Bush answers questions about prewar intelligence

AP:

President Bush said Tuesday he was disappointed in "flawed intelligence" before the Iraq war and was concerned that if a Democrat wins the presidency in November and withdrew troops prematurely it could "eventually lead to another attack on the United States."

In an interview with Politico magazine and Yahoo News, Bush also said he gave up golf in 2003 out of respect for U.S. soldiers killed in the war, which has now lasted more than five years.

"I didn't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," he said. "I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

Bush said he made his decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.

A question submitted from the online audience asked Bush whether he felt he had been misled about Iraq as he made the decision to go to war.

"`Misled' is a strong word," he said. "Not only our intelligence community, but intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment. And so I was disappointed to see how flawed our intelligence was."

"Do I think somebody lied to me? No, I don't. I think it was just, you know, