http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1100916_pf.html

washingtonpost.com
Bush Spars With Critics Of the War
Exchanges With Democrats Take Campaign-Style Tone

By Linton Weeks and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, November 12, 2005; A01



TOBYHANNA, Pa., Nov. 11 -- President Bush and leading congressional Democrats lobbed angry charges at each other Friday in an increasingly personal battle over the origins of the Iraq war.

"It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," Bush said as he used a Veterans Day address here to lash out at critics. "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will." Democrats retaliated with a barrage of statements accusing the president of skewing the facts, just as they maintain he did in the run-up to the invasion of March 2003.

Although the two sides have long skirmished over the war, the sharp tenor Friday resembled an election-year campaign more than a policy disagreement. In a rare move, Bush in his speech took a direct swipe at last year's opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), while the White House issued an unusual campaign-style memo attacking Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman followed with a speech blistering 10 Democrats for "political doublespeak."

From their campaign-style war rooms, the Democrats and allied liberal interest groups churned out "fact sheets" dissecting Bush's comments and comparing them with past statements and investigation findings in an effort to undercut his arguments. Kerry accused Bush of "playing the politics of fear and smear on Veterans Day."

The fierce back-and-forth underscored how central Iraq has become in the political environment leading into next year's mid-term congressional elections. After a succession of setbacks for Bush, including slow hurricane relief and a failed Supreme Court nomination, his public standing in opinion polls has tumbled to the lowest level of his presidency.

Anxious White House advisers believe that although other bad news will fade, Iraq remains the most significant long-term threat to the president's political fortunes. Without more tangible signs of progress in the coming months, they believe, Bush will find it enormously difficult to reassert his leadership of the country and steer his party through next year's elections.

The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 64 percent of Americans disapprove of how Bush is handling the war and 60 percent believe it was not worth fighting -- in both cases, the worst numbers for the president since the invasion. The perjury indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who resigned as chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, has revived the issue of the administration's truthfulness in building the case for war, and nearly 3 in 5 voters in the Post-ABC poll do not consider Bush honest.

Bush's speech at an Army depot here was intended to address that and turn the tables. Some critics, he complained, "are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war."

The president said that "it's legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war" but added that "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 the troops in Iraq deserve to know "that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them."

Taking aim at Kerry, who recently announced his support for a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq, Bush quoted the senator's statement in voting in 2002 for a congressional resolution authorizing use of force against Saddam Hussein. At the time, Bush noted, Kerry said that "a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat and a grave threat to our country." Bush added that other Democrats "who had access to the same intelligence" voted for the resolution.

Kerry later fired back. "This administration misled a nation into war by cherry-picking intelligence and stretching the truth beyond recognition," he said. "That's why Scooter Libby has been indicted."

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said Bush had "resorted to his old playbook of discredited rhetoric" and was "attacking those patriotic Americans who have raised serious questions about the case the Bush administration made to take our country to war."

And Kennedy, who voted against the war resolution, said: "It is deeply regrettable that the president is using Veterans Day as a campaign-like attempt to rebuild his own credibility by tearing down those who seek the truth about the clear manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war."

The exchange of fire heated up as the day wore on. White House press secretary Scott McClellan said it was "regrettable that Senator Kennedy has found more time to say negative things about President Bush than he ever did about Saddam Hussein" and added: "If America were to follow Senator Kennedy's foreign policy, Saddam Hussein would not only still be in power, he would be oppressing and occupying Kuwait."

And Mehlman, addressing a GOP dinner in Fort Wayne, Ind., mocked Democratic calls for further investigation into the handling of intelligence before the war. "Maybe this investigation will reveal that they were brainwashed," he said, according to prepared remarks released by the RNC. "Or that, like John Kerry, they were for the war before they were against it for short-term political gain."

