Bush adviser: Intelligence accusations 'flat wrong'

The World Today - Monday, 14 November , 2005 12:33:00
Reporter: Michael Rowland

ELEANOR HALL: In the United States, there's renewed political debate about the faulty intelligence on weapons of mass destruction used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Democrats are seizing on the President's declining popularity and polls showing Americans are questioning his honesty, to again accuse George W. Bush of manipulating intelligence to boost public support for the war.

But the President has hit back, saying the criticism is undermining the war effort.

From Washington, Correspondent Michael Rowland reports.

MICHAEL ROWLAND: The debate about the accuracy of pre-war intelligence has been raging since Coalition forces invaded Iraq in March 2003.

The often frantic declarations that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction have already been dismissed as baseless by numerous official inquiries.

What's changed now from the early days of the war is that President George W. Bush is on the ropes and Democrats, like Jay Rockefeller, the Vice Chairman of the Senate's Intelligence Committee, believe they have a chance to deliver a knockout blow.

JAY ROCKEFELLER: If it is the fact that they created intelligence or shaped intelligence in order to bring American opinion along to support them in going to war, that's a really bad thing which should not be reported, and should not ever be repeated.

MICHAEL ROWLAND: Several recent opinion polls show an increasing number of Americans are questioning the President's honesty on issues like the pre-war intelligence and a new survey by Newsweek magazine has Mr Bush's approval rating falling to yet another all-time low of 36 per cent.

He may be bruised and bloodied, but the President is punching back, using a Veterans Day speech to point out the same Democrats now attacking him also believed, at the time, that the weapons of mass destruction were very real.

GEORGE W. BUSH: While it's perfectly legitimate to criticise my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.

MICHAEL ROWLAND: Democrat Senator Charles Schumer of New York says he and his colleagues, in voting in favour of the war, were simply acting in good faith on the intelligence provided by the White House.

CHARLES SCHUMER: The President's the Commander in Chief, the President controls foreign policy, and we don't even have a majority in the House or Senate, so it's very hard to have hearings and due oversight, and we've been stonewalled. But we are holding the President accountable.

MICHAEL ROWLAND: Arguments like that are gaining greater traction with American voters, according to the latest polls, presenting Mr Bush with another daunting political challenge, to add to the myriad he's already facing.

William Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, agreed that the faulty pre-war intelligence will continue to dog the President.

WILLIAM KRISTOL: Fifty seven per cent of the American people now believe that Bush misled us into war. It was about 44 per cent a year ago. And you do need to … you can govern if people think "I'm not sure the President was right, it was a tough call, maybe he made the right call, maybe he made the wrong call, now that we're there we've got to fight and win". You cannot govern successfully if the majority of the people think you consciously lied the country into war. And the President is absolutely right, he's got to address that.
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Monday, November 14, 2005

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush's national security adviser defended the administration Sunday against accusations that it misled the nation about the need for war with Iraq as Democrats stepped up their attacks on the president's candor

Stephen Hadley told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" that those claims were "flat wrong."

"We need to put this debate behind us," he said. "It's unfair to the country. It's unfair to the men and women in uniform risking their lives to make this country safe."

Hadley says Bush acted on "roughly the same intelligence that the Clinton administration saw."