WH pushback Pt. 4

Setting the Record Straight: The Senate Amendment On The Strategy For Victory In Iraq

This one is worth reading as they struggle to assert that the Amendment put forth and passed by Republicans is wrong without ever pointing fingers at their own party. Pretty amusing.

And to pushback on the pushback, TPM points to this Knight Ridder article that does the same as the WaPo article we saw earlier this week by looking at Bush's recents statements and exposing the untruths.

ASSERTION: In a Veterans Day speech last Friday, Bush said that Iraq war
"critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no
evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments
related to Iraq's weapons programs."
CONTEXT: Bush is correct in saying that
a commission he appointed, chaired by Judge Laurence Silberman and former Sen.
Charles Robb, D-Va., found no evidence of "politicization" of the intelligence
community's assessments concerning Iraq's reported weapons of mass destruction
programs.
[...]
ASSERTION: In his speech, Bush noted that "more than a hundred Democrats in
the House and the Senate - who had access to the same intelligence - voted to
support removing Saddam Hussein from power."
CONTEXT: This isn't true.
[...]
ASSERTION: In his Veterans Day address, Bush said that "intelligence
agencies around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein."
CONTEXT: Bush is correct in saying that many intelligence agencies,
particularly in Europe, believed that Saddam was hiding some weapons of mass
destruction capabilities - not necessarily weapons. But they didn't agree with
other U.S. assessments about Saddam. Few, with the exception of Great Britain,
argued that Iraq was an imminent threat, or that it had any link to Islamic
terrorism, much less the Sept. 11 attacks.
[...]
ASSERTION: Stephen Hadley, the president's national security adviser, told
reporters last Thursday that the Clinton administration and Congress perceived
Saddam as a threat based on some of the same intelligence used by the Bush
administration. [...]
CONTEXT: Congress did pass the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which stated
U.S. support for regime change in Iraq and provided up to $97 million in overt
military and humanitarian aid to opposition groups in Iraq.
But it didn't
authorize the use of U.S. force against Iraq.

If they're willing to lie in defense of the war, it doesn't much help their case that they didn't lie to get us into it.