Today's Progressive Talking Points 11/14/05

President Bush Rewrites History

On Veterans Day, President Bush chose to forgo the traditional Veterans Day activities and instead "hit back" against his critics – those calling for a strategy for success in Iraq. President Bush was joined in his offensive over the weekend with remarks by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadleyand RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman. Bush’s latest case is based on three flawed points: 1) that Congress had the same pre-war intelligence as the White House; 2) that the Senate investigation found no administration manipulation of the intelligence; and 3) that world intelligence agencies agreed with the administration’s assessment of the Iraqi threat. While President Bush is entitled to try to defend his record, he is not entitled to his own facts.

• Congress did not have the “same intelligence” as the White House. In his speech, Bush claimed that Congress "had access to the same intelligence" as his administration. This is false. According to the Washington Post, 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.” Even Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) acknowledged that the differences in intelligence seen by Congress and the White House “may be a concern to some extent.”
  
• The Senate Intelligence Report showed that there was manipulation of the evidence. President Bush claimed that "abipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs." This claim is wrong on two counts. First, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence “has not yet done its inquiry into whether officials mischaracterized intelligence by omitting caveats and dissenting opinions.” Second, the Senate Intelligence Committee's Phase I report found, according to the LA Times (7/10/04), that the unclassified public version of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was manipulated. "[C]arefully qualified conclusions [in the classified NIE] were turned into blunt assertions of fact. "
  
  
• The entire world was not in agreement with the Bush administration. Bush defenders all say that other intelligence agencies agreed with the administration’s findings. "Every intelligence agency in the world, including the Russians, the French ... all reached the same conclusion," Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said on CBS' "Face the Nation." The truth is many of our friends and allies believed that, based on the intelligence they had, the threat of Iraq did not rise to the level of justifying immediate force. France, Germany and Russia all believed that the evidence presented did not justify utilizing their last resort – declaring war.