President fires back at critics of Iraq war

TOBYHANNA, Pa. — President Bush, on the defensive over claims that he manipulated intelligence to build support for invading Iraq, launched an unusually sharp attack on critics Friday for what he called trying to "rewrite the history" of how and why the war began.

Bush said his critics were undermining U.S. troops by claiming that his administration had misled the public on whether Saddam Hussein had obtained weapons of mass destruction.

"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," the president said in a Veterans Day address at an Army depot in Tobyhanna.

"These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will."

Bush's rhetoric, which coincided with a similar attack on Democrats from the Republican Party chairman, reflected growing White House concern over signs that the public's confidence in the president is slipping and that misgivings about Iraq are among the principal causes of his credibility problems. The administration has conceded that some prewar intelligence suggesting Saddam held or sought banned weapons was faulty.

But Democrats in recent weeks have sought, with some success, to revive the question of whether officials at the White House and other agencies misrepresented the intelligence to the public before the war. Claiming Republicans had blocked a promised investigation in the matter, Democratic senators used a rare parliamentary maneuver earlier this month to win assurances the inquiry would proceed.

At the same time, public-opinion surveys show more Americans question Bush's handling of the war and prewar intelligence. In a recent ABC News/Washington Post survey, 55 percent said they believed the Bush administration "intentionally misled" the public in making its case for war.

In an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Friday, 57 percent of respondents said they did not think the administration has high ethical standards. Bush's approval rating in that poll remained at an all-time low of 37 percent.

Bush told a crowd of soldiers and civilians at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania: "While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began."

The president said his critics were aware a bipartisan investigation "found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs."

He appeared to be referring to a White House commission that reported in April, after a yearlong inquiry, that U.S. intelligence had been "dead wrong" in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq's illicit weapons, but that it found no evidence that administration officials pressured analysts to shade their reports for political reasons.

Bush said his critics "also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing his development and possession of weapons of mass destruction." He also noted that "more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power."

Referring to his defeat of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in the 2004 presidential campaign, Bush said many of his critics "supported my opponent during the last election," and that Kerry had cited Iraqi weapons programs when he voted to support the use of force in Iraq.

Bush's attack set off a daylong series of rhetorical volleys between the White House and its critics. Democratic lawmakers continued to accuse the president of twisting the facts and called for a new administration strategy for extricating U.S. troops from Iraq.

"We can no longer simply pledge to stay the course; we must change the course," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who added that Iraq was now a haven for terrorists, something it had not been before the war.

Kerry, among the senators calling on Bush to start withdrawing forces from Iraq, castigated Bush for "playing the politics of smear and fear on Veterans Day."

"This administration misled a nation into war by cherry-picking intelligence and stretching the truth beyond recognition," Kerry said. "The mistake we made was trusting the president, and it's a sad day when an administration's word is no good."

Some Republicans also have questioned the handling of intelligence before the war. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., has backed an investigation "because I thought we needed the answers to whether intelligence was misused, intentionally or unintentionally."

Material from the Chicago Tribune

is included in this report.