Rumsfeld Rebuffs Iraq War Critics

(AP)  Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday joined the Bush administration's attack on Iraq war critics, quoting Clinton administration officials who contended in the late 1990s that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a security threat to the United States and its allies.

At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld noted that the Iraq Liberation Act, passed by Congress in 1998, said it should be U.S. government policy to support efforts to remove the Saddam regime from power. He noted that President Bill Clinton signed the act and ordered four days of bombing in December 1998.

With Democrats accusing President Bush of having misled the American public about the urgency of the Iraqi threat prior to his order to invade in March 2003, Mr. Bush on Monday threw back at Democratic critics the worries they once expressed about Saddam.

"They spoke the truth then and they're speaking politics now," Mr. Bush charged.

Rumsfeld continued Mr. Bush's assault on war critics, citing the words of Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger, Clinton's national security adviser.

Rumsfeld quoted Berger as having said of Saddam in 1998, "He will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983."

Rumsfeld also said the U.S. troops now fighting in Iraq deserve to know the truth about the reasons for going to war.

"People who are willing to risk their lives need to know the truth," he said. "They need to understand that they are there based on decisions that were made in good faith by responsible people and that this world is going to be a lot better off with Saddam Hussein gone and that country on a path toward democracy."

He said prewar claims by the Bush administration, later shown to be wrong, that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction at the time of the invasion were based on honest mistakes by intelligence analysts.

Rebutting Rumsfeld, a former Clinton administration National Security Council spokesman, P.J. Crowley, said the defense secretary was quoting Berger and other former administration officials out of context.

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