Party strategists said neither side can afford to let the other define how the war began. "We cannot allow a mythology to develop that somehow it was inappropriate to be frightened" of Hussein, former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said in an interview. "The president absolutely should take on what I would describe as the surrender wing of American foreign policy."

Jim Jordan, a former adviser to Kerry, said Bush's speech reflected weakness. "It was driven by a petulance and frustration, and it had the tone of a president with an approval rating of 35 percent," he said. "He's sounding less statesmanlike when he needs to seem more."

In flying to Pennsylvania, Bush chose a battleground state in next year's election. Standing before a warehouse full of current and former troops, he spoke under a banner that read "Strategy for Victory" and next to a sand-colored Humvee and a 59,000-pound array of satellite and radar dishes.

The crowd cheered him exuberantly, especially when he embraced a constitutional amendment to ban the desecration of the American flag -- a proposal he has supported for years but almost never mentions in speeches. At another point, as he denounced terrorists, someone in the audience yelled out, "Give 'em hell, George."

Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) was on hand, but notably absent was fellow Republican Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), who trails badly in his bid for reelection next year. His press secretary, Robert Traynham, said the senator was speaking at a long-scheduled American Legion luncheon in Philadelphia and could not be in two places at one time. Jay Reiff, campaign manager for Democratic challenger Robert Casey Jr., said Santorum "is clearly trying to distance himself from an unpopular president and an unpopular agenda."

Baker reported from Washington.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/13143421.htm

Posted on Fri, Nov. 11, 2005
Bush forcefully attacks Iraq critics

DEB RIECHMANN

Associated Press


TOBYHANNA, Pa. - President Bush strongly rebuked congressional critics of his Iraq war policy Friday, accusing them of being "deeply irresponsible" and sending the wrong signal both to America's enemy and to U.S. troops.

"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," Bush said in his most combative defense yet of his rationale for invading Iraq in March 2003.

Bush's charges brought a forceful response from senior Democrats in Congress, who accused the president of misleading the country about the justification for war. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who ran unsuccessfully against Bush last year, accused the president of playing "the politics of fear and smear."

Bush's speech was part of a coordinated White House effort to bolster the president's waning credibility and dwindling support for the war, in which more than 2,000 U.S. troops have died.

As casualties have climbed, Bush's popularity has dropped. His approval rating now is at 37 percent in the latest AP-Ipsos poll, an all-time low point for his presidency.

"When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support," Bush said in a Veterans Day speech at Tobyhanna Army Depot.

"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."

Bush's remarks brought a few jabs from fellow Republicans as well as a sharp counterattack from Democrats.

In a speech in Philadelphia, Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., criticized how the war has been presented to Americans - both by the media and the White House. Afterward, Santorum said the war has been "less than optimal" and "maybe some blame could be laid" at the White House. "Certainly, mistakes were made," Santorum said.

Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., who is weighing a run for president in 2008, has said he agrees with Democrats who are pressing the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to move forward with an investigation into whether the administration manipulated intelligence.

"I was probably the main driver on the Republican side because I thought we needed the answers to whether intelligence was misused, intentionally or unintentionally," Hagel told the Omaha World-Herald in a story published Friday.

Defending the march to war, Bush said foreign intelligence services and Democrats and Republicans alike were convinced at the time that Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader, had weapons of mass destruction. The United Nations, he noted, had passed more than a dozen resolutions citing Saddam's development and possession of such weapons.

Accusing his critics of making false charges, Bush said: "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will.

"As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them."

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said Democrats would continue to press for a full airing of the facts about prewar intelligence and said asking tough questions was his party's way of standing with the troops.

"Americans seek the truth about how the nation committed our troops to war because the decision to go to war is too serious to be entered into under faulty pretenses," Reid said.

White House officials fanned out to television appearances to reinforce Bush's argument and Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman added his voice. He said Democrats who once worried that Saddam was amassing weapons of mass destruction now want an investigation of the intelligence. "Maybe this investigation will reveal that they were brainwashed," Mehlman said in a speech to be delivered Friday evening in Fort Wayne, Ind.

