Posted on 12/14/2005 2:37:48 PM PST by presidio9
WASHINGTON - President Bush said Wednesday the responsibility for invading Iraq based in part on faulty weapons intelligence rested solely with him, taking on the issue in his most direct and personal terms in the 1,000-plus days since the war's first shots.
"It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," Bush said. "As president, I'm responsible for the decision to go into Iraq."
The president's mea culpa was accompanied by a robust defense of the divisive war.
"Saddam was a threat — and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power," Bush declared, as he has before.
Democrats were not moved by Bush's speech, the last of four designed to boost his credibility on the war and the public's backing for it.
"There was no reason for America to go to war when we did, the way we did, and for the false reasons we were given," said Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass.
Bush offered few qualms about the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He said foreign intelligence agencies — including several for governments who didn't back his decision to invade — also believed before the war that Saddam Hussein possessed them. And he said his administration has begun making changes to the U.S. intelligence apparatus to head off future errors.
The president also contended the Iraqi president had intended to restart weapons programs.
As in the past, Bush acknowledged no regrets about launching the war despite the problems with his initial justification. He revisited a long list of other previously cited reasons, including Iraqi violations of a no-fly zone in its airspace, Saddam's invasion of Kuwait a decade earlier and Iraq's defiance of United Nations resolutions.
"My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision," the president said to polite applause from his audience at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a nonpartisan forum for the study of world affairs.
Bush has repeatedly noted that the decision to go to war was his responsibility. And he has acknowledged for more than a year that most of the intelligence behind the claims of Saddam's weapons programs turned out to be faulty. But he has never linked the two so clearly and so personally.
On the eve of parliamentary elections in Iraq, Bush's speech was meant to wrap up an aggressive push-back against war critics with an overarching explanation, nearly three years later, of why he went into Iraq and why he believes U.S. troops must remain there.
Bush predicted a higher turnout than in earlier balloting of Iraq's minority Sunni Arabs in Thursday's voting, which will establish Iraq's first permanent, democratically elected government. The Sunnis provide the backbone of the insurgency and largely shunned Jan. 30 elections for an interim Parliament that wrote the nation's constitution. Their participation was higher in the October election to adopt the constitution.
But the president also said that Americans shouldn't hope for violence to wane, and shouldn't even expect to know results before early January.
"We can ... expect that the elections will be followed by days of uncertainty," he said. "It's going to take awhile."
Wednesday's remarks followed a pattern of more frank talk from Bush on Iraq. Each installment in the recent round of Iraq speeches, which began last month at the Naval Academy, has included descriptions of fixes for early mistakes and sober assessments of remaining challenges.
That reflects the majority of Americans who, confronted with daily doses of bad news and rising death counts in Iraq, disapprove of Bush's policies there and question the outlook for victory. For instance, a new poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that most people see progress in areas such as establishing democracy and training Iraqi security forces but are split on whether the United States is defeating the insurgents.
Answering critics who have said he's offered no definition of victory in Iraq, Bush offered a succinct summation.
"Victory will be achieved by meeting certain objectives: when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq's democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can protect their own people and when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot attacks against our country," he said. "These objectives, not timetables set by politicians in Washington, will drive our force levels in Iraq."
Still, some said they had hoped to hear more specific benchmarks.
"The American public, the Iraqi people and our brave troops still don't have any clarity about the U.S. military mission in Iraq," said Sen. Russ Feingold (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis.
The president's approach received a warmer welcome from several House Democrats whom Bush hosted at the White House for a top-level Iraq briefing before his speech.
"There was a dose of reality that I have not heard before," said Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y.
50 millions lives were lost because after WW I the nation of Germany was not rebuilt. That mistake was not made after WW II, and it should never be made again.
Iraq will be one of America's and Freedom's strongest ally. As would Iran or any people that are enabled to successfully live in Freedom.
If this is Rove's genius, I'd let him go.
It isn't Bush's fault. The intelligence agencies were guessing wrong, but they were guessing in favor of defending this country's person.
Notice how people have forgotten about UN Resolution 1441?
The event leading into the war are complex and intertwined. It isn't the just a coin flip.
As that Iraqi lady said, anybody who doesn't appreciate what our nation has done, and President Bush, can go to hell.
"It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," Bush said.
How long did that take? Three years?
I was actually agreeing with you.....been a long day. Sorry if you mistook my post. Merry Christmas.
I wish you and yours the very best Christmas.
God bless ya and get some rest. :-}
Ask anyone today why we went to war. The usual answer is "Bush lied"....."WMD's".....blah blah blah. Then tell them that it was because of UN res 1441 in which ALL 15 Security council members votes yes on it. We "Rushed" to war taking only 16+ months to do so and we went in "Unilateraly" with only 40+ countries backing us.
How is it possible that you can "Invade" a country and take it over for more than 2 1/2 years and lose 2150 soldiers? Can you even IMAGINE what would have been said if President Bush would have predicted this before the start of this?
Look at the facts, ignore the media.
"If they win a lot of seats next year... this will be part of the evidence for impeachment"
You think the Dems are really looking forward to having Cheney as President?
Thanks ....bookmarked for future reference.
I'm with you...or, we could just put our heads in the sand.
I can't even get the Sidebar Moderator to post this so Freepers can see the bias from the AP.
All we get is stories posted from obscure websites parroting what we say on FR.
Activism? I wish we could. I e-mailed everybody I could think of...perhaps it'll make "Grapevine" on Hume's show.
Much of the intelligence turned out to be right. The Iraq War was right. Iraq had WMD components and programs. If I have pieces of a gun scattered about I technically do not have a gun. Should we have waited on iron clad intelligence that Saddam's Iraq had put his WMD pieces togther. HELL NO! Saddam had used what WMD's he had in the past already, he would use them again or hand them off to his Al Qaeda cohorts.
Good catch, and one might have added, a congress apparently unwilling, or unable to do their job properly and so placing additional burden on the executive branch of government to get the job done that congress said needed to be done but just couldn't muster the courage to issue the declaration. What a bunch of petunia's.
Smack dab in the middle of mine this morning, so I got a double dose. Once there, once here, however is anyone surprise d by what they read from AP. I still haven't come up with a good acronym for AP. Anyone? Have to remember that name jennifer loven. Too bad she isn't ... instead of writing BS for AP.
Jennifer Loven, AP writer, Liberal Liar. We are watching you.
AP: Amateur Propaganda
these are not amateurs, rather professional seditionists.
But the power of the truth will win the day. I just want to find a way to hold these pukes criminally liable for their treason.
hese are not amateurs, rather professional seditionists.
But the power of the truth will win the day. I just want to find a way to hold these pukes criminally liable for their treason.
_____________
When the bias is so obvious, it's pretty amateurish. I'm working on something for Jennifer Loven right now. I'll keep you informed.
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