Whitehouse: Report shows Bush misled nation on Iraq threat
2:43 PM Thu, Jun 05, 2008 | Permalink
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WASHINGTON -- A new Senate report debunking the Bush administration’s pre-war claims about the threat from Iraq underlines "a disturbing pattern’’ of twisting the facts about important domestic and national defense issues, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse charged today. In a Senate floor speech and at a news conference later in the Capitol, the Rhode Island Democrat said President Bush and his national security leaders "misled this country into a war that never should have been fought.’’ Whitehouse joined other members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in speaking out on the panel’s new report, which scrutinizes several of the administration’s claims about the Iraqi dictatorship’s purported weapons-making ability and links to terrorists and the possibility of establishing a friendly Iraqi democracy in its place. The report generally finds that the administration’s claims went beyond the findings of its own intelligence establishment and in some cases ignored intelligence that did not support its case for invading Iraq. Whitehouse said the administration chose to set aside evidence that "did not conform to its preordained view of the world.’’ -- John E. Mulligan of the Journal Washington Bureau During the news conference, Whitehouse said the pre-war intelligence claims were part of a pattern echoed later in the firings of several U.S. attorneys for political reasons and in what he portrayed as the official manipulation of scientific evidence about key environmental Such twisting of facts "rots the sinews of our democracy,’’ Whitehouse said. The panel released two documents: One related to the "public statements," or claims, made by the government, and the other addresses more alleged wrongs in marshaling of evidence. The report had a bipartisan cast because two committee Republicans, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, joined the Democrats in voting to accept its conclusions But most of the Intelligence Committee Republicans joined in a dissenting view of pre-war intelligence – and of the majority’s conclusions. Missouri Sen. Christopher Bond, the panel’s ranking Republican, wrote that the new report "confirmed our early suspicions’’ that the committee’s investigation was "a partisan exercise.’’ White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said there was little news in the report on Saddam Hussein and his weapons programs. "We had the intelligence that we had, it was fully vetted and it was wrong,’’ she said, reiterating the administration's regret over the mistakes. 
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