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Bush Rails Against Critics of Iraqi WMD Intel
U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday called Democratic accusations that he misled the country into war with Iraq “deeply irresponsible,” the New York Times reported (see GSN, Nov. 11). Speaking in Pennsylvania, Bush said charges that he misused intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs undermine the war effort. Efforts to counter these charges come as public support shrinks for the war and questions about the president’s credibility linger, according to the Times. “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. “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 (Nev.) was quick to counter the president’s assertion. “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,” Reid 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 the speech, the president said that Democrats, Republicans and the United Nations believed before the war that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. No WMD programs have been found in the aftermath or the invasion. Bush said that his administration did not distort intelligence and that congressional resolutions supporting the war had support from both sides of the aisle. “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,” the president said. “Some Democrats and antiwar critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war,” he continued. “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,” Bush added. Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) said Bush was “playing the politics of fear and smear on Veterans Day.” Fellow Massachusetts Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy said the president’s speech was “a campaign-like 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.” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said that it was “regrettable that Senator Kennedy has found more time to say negative things about President Bush than he ever did about Saddam Hussein” (Richard Stevenson, New York Times, Nov. 12). Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, yesterday said that the Iraq war taught lawmakers to seriously consider intelligence before authorizing military force, the Washington Post reported. “I think a lot of us would really stop and think a moment before we would ever vote for war or to go and take military action,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We don't accept this intelligence at face value anymore,” Roberts added. “We get into pre-emptive oversight and do digging in regards to our hard targets.” Senator John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said the committee’s ongoing review of prewar intelligence (see GSN, Nov. 10) was “absolutely useful” because “if it is the fact that they [the Bush administration] created intelligence or shaped intelligence in order to bring American opinion along to support them in going to war, that's a really bad thing — it should not ever be repeated” (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, Nov. 14). The Washington Post’s review of the use of intelligence Saturday found that U.S. intelligence agencies believed that Iraq had a WMD program. Most members of Congress backed this belief, according to the Post. However, intelligence reviewed by the White House was more robust than that viewed by Congress. The Post also found that commissions that have reviewed the use of intelligence were not charged with determining whether the Bush administration improperly used the information. “Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry,” said Laurence Silberman, co-chairman of the presidential commission on weapons of mass destruction. The White House also did not share the most sensitive intelligence with lawmakers and provided the National Intelligence Estimate to Congress just days before the vote to allow military force. The National Intelligence Estimate also raises questions. Doubts in the report could not be made known to the public because the estimate was classified. For example, the concluded found that Hussein would not use weapons of mass destruction unless he had no other option. The Post found last year that only six senators and a “handful” of representatives read past the estimate’s executive summary. Within the Bush administration there was also disagreement. In February 2001, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said of economic sanctions against Iraq, “Frankly, they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction (Milbank/Pincus, Washington Post II, Nov. 12).
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