| ||
| ||
| ||
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bush team voices single theme on IraqWhite House defends rationale for war in Iraq
From John King
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush White House made a concerted effort Thursday to rebut those questioning the case for war in Iraq, and all but ignored the criticism in a new report suggesting intelligence lapses before the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. President Bush, speaking in Philadelphia, said the deaths of Saddam Hussein's two eldest sons was proof the former Iraqi regime would never return to power. He also addressed the rationale for going to war in the first place. "In Iraq, a dictator was arming to threaten the peace, and he defied the demands of the world," the president said. "He didn't just defy the demands of the United States, he defied the demands of the United Nations Security Council -- not once but many times. "And so for peace and for the security of the free world we removed that regime, and the Iraqi people are now free." Vice President Dick Cheney made a similar defense, and issued a direct challenge to those now suggesting the administration exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq as it made the case for war. ( Full story) "The ability to criticize is one of the great strengths of our democracy," Cheney said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "But those who do so have an obligation to answer this question: How could any responsible leader have ignored the Iraqi threat?" Critics have seized on a White House admission that the intelligence was far too weak to support a claim the White House made repeatedly in its bid to suggest Saddam Hussein was reinvigorating his nuclear weapons program: an assertion that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium in Africa. The White House now says it never should have made that claim -- which appeared, among other places, in the president's State of the Union speech. Cheney did not refer directly to the controversy over that assertion. But he said there was ample other intelligence supporting the case for war. The vice president said there was broad consensus among intelligence agencies that: • Iraq was actively pursuing chemical and biological weapons. • Iraq could build a nuclear weapon within a decade if it was able to obtain key materials. • Iraq was deliberately and aggressively obstructing United Nations weapons inspectors. "How could any responsible leader have ignored the Iraqi threat?" Cheney asked in his rebuttal of administration critics. The vice president also cast the decision in the administration's new national security mindset after the September 11 attacks. Saddam's historyCheney said the president was not going to give enemies with the capability to attack the United States the benefit of the doubt and that Saddam Hussein had a lengthy history of recklessness and sudden aggression. "He bore a deep and bitter hatred for the United States. He cultivated ties to terrorist groups. He built and possessed weapons or mass destruction. He refused all international demands to account for those weapons," Cheney said of the former Iraqi leader. Neither Bush nor Cheney made any reference to the new report released by a joint congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks and the question of whether there were major intelligence lapses in the days and months before the 2001 terrorist strikes. (Related story)
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said the administration welcomed the report and its call for improved cooperation among intelligence agencies. He also said the report bolstered the administration's case for creating the new Department of Homeland Security. He played down the issue of whether the administration pressed to keep a significant amount of information out of the public report, saying only sensitive national security and intelligence information was kept out of the materials released to the public. But House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said the congressional investigation was incomplete because of the administration's deliberate effort to withhold some information. "The nation was not well served by the Bush administration's failure to provide this critical information to the committees," Pelosi said. She said she hoped the administration was more cooperative with a separate inquiry being conducted by an independent commission. She also said the public was being short-changed in the new congressional report because of a White House obsession with secrecy. Pelosi said the report is over- classified -- a disservice to the American people.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
