Up Yours, George

Bush has launched a counter-attack against folks who have accused the White House of manipulating intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq Catastrophe:

President Bush, in the most forceful defense yet of his Iraq war policy, accused critics Friday of trying to rewrite history and charged that they’re undercutting America’s forces on the front lines.

“The stakes in the global war on terror are too high and the national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges,” the president said in his combative Veterans Day speech.

“When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support,” Bush said. “While it’s perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.”

I have a three-word response to this load of crap Bush is trying to dump on us: Downing Street Memo.

If that ain't enough, then how about these 16 words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Stop trying to re-write history, George.

UPDATE: This Atrios post pretty much nails it:

I think that the recently statements of Stephen Hadley are really all we need to put the final nail in the coffin of the Bush administration's credibility on anything. These people are just quite literally loathsome.

Hadley argues that Democrats had the same intelligence because "parts of" the NIE "had been made public."

Right, and the parts of the NIE which weren't made public were the parts which suggested that the parts which were made public were full of shit.

Any talking head who overlooks this fact to try to claim that "democrats had the same intelligence as Republicans" is just completely full of shit. They only the had the bits that made their case, not the bits which took away from it.

And people question my patriotism?

UPDATE II: Ken Melman was just on The News Hour reciting the line of crap that Stephen Hadley was spewing the other day, namely, that the Democrats had the same intelligence that Bush had in the run-up to the Iraq Debacle. This load of bull will obviously form the foundation for the GOP talking points this weekend.

I guess we'll find out on Sunday morning whether the corporate media have done their homework on this issue, as well as whether the Democrats are willing to take this debate up another notch.