Getting defensive, now aren't we...
WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Monday charged that critics who claim he exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq to justify an invasion are "revisionist historians" who ignore more than a decade of evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Bush's comments marked the first time he has taken on the growing chorus of critics at home and abroad who claim the inability of U.S. forces to find chemical or biological weapons in Iraq after nearly two months of searching proves Bush hyped the need for war.
"There are some who would like to rewrite history. The revisionist historians is what I like to call them," Bush told workers at a New Jersey pasta company as he made his way back to the White House after a long weekend at his family's compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.
In recent weeks, as members of Congress and others have stepped up criticism of the administration's prewar statements about Iraqi weaponry, the White House has dispatched an array of senior officials to defend the decision to go to war. But Bush's comments Monday escalated the debate and indicated the administration may be feeling increased pressure on an issue that could blossom into a campaign controversy over Bush's credibility.
"There's a lot of evidence that there were mixed reviews about whether there were weapons of mass destruction, and it's been building, not only from Democrats but from others, and [Bush] probably felt he had to defuse it," said James Thurber, director of American University's Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies.
"In these situations, sometimes it's better to let others handle it, to let surrogates handle it. This is escalating it to another level," Thurber said.
Without specifically mentioning weapons of mass destruction, Bush said the international community has long accepted the premise that Saddam Hussein continued to develop weapons after the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war and the 1998 expulsion of United Nations weapons inspectors.
"Saddam Hussein was a threat to America and the free world in '91, in '98, in 2003," Bush said. "He continually ignored the demands of the free world, so the United States and friends and allies acted."
Bush added, "And this is for certain: Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States and our friends and allies."
A senior administration official said Bush was expressing the same frustration voiced by other senior officials who wonder how anyone could question the threat posed by Hussein given the intelligence gathered by U.S. officials and other governments.
"It's not just us who were saying it. Everyone was saying it," the official said, adding that the administration still expects to find evidence of the weapons.
Some experts asserted that Bush's comments would do little to quell the controversy.
Ivan Eland, senior fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, said that despite Bush's escalating defense of the war, serious questions remain about the integrity of the intelligence gathered on Iraq and the administration's use of that information to justify the war.
"Although congressional and CIA investigations will take place, many professionals in the U.S. intelligence community are already complaining that the integrity of the intelligence process was compromised for the political purpose of selling the war on Iraq to the American people," Eland said.
Among the charges leveled against the Bush administration is that it ignored intelligence that cast doubts about Iraq's weapons programs while emphasizing less reliable information suggesting that Hussein was on the brink of acquiring a nuclear bomb.
Congressional leaders are expected to scrutinize whether a special intelligence unit set up in the Pentagon late last year by civilian defense leaders was created because those leaders thought the CIA was underestimating the threat of Iraqi weapons programs.
Investigators also may look into a series of visits Vice President Dick Cheney, an advocate of the Iraqi invasion, made to the CIA prior to the war. The White House acknowledged that Cheney went to the CIA but said he did not pressure intelligence analysts there to make the case for an invasion.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's chief ally in the invasion of Iraq, is also facing a barrage of public criticism for claiming before the war that Iraq possessed unconventional weapons that threatened Britain, the U.S. and Middle East nations.
While Congress is investigating whether the White House manipulated or misrepresented intelligence information in making its case for the war, a committee of the British House of Commons has undertaken a similar examination of Blair in London.
Under scrutiny in both Washington and London is a document that supposedly proved that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium for a bomb from Niger. The document, prominently cited by Britain and the U.S. as a cause for concern prior to the war, was later determined to have been a forgery so crude that critics said it should have been obvious to intelligence officials.
Bush recently claimed the U.S. had found evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, pointing to the discovery of two trailers the administration described as mobile weapons labs. But Bush backed off those remarks given the lack of evidence that the labs had ever been used to produce chemical or biological agents. The administration still believes, however, the trailers were built to manufacture such weapons.
I say:
1) That the Resident is getting defensive about this is a Good Thing, because it means that the cacaphony is growing to a point where it can no longer be ignored.
2) Who taught Shrub to string together the polysyllabic phrase "revisionist historians", and how long did it take for hime to be able to pronounce it properly? (Although he did butcher the grammar in the sentence...I guess they can only teach hime the words; how to use them takes more time...)
