Bush: we went to war on faulty intelligence

[francis]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 98,00.html

Bush: we went to war on faulty intelligence
By Times Online and agencies

President Bush has admitted for the first time that his decision to go to war in Iraq was based on faulty intelligence. But he still said that the decision to remove Saddam Hussein had been "the right one".

Mr Bush said that tomorrow's parliamentary elections in Iraq are a watershed moment that will inspire democracy across the Middle East.

But with public opinion still running against his mission, the President still was left defending his decision to go to war nearly three years ago.

"It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq," he told a foreign policy forum on the eve of elections to establish Iraq’s first permanent, democratically elected government.

"And I’m also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we’re doing just that."

"We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than the removal of brutal dictator," he said.

"It is to leave a free and democratic Iraq in his place.

"My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was a threat and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power," the President told the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars.

Most Americans see progress on establishing democracy in Iraq, but they are less optimistic about efforts to prevent a civil war and reduce the number of civilian casualties, polling found.

Fifty six per cent said they thought progress is being made in the establishment of democracy, but almost as many 53 per cent said that they thought the United States was losing ground in reducing civilian casualties, according to the poll by the Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press.

Mr Bush’s speech is the fourth tackling the US role in Iraq.

In a speech on Monday he offered his view straightforwardly that 30,000 Iraqis "more or less" had died "in the initial incursion and in the ongoing violence against Iraqis".

In previous speeches, he has admitted that reconstruction efforts were too ambitions and that the US would have done better to work on small, local projects that were less vulnerable to sabotage, he said. It was now doing this.

But Mr Bush has stapled all these admissions to an emphatic statement that he did the right thing in going to war. On Monday, answering a question, he said "Knowing what I know now, I would make the same decision to invade.

[Katie]

Four years of journalism classes has me trained to always look at multiple sources and I always find it interesting to look at the spin different news organizations take.

CNN's front page has a photo with the large tag-line Bush: 'I am responsible' and this lead:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- On the eve of Iraq's historic election, President Bush took responsibility Wednesday for "wrong" intelligence that led to the war, but he said removing Saddam Hussein was still necessary.

The NY Times on the other hand, went with "Bush Defends Iraq Strategy on Eve of Parliamentary Elections"

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 - On the eve of parliamentary elections in Iraq, President Bush today described the United States campaign there as a blend of idealism, pragmatism and flexibility that would lead to "total victory" over the forces of tyranny and terrorism.

The 4th paragraph has the first mention of intelligence with a quote from Bush "It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong" and the 5th "As president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq." It's interesting to note how much farther down in the story you have to read to get to a mention of that, and they don't directly connect the two statements in the same way CNN did.

The BBC's headline is similar to The Time's "Bush takes on Iraqi war critics"
but their lead more like CNN's:
US President George W Bush has accepted responsibility for going to war in Iraq on the basis of faulty intelligence, but said it was still the right choice.

The next paragraphs focus more on Bush defending his choice and doesn't expand on the quotes about wrong intelligence and responsibility until farther in the story, but the fact that it's mentioned in the lead at least signals to a reader that it will be mentioned (and is important). Seems like the BBC took the middle ground on this story.

Sources so you can read the whole thing:
http://www.cnn.com http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/14/ ... index.html

http://www.nytimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/inter ... iddleeast/
14cnd-prexy.html?hp&ex=1134622800&en=d31374151e083da4&ei=5094&partner=homepage
(eidt: Put the two lines together. It's a ridiculously long link and makes the rest of the post hard to read if it's one line. Oh well. It is the top story today and I don't think you need a login to view it.)

BBC world service: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/index.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4528982.stm

Yeah, i have too much free time at work... but it's kind of interesting to compare the subtle editorial choices, cause no matter how hard they try, everyone has an opinion and makes choices about how they tell a story, so news isn't truly objective.

[headnugg]

His new strategy is to accept blame for shit he did, so he can win a record third term in office.

Best president eva.