Criticism about prewar intelligence has been stoked by the recent indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, in the CIA leak investigation.

The probe aims to identify who leaked the identity of an undercover CIA officer whose husband, a former ambassador, alleged that the administration relied on faulty intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Kerry accused the president of playing politics on a holiday set aside to honor veterans.

"This administration misled a nation into war by cherry-picking intelligence and stretching the truth beyond recognition. That's why Scooter Libby has been indicted. That's why a statement in the State of the Union Address was retracted," said Kerry, who voted in 2002 to give Bush the authority to wage war but later voted against additional funds for Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction.

"It's a dangerous day for our national security when an administration's word is no good," Kerry said.

Bush chose to go on the road this Veterans Day to make his forceful defense of the war, leaving Cheney in Washington to attend traditional wreath-laying ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., accused Bush of using Veterans Day as "a campaign-like attempt to rebuild his own credibility by tearing down those who seek the truth about the clear manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War."

Bush's political adviser Karl Rove, who is still under the cloud of the CIA leak investigation, hopped Air Force One to attend the speech, an indication that it was a political event.

Bush shared the stage with a tan Army depot vehicle, and banners behind him read "Strategy for Victory." "Hail to the Chief," which is rarely played to mark Bush's arrival, blared from speakers in the warehouse.

---

Associated Press writers Kathy Matheson in Philadelphia and Will Lester in Washington contributed to this report.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/12/politics...094&partner=AOL

Bush Contends Partisan Critics Hurt War Effort

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: November 12, 2005
TOBYHANNA, Pa., Nov. 11 - President Bush on Friday sharply criticized Democrats who have accused him of misleading the nation about the threat from Iraq's weapons programs, calling their criticism "deeply irresponsible" and suggesting that they are undermining the war effort.

In a Veterans Day speech at an Army depot here, Mr. Bush made his most aggressive effort to date to counter the charge that he had justified taking the United States to war by twisting or exaggerating prewar intelligence. That line of attack has deepened his political woes by helping to sow doubts about his credibility and integrity at a time when public support for the war is ebbing.

"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," Mr. Bush said. "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them."

Mr. Bush's comments, using language far more direct and provocative than in his previous efforts to parry the criticism, brought an angry response from Democratic leaders in Congress, who said questions about his use of prewar intelligence were entirely legitimate and proper.

"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," Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader, said in a statement. "Americans seek the truth about how the nation committed our troops to war because the decision to go to war is too serious to be entered into under faulty pretenses."

In his speech, Mr. Bush asserted that Democrats as well as Republicans believed before the invasion in 2003 that Saddam Hussein possessed banned weapons, a conclusion, he said, that was shared by the United Nations. He resisted any implication that his administration had deliberately distorted the available intelligence, and said that the resolution authorizing the use of force had been supported by more than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate based on the same information available to the White House.

Before the war, the administration portrayed Iraq as armed with weapons that made it a threat to the Middle East and the United States. No biological or chemical weapons were found in Iraq after the American attack, and Mr. Hussein's nuclear program appears to have been rudimentary and all but dormant.

Mr. Bush has acknowledged failures in prewar intelligence but has maintained that toppling Mr. Hussein was still justified on other grounds, including liberating Iraqis from his rule.

Two official inquiries - by the Senate Intelligence Committee and by a presidential commission - blamed intelligence agencies for inflating the threat posed by Iraq's weapons programs, but stopped short of ascribing the problems to political pressures.

But the Senate review described repeated, unsuccessful efforts by the White House and its allies in the Pentagon to persuade the Central Intelligence Agency to embrace the view that Iraq had provided support to Al Qaeda. According to former administration officials, in early 2003, George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, and Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, rejected elements of a speech drafted by aides to Vice President Dick Cheney that was intended to present the administration's case for war, calling them exaggerated and unsubstantiated by intelligence.

