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Bush defends cia intel darn good { July 14 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Bush Defends CIA Intelligence as 'Darn Good'
Mon July 14, 2003 05:18 PM ET
By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush on Monday defended the quality of CIA intelligence as "darn good" as he tried to put out a firestorm over his disputed allegation that Iraq sought uranium from Africa for nuclear weapons.
Having just returned from Africa, Bush and his White House team found themselves facing tough questions about whether he misled the country to justify the Iraq war, as U.S. troops there die on average of one a day under attack by Saddam Hussein loyalists.
Democrats and even some Republicans were raising questions about the president's use of faulty intelligence when he said in his State of the Union speech last winter that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa in its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
"I think the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence. And the speeches I have given were backed by good intelligence," Bush said.
Bush said the administration believed the claim was true when he made it and only afterward learned there were doubts about it. "When I gave the speech, the line (about African uranium) was relevant ... Subsequent to the speech, the CIA had some doubts," he said.
As Bush again blamed the CIA for giving him the information, Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter suggested Bush bears ultimate responsibility.
"As President Harry S. Truman said 'The buck stops with the president of the United States.' It's just a matter of finding out what went wrong and making sure that it doesn't happen again," Specter said in Philadelphia.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, at his last briefing before leaving to enter the private sector, was grilled on the subject by reporters.
'BUNCH OF BULL'
He dismissed as a "bunch of bull" charges that Bush used the disputed intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq and said there was no need to delve further into the matter, which Democrats want investigated.
"As far as the president's concerned, he's moved on ... I think the bottom has been gotten to," Fleischer said.
Even though Bush declared Iraq was an imminent threat because of its suspected weapons of mass destruction, Fleischer said the issue of whether Iraq sought uranium from Africa was not a central question of whether the United States should go to war.
"This revisionist notion that somehow this is now the core of why we went to war, a central issue in why we went to war, a fundamental underpinning of the president's decisions, is a bunch of bull," Fleischer said.
Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, said U.S. credibility was at stake.
"If it were an inconsequential part of the case, the fact that it was included becomes even more troubling, and the conduct of those who included it becomes even more difficult to justify," Obey said.
The White House promised greater scrutiny to weed out faulty intelligence in the future.
"Everybody involved in the vetting process already knows that this process has to be improved. Nobody wants to go through this once more, of course," Fleischer said.
Bush met face-to-face with CIA Director George Tenet for the first time since the political firestorm erupted over the statement, which Bush attributed to the British even though U.S. intelligence was unable to confirm it.
Tenet, who is to testify this week at a closed-door hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has taken responsibility for the CIA's approval of Bush's speech, but did not himself read the text of the State of the Union prior to its delivery before a joint session of Congress.
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