alike were privy to the same intelligence that indicated former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
"Some Democrats and antiwar critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war," he said. "These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs. They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein."
The Senate's Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said Mr. Bush had "resorted to his old playbook of discredited rhetoric about the war on terror and political attacks as his own political fortunes and credibility diminish."
"Attacking those patriotic Americans who have raised serious questions about the case the Bush administration made to take our country to war does not provide us a plan for success that will bring our troops home," Mr. Reid said. "While the Bush administration continues to stonewall the Congress from finding the truth about the manipulation of pre-war intelligence, Democrats will continue to press for a full airing of the facts."
In his Pennsylvania speech, Mr. Bush said the United Nations had passed more than a dozen resolutions that cited Mr. Hussein's development and possession of weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Bush mentioned Senator John Kerry, whom he defeated in the 2004 election, something he seldom did even during the campaign. Mr. Bush recalled that Mr. Kerry, a Democrat, also voted to go to war, and quoted him as saying that he had done so because Mr. Hussein had "a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hand" and that he was "a threat and a grave threat to our security."
The president said: "That's why more then a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power."
Mr. Kerry responded in Boston, where he participated in ceremonies honoring veterans and active duty forces. "I wish President Bush knew better than to dishonor America's veterans by playing the politics of fear and smear on Veterans Day," Mr. Kerry said. "This administration misled a nation into war by cherry-picking intelligence and stretching the truth beyond recognition."
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