West Virginia daily

President Bush, battling a long slide in the polls and growing public doubts about the war in Iraq, fired back yesterday at Democratic critics who say he misused prewar intelligence to justify the invasion in March 2003.

"It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how the war began," Bush told military families at Tobyhanna Army Depot near Wilkes-Barre yesterday. "More than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate who had access to the same intelligence voted to remove Saddam Hussein from power."

"Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war," Bush said in a Veterans Day speech.

"These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgment related to Iraq's weapons programs," he said.

Bush went on the offensive after weeks of charges by Democrats including Sens. John Rockefeller of West Virginia and John Kerry of Massachusetts that the White House overstated or manipulated intelligence.

Kerry quickly responded to Bush. "This administration misled a nation into war by cherry-picking intelligence and stretching the truth beyond recognition," he said in a statement. The Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said that the speech was little more than "political attacks as his own political fortunes and credibility diminish."

Presidents almost always mark Veterans Day with a visit to Arlington National Cemetery. This year Bush left that ceremonial duty to Vice President Dick Cheney and chose to defend himself in a speech to military families in the Pocono mountains in northeast Pennsylvania.

In a wide-ranging speech that lasted almost 40 minutes, Bush spelled out the struggle for influence between U.S.-led forces and "radical Islamists" whose random bombings show "cold-blooded contempt for human life."

Questions about the quality of U.S. intelligence and whether Bush misled the nation on the threat posed by the Iraqi dictator have arisen because none of the president's three main justifications for the war turned out to be true.

Weapons inspectors for the United Nations found no evidence that Saddam possessed or was trying to obtain chemical or biological weapons, and the bipartisan Sept. 11 Commission concluded that there were no prewar links between Iraq and al-Qaida. Investigators also found no evidence that Saddam was trying to reconstitute his nuclear-weapons program.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a statement that Bush was using the Veterans Day speech "as a campaignlike attempt to rebuild his own credibility by tearing down those who seek the truth about the clear manipulation of intelligence" that led to war.

In a year marked by conflict and declining job-approval ratings, one bright spot for Bush has been on the issue of terrorism. Americans give him better marks for handling that issue than any other.

In a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll published Thursday, respondents gave Bush and Republicans a nine-point edge over Democrats in regard to which party is best equipped to handle terrorism. Republicans trailed Democrats in the survey on a number of other issues ranging from Social Security and education to tax policy.

Still, the survey put Bush's job approval at 38 percent, the lowest of his presidency in that poll. An Associated Press poll released yesterday showed an approval rating of 37 percent, a record low in that poll as well. Although Bush describes Iraq as the focal point in the war on terror, other surveys show that the war may be the biggest reason that his approval rating is declining.

He said that such incidents as the bombings of hotels in Jordan on Wednesday prove that terrorists, including those operating in Iraq, must be stopped before they are allowed to spread their violence to the United States or other nations.

Bush has turned repeatedly to the war on terror in recent weeks; yesterday's speech was the third time in less than a month that he has concentrated on what he calls America's most important mission.

In recent weeks, he has been under fire for an investigation into the leaking of a CIA agent's name and the failed Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers.

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