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Bush Aide Fires Back at Critics On Justification for War in Iraq |
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By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 11, 2005
washingtonpost.com
The White House went on the offensive in the debate over the Iraq war
yesterday, insisting that U.S. intelligence had compiled a "very strong
case" that Saddam Hussein harbored banned weapons and accusing
congressional critics of hypocrisy because many of them voted for force
three years ago.
Bristling from fresh assaults on its justification for war, the White
House dispatched national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley to the
briefing room to issue a rebuttal to "the notion that somehow the
administration manipulated prewar intelligence about Iraq." The
administration's judgment on the threat posed by Iraq, he said,
"represented the collective view of the intelligence community" and was
"shared by Republicans and Democrats alike."
"Some of the critics today," Hadley added, "believed themselves in 2002
that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, they stated that
belief, and they voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq because
they believed Saddam Hussein posed a dangerous threat to the American
people. For those critics to ignore their own past statements exposes
the hollowness of their current attacks."
The unusually combative statement by the normally mild-mannered Hadley
underscored how the issue has inflamed political dialogue in Washington
in the days since a senior White House official was indicted in the CIA
leak case. Democratic leaders have seized on the indictment to refocus
attention on the broader question of how President Bush led the nation
to war.
For the Bush team, the Iraq war has evolved into the most damaging
political liability at a time of multiple setbacks, and the president's
advisers do not want Democrats writing the history of how the war
began. The White House decided to respond aggressively in hopes of
convincing the American people that Bush relied in good faith on
intelligence that proved wrong in an effort to protect them -- rather
than skewing the data to rationalize a war he was already determined to
wage, as many Democrats contend.
Successive investigations have documented the failure of U.S.
intelligence agencies to correctly judge Iraq's chemical, biological
and nuclear weapons programs before the war, including a commission
appointed by Bush that concluded that the intelligence was "dead
wrong." The government relied on lying sources, fragmentary information
and unwarranted analysis, the commission found, resulting in one of the
"most damaging intelligence failures in American history."
Democrats immediately took issue with Hadley's account. Within minutes
of his briefing, the Senate Democratic caucus issued a statement saying
the responsibility did not fall on lawmakers who voted to authorize use
of force: "Some critics of how the administration misused intelligence
did believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. What
these critics object to is the hyping of the intelligence by the Bush
administration."
In a separate statement earlier in the day, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy
(D-Mass.) recounted the various urgent warnings about supposed Iraqi
weapons delivered by Bush and his advisers in the months leading up to
the March 2003 invasion -- warnings that all proved overstated if not
flatly wrong.
"In his march to war, President Bush exaggerated the threat to the
American people," Kennedy said. "It was not subtle. It was not nuanced.
It was pure, unadulterated fear-mongering, based on a devious strategy
to convince the American people that Saddam's ability to provide
nuclear weapons to al Qaeda justified immediate war."
Hadley yesterday offered no direct critique of the prewar intelligence
and instead said that at the time it was compelling evidence that also
convinced the Clinton administration and other governments.
"The intelligence was clear in terms of the weapons of mass
destruction," Hadley said, citing a National Intelligence Estimate
provided to Bush. "The case that was brought to him, in terms of the
NIE, and parts of which have been made public, was a very strong case."
Hadley noted that the presidential commission, led by retired judge
Laurence H. Silberman and former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.), said
it found no evidence that administration officials manipulated
intelligence. But the panel was not allowed to examine how policymakers
used the information.
By forcing a rare closed-door session last week, Senate Democrats successfully
pressured the chamber's Republican leadership to promise to speed up an
inquiry into the Bush administration's handling of prewar intelligence.
But a House Republican leader declined any additional inquiry by his
body's intelligence committee.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the House intelligence chairman, instead
said his panel would expand an inquiry into the leaking of classified
information to include three new matters -- the revelation of secret
CIA prisons abroad, the disclosure of Valerie Plame's CIA affiliation
and the inadvertent release last week of the nation's intelligence
budget by the deputy director of national intelligence.
Staff writer Jonathan Weisman contributed to this report.
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