Bush and critics spar over how Iraq war started

The back-and-forth jabs made the quarrel seem like a political campaign.
WASHINGTON POST
TOBYHANNA, Pa. -- 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.
Campaign tone
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 Kerry, D-Mass., while the White House issued an unusual campaign-style memo attacking Sen. Edward 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 midterm 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.
Bush's troubles
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 Dick Cheney, has revived the issue of the administration's truthfulness in building the case for war, and nearly three in five voters in the Post-ABC poll do not consider Bush honest.
Bush's view
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."
"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war," the president told the supportive crowd, "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.
Response
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 Reid of Nevada 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."
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."