And some assertions by administration officials, like Mr. Cheney's statement in 2002 that Mr. Hussein could acquire nuclear weapons "fairly soon" and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's statement the same year that Iraq "has chemical and biological weapons," have been proven overstated or wrong.

In defending his administration against the new round of Democratic criticism, Mr. Bush said Friday, "While it is 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."

"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. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing his development and possession of weapons of mass destruction."
After simmering for much of this year, the issue of how the administration used prewar intelligence has boiled over again in the last few months, leaving Mr. Bush on the defensive. The C.I.A. leak investigation focused new attention on the role of the White House, and especially Mr. Cheney, in assembling the intelligence used to justify the invasion.

The rising death toll and the difficulty American and Iraqi forces have had in containing the insurgency have depressed public support for the war. With Mr. Bush weakened politically on many counts, Democrats have been emboldened to take him on more aggressively than they have in the past, and have pushed in particular to keep a focus on the White House's justifications for the war.

Under pressure from Democrats, the Senate Intelligence Committee has begun closed-door meetings about how to proceed with a long-promised second phase of its inquiry into prewar intelligence. That effort is to focus in part on the use of intelligence by the Bush administration, Congress and others.

But that inquiry is unlikely to be completed any time soon, given the complexities of assessing how the White House, the Pentagon, Republicans and Democrats in Congress, Iraqi exile groups and others employed intelligence in setting policy and making public statements. Republicans have rebuffed an effort by Democrats to begin a similar review in the House Intelligence Committee.

Mr. Bush's comments on Friday only intensified the partisan battle. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Bush's Democratic rival in the presidential campaign last year, accused him of "playing the politics of fear and smear on Veterans Day."

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, called Mr. Bush's speech "a campaignlike attempt to rebuild his own credibility by tearing down those who seek truth about the clear manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war."

The White House, which has sought to define its opponents on the issue as liberals who are out of the mainstream on national security, struck back quickly at Mr. Kennedy as part of a new rapid-response plan through which administration officials hope to blunt the Democratic message about Mr. Bush.

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said it was "regrettable that Senator Kennedy has found more time to say negative things about President Bush than he ever did about Saddam Hussein."

"If America were to follow Senator Kennedy's foreign policy," Mr. McClellan said, "Saddam Hussein would not only still be in power, he would be oppressing and occupying Kuwait."

In responding so strongly to the criticism, the White House seems to be throwing fuel on a political fire that it may not be able to control.

But the administration appears to be calculating that it has always benefited so far from focusing the debate on national security, where the Democrats in recent years have been divided and tentative in advocating alternatives to Mr. Bush's stay-the-course policy in Iraq. And with Mr. Bush's poll numbers crumbling, the White House may have little choice but to take the risk; an Associated Press-Ipsos Poll released Friday found that 42 percent of Americans viewed Mr. Bush as honest, down from 53 percent at the beginning of the year.

Beyond taking on the Democrats over prewar intelligence, Mr. Bush used Friday's speech to make a case that despite the violent insurgency, Iraq is making steady progress that is creating the foundations of a stable democracy.

"By any standard or precedent of history, Iraq had made incredible political progress - from tyranny to liberation to national elections to the ratification of a constitution - in the space of two and a half years," he said, speaking to a friendly audience of veterans, military personnel and their families under a banner reading "Strategy for Victory."

At the same time, he said, Iraqi troops are showing increased ability to battle the insurgency.

"Our strategy is to clear, hold and build," Mr. Bush said, referring to the military tactic of sweeping suspected insurgents from towns and cities, leaving Iraqi forces behind to keep the insurgents from re-establishing a foothold, and then creating political institutions that can sustain a stable peace.

He also continued his effort to cast Iraq as part of a broader struggle against a virulent strain of radical Islam.

With Mr. Bush in Pennsylvania, Mr. Cheney took up traditional Veterans Day wreath-laying ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery.