Fighting Falsehood

From Investor Business Daily

Posted 11/11/2005
War on Terror: President Bush hit back hard Friday against Democrats' claims he misled America into going to war against Iraq. The truth is, White House critics are the ones spreading disinformation.

'More than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate who had access to the same intelligence voted to remove Saddam Hussein from power," Bush noted in a Veterans Day address to military families.

He called it "deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how the war began," and noted those spreading such inaccuracies were well-aware a bipartisan investigation found no evidence the administration manipulated intelligence.

Bush said his critics know "intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam."

He added, "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy" questioning America's will.

Al-Qaida is indeed testing our will. The president brought that point home by citing last month's chilling letter from the terrorist group's chief strategist, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to al-Qaida's top commander in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zawahiri was confident "the Americans will exit soon."

What's most disturbing, Zawahiri wrote: "The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents is noteworthy." Clearly, al-Qaida is following news out of Washington with glee.
National Security Adviser Steve Hadley also came out swinging last week, reminding the press that intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction "was the basis for actions by our Congress, action by two administrations, and was concluded by intelligence services and leaders around the globe."

In 1998, he reminded critics, Congress used that intelligence to authorize the use of force against Iraq.
To believe it was all a lie, Allan Ryskind of Human Events wrote, "you would have to believe in a massive conspiracy involving not only the Bush people, but both Bill Clinton's and George Bush's CIA director, George Tenet; Bush's first-term secretary of state, Colin Powell; Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright; Clinton's key NSC Persian Gulf adviser, Kenneth Pollack; and numerous WMD experts at the United Nations."
In the Atlantic Monthly last year, Pollack wrote that the National Intelligence Council's 2002 assessment of the Iraqi threat "reflected what intelligence analysts had been telling Clinton administration officials like me for years" — that is, Iraq was continuing its WMD program, had chemical and bio weapons, and was close to restarting its nuclear weapons program.

Another Vietnam is what al-Qaida wants in Iraq. Sadly, it's easy to conclude that the terrorists share that desire with some in Washington spreading lies about why we ousted Saddam.