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Democrats step up attacks on Bush over Iraq intelligence
Washington, July 16: Democrats sharpened their attacks on the George W Bush administration yesterday, emboldened by persistent questions over prewar intelligence on Iraq`s pursuit of nuclear, biological and chemical arms.
Washington, July 16: Democrats sharpened their attacks on the George W Bush administration yesterday, emboldened by persistent questions over prewar intelligence
on Iraq's pursuit of nuclear, biological and chemical arms.
US Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet has taken the blame for President Bush's January claim that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear material from Africa.
In a surprise statement last week, tenet said the reference -- based on information from Britain -- should not have been included in the president's January 28 state of the union address because it had not been corroborated by US intelligence.
The White House has said that as far as they are concerned, the issue is over and done with, but Democrats refused to let the matter die, with the party's biggest guns taking to the floor of the senate, holding news conferences, and taking to the airwaves to keep the controversy alive.
One leading democrat accused the White House of a broad pattern of dissemblance in making its case for waging war on Iraq.
"The misleading statement about african uranium is not an isolated incident. There is a significant amount of troubling evidence that it was part of a pattern of exaggerations and misleading statements," senator Carl Levin of Michigan said on the floor of the US Senate.
"It was not inadvertent. It was not a slip ... It was calculated. It was misleading."
In a surprise statement last week, tenet said the reference -- based on information from Britain -- should not have been included in the president's January 28 state of the union address because it had not been corroborated by US intelligence.
The White House has said that as far as they are concerned, the issue is over and done with, but Democrats refused to let the matter die, with the party's biggest guns taking to the floor of the senate, holding news conferences, and taking to the airwaves to keep the controversy alive.
One leading democrat accused the White House of a broad pattern of dissemblance in making its case for waging war on Iraq.
"The misleading statement about african uranium is not an isolated incident. There is a significant amount of troubling evidence that it was part of a pattern of exaggerations and misleading statements," senator Carl Levin of Michigan said on the floor of the US Senate.
"It was not inadvertent. It was not a slip ... It was calculated. It was misleading."
Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy, one of the most senior Democrats in Congress, decried what he called a "bankrupt" US policy toward Iraq.
Bureau Report