TOBYHANNA, Pa. — President Bush on Friday offered his most vigorous defense yet of his decision to invade Iraq, rejecting as "false" and "baseless" accusations that his administration twisted intelligence to support its case for war.
The attempts by Democratic lawmakers and others to rewrite history are demoralizing U.S. troops and encouraging their radical Islamic foes, Bush said.
Bush's assertions were in response to renewed questions about how the administration used intelligence in making its case for war. The revived interest follows the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, on perjury charges. That case involved the leak of the identity of a CIA officer married to a critic of Bush's use of Iraq intelligence.
Polls show that a majority of Americans don't believe that Bush is honest, and his approval rating has dropped to 37 percent.
Meanwhile, the number of American servicemen and women killed in Iraq has reached 2,050.
Standing before a poster reading "Strategy for Victory," Bush spoke at the Tobyhanna Army Depot of the dangers of violent Islamic radicalism and what he asserted has been progress in the fight to defeat terrorism and build democracy in Iraq and elsewhere.
He also responded to critics' accusations that his administration misused intelligence to hype the threat posed by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. No evidence has been found to substantiate the administration's claims that Iraq was hiding chemical and biological weapons, secretly pursuing nuclear ones and planning to possibly give them to al-Qaida or other terrorist organizations.
"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," Bush declared. "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will.
"As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them," he continued to applause and cheers.
Senior Democrats accused Bush of misusing Veterans Day for partisan politics, and they urged him to cooperate with a Senate probe into the handling of prewar intelligence on Iraq.
"Attacking those patriotic Americans who have raised serious questions about the case the Bush administration made to take our country to war does not provide us a plan for success that will bring our troops home," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Bush said that many of his Democratic critics had access to the same prewar intelligence that he'd read. And, he noted, those critics were among the more than 100 Democrats in the House of Representatives and the Senate who voted for a resolution authorizing the use of force against Saddam.