Bush Aide Fires Back at Critics
The Bush administration is finally taking the fight to the pacifists in the Democratic Party who’ve been claiming they manipulated the pre-war intelligence and lying us into war. Here’s how they’re fighting back:
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.”
It’s long past due for the Administration to come out fighting. It’s long past time for them to knock the two-faced Democrats back on their heals. They said far more aggressive things in support of the war than did President Bush and his administration.
Still, it’s important to not get too excited about this shot at Democrats. What’s needed is for this administration to build on this, not use it as a one-time salvo. The President himself must take the fight to Democrats, too. Enlist the Vice President and Condi Rice, too. Democrats are easy targets and it’s hunting season on pacifist Dems. It’s time to start blasting away.
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.”
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“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.”
Senator Blowhard, there’s nothing subtle or nuanced about your fear-mongering in opposition to the war.
Cross-posted at Let Freedom Ring
November 13th, 2005 at 12:49 am
Inaccuracies in Bush’s defense of lead-up to war / Congress had far less information than White House had
President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent day
March 12th, 2006 at 9:57 pm
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