He quoted pre-war remarks by three senior Democrats as evidence of that Democrats had shared the administration's fears that were the rationale for invading Iraq in 2003. Bush did not name them, but White House counselor Dan Bartlett filled in the blanks.
_"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons." — Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.
_"The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as (Saddam Hussein) is in power." — Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.
_"Saddam Hussein, in effect, has thumbed his nose at the world community. And I think that the president's approaching this in the right fashion." — Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., then the Democratic whip.
Said the President:
"The truth is that investigations of the intelligence on Iraq have concluded that only one person manipulated evidence and misled the world — and that person was Saddam Hussein," Bush charged.
But instead of admitting mistakes over their overwrought charge of misleading the American people into war (oh, and Halliburton!!!!, just in case), the opposition is stubbornly following a flawed and failed plan:
On Capitol Hill, top Democrats stood their ground in claiming Bush misled Congress and the country. "The war in Iraq was and remains one of the great acts of misleading and deception in American history," Kerry told a news conference.
On the other hand, the opposition has a pliant press corps to peddle their twisted version of history. The President still has a heck of a battle on his hands.
I don't like commenting on the political battles between the two parties. I hate it, in fact. But the opposition is being so dishonest in its charges that they cannot be excused as simply playing politics. Lives are on the line and their slanderous charges cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged. The opposition needs to admit their mistakes in the "lying charge" and move on. Haven't they given the same advice for two years?
And for the record, I still don't buy that the intelligence was wrong. Were all the intelligence agencies of the world and the UN uniformly wrong in concluding Saddam had WMD?
We did not find WMD when we invaded but I don't think we should simply accept the new conventional wisdom that there were no WMD in Iraq. The Baathists who would know what happened to the chemical weapons that Saddam had prior to the war are still fighting and so not talking. In the long telegraphed punch that removed Saddam, the Baathists had plenty of time to scrub Iraq. Duelfer found much evidence of WMD efforts even though Saddam had time to hide what he had.
I think we'll find out what happened to the WMD and I don't think the final explanation will be that he had none in March 2003.
