November 11, 2005

Finally—GWB Responds to Critics

Many Conservatives have wondered for a long time, why GWB doesn't do a better job of presenting the facts that support his position. It appears to have been a policy of this administration, never to publicly respond to criticism. This has permitted all sorts of errors to be more widely repeated than would otherwise have been the case.

Finally, in a Veteran's day speech in Pennsylvania, GWB is responding to the critics.  Here are highlights from the speech, assembled from a variety of press accounts. 

AP -- "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. 

"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," the president said.

 

Reuters -- He quoted from Kerry's 2002 Senate speech in supporting the use of force if necessary to disarm Saddam Hussein, based on charges that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons were ever found.

Kerry, Bush said, backed the president "because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hand is a threat and a grave threat to our security."

BBC -- "Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war," he said.

"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."

 

USA Today --"These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will," Bush said.

"As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them," the president said. "Our troops deserve to know that this support will remain firm when the going gets tough. And our troops deserve to know that, whatever our differences in Washington, our will is strong, our nation is united and we will settle for nothing less than victory."

"We will never back down. We will never give in. We will never accept anything less than complete victory," Bush declared.

Bush said the United States and its allies are determined to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of extremists and prevent them from gaining control of any country.

Bush singled out Syria for particular criticism, saying its government had taken "two disturbing steps" in recent days. He cited the arrest of Syria pro-democracy activist Kamal Labwani and a "strident speech" by President Bashar Assad. In that speech, Assad said his government would cooperate with a U.N. investigation that implicated Syrian officials in the killing of a Lebanese leader, but warned he would no longer "play their game" if Syria "is going to be harmed."

Bush said Syria "must stop exporting violence and start importing democracy."

On a number of occasions I've pointed out some fact in support of the Iraq war to a friend, and heard the response, "Well, then why didn't Bush say that?" I'm glad to see GWB providing good answers to questions that have been raised.