[theknife]

Bush came out swinging on Vet's Day, in a new campaign to deflect criticism of of his decision to go to war with Iraq:

President Bush, on the defensive over claims that he manipulated intelligence to build support for invading Iraq, launched an unusually sharp attack on critics Friday for what he called trying to "rewrite the history" of how and why the war began.

Bush said his critics were undermining U.S. troops by claiming that his administration had misled the public on whether Saddam Hussein had obtained weapons of mass destruction.

"The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges," the president said in a Veterans Day address at an Army depot in Tobyhanna.

in his zeal to counter the growing public perception that he is dishonest (57% of the country feels this way, according to latest polls), he made two specific charges: that critics of the administration signed off on the same intelligence he did before the war and that he has already been exonerated of charges of intelligence manipulation by Congressional investigation. unfortunately, neither one of these claims is true:

But 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. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions.

National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, briefing reporters Thursday, countered "the notion that somehow this administration manipulated the intelligence." He said that "those people who have looked at that issue, some committees on the Hill in Congress, and also the Silberman-Robb Commission, have concluded it did not happen."

But the only committee investigating the matter in Congress, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has not yet done its inquiry into whether officials mischaracterized intelligence by omitting caveats and dissenting opinions. And Judge Laurence H. Silberman, chairman of Bush's commission on weapons of mass destruction, said in releasing his report on March 31, 2005: "Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry."

kudos to the Washington Post for immediately calling the Prez on, let's be kind and say, his less than accurate claims. nice to see the press doing it's job finally.

edit: more than a few people noticed that the speech Bush gave on November 11 was virtually identical to the one he gave 5 weeks ago on October 6. if it didn't buy him any credibility then, what makes him think it will do so now?