The Push Back

Backed up against the wall by scandal and mismanagement, the Bush PR team returned fire like a cornered animal. In a democracy, obviously the President has every right to respond to charges leveled at him by the opposition. But does he really think Veteran's Day is a good time to do that? Is politics really necessary on a day of remembering the sacrifice of soldiers in battle? Is this a good time to answer critics with political rhetoric? Is this a good time to break a long-standing tradition of Presidents visiting Arlington National Cemetery to go make a political speech?

And the speech itself was deeply disingenuous.

"It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how the war began,'' Bush said in a Veterans Day speech today to military families at Tobyhanna Army Depot near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. "More than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate who had access to the same intelligence voted to remove Saddam Hussein from power,'' the president said.

Of course, the resolution was about disarmament, not removal from power. Ask the President.

But I am very firm in my desire to make sure that Saddam is disarmed. Hopefully, we can do this peacefully. The use of the military is my last choice, is my last desire.

He made very clear that removing Saddam Hussein from power was the last choice and the last desire. Who's rewriting history?

Second of all, the notion that Democrats in Congress had access to the same intelligence as the White House is ridiculous. As Matthew Yglesias notes, the parts of the National Intelligence Estimate that was made available to the public made the case for Saddam having WMD. The parts of the NIE that were classified made the EXACT OPPOSITE CASE.

In the late summer of 2002, (former FL Sen. Bob) Graham had requested from Tenet an analysis of the Iraqi threat. According to knowledgeable sources, he received a 25-page classified response reflecting the balanced view that had prevailed earlier among the intelligence agencies--noting, for example, that evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or a link to Al Qaeda was inconclusive. Early that September, the committee also received the DIA's classified analysis, which reflected the same cautious assessments. But committee members became worried when, midway through the month, they received a new CIA analysis of the threat that highlighted the Bush administration's claims and consigned skepticism to footnotes. According to one congressional staffer who read the document, it highlighted "extensive Iraqi chem-bio programs and nuclear programs and links to terrorism" but then included a footnote that read, "This information comes from a source known to fabricate in the past." The staffer concluded that "they didn't do analysis. What they did was they just amassed everything they could that said anything bad about Iraq and put it into a document."

We know this week that one of the biggest sources for prewar intel was discredited as early as January 2002. We know that Ahmad Chalabi was not vetting the intel he was receiving from suspect defectors. We know about "Curveball," a drunk who German intelligence knew was lying well before the IWR vote in October 2002. The intelligence was put through a meat grinder in the Vice President's office, removed of any balance, and sent up to the Hill with only the threats intact.

This "counter-argument," even if it were based in fact, rests on a ridiculous notion: that the Republicans were right because the Democrats were wrong too. I don't think you'll get far with a public who's turned against the war with the argument that "It's their fault because they were dumb enough to trust us!"

Here's another complete fabrication:

"Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war,'' Bush said.

"These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgment related to Iraq's weapons programs,'' he said.

He's counting on the public to be fully unaware that whether or not political pressure was placed on the intelligence community about Iraq's weapons programs WAS NOT PART OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE'S mandate. That's why Harry Reid sent the Senate into closed session last week, to force Phase II of the report, which WOULD cover the political pressure angle, to actually begin, after Sen. Roberts (Idiot-KS) delayed and obstructed the investigation. Yeah, dude, the bipartisan Senate investigation didn't find anything because THAT'S NOT WHAT THEY WERE LOOKING FOR, and the Republicans in the Senate have stonewalled any attempt to actually kickstart a legitimate investigation.

This push back is not going to have any currency with the American people if it continues to rely on mistruths and obfuscations. Bush's popularity is too weak to get the benefit of the doubt anymore.