Embattled US President George W. Bush hit back on Friday at what he called "deeply irresponsible" charges that he won support for war in Iraq by exaggerating intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons programs.
"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.
"Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election," he said in a speech to former and active US military personnel on the Veterans Day holiday.
"These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will," Bush said.
Opposition Democrats fired back that Bush had highlighted Iraqi intelligence that supported his position and ignored or suppressed data that did not, and some said his speech smacked of political desperation.
Unabated violence in Iraq has overshadowed political progress there, helping to drive Bush's poll numbers to their worst levels ever, as the number of US soldiers killed there passed the symbolic milestone of 2,000.
And with the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction at the core of Bush's case for war, Democrats have redoubled their charges that he intentionally exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam to justify the conflict.
Bush countered that the UN, intelligence services around the world, and many Democrats all agreed with him before the US-led invasion that Saddam possessed unconventional weapons.
"When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support," Bush said.
"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision, or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," he said at Tobyhanna Army Depot.
Bush pointed to ample support among Democrats "who had access to the same intelligence" for a congressional resolution in late 2002 that authorized him to use force to remove Saddam Hussein.
Yet, the Washington Post stressed, "Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material."
Bush also mentioned the repeated UN resolutions on Iraq that cited Saddam's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction, as well as the stated belief by his 2004 Democratic rival for the White House, Senator John Kerry, that the Iraq dictator had such arms.
The president also pointed to a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation that found "no evidence" of political pressure on intelligence analysts to change their findings about Iraq's suspected arsenals.
But Democrats say that neither that probe, nor a bipartisan panel known as the Silberman-Robb commission, looked at whether the administration misused the intelligence that they received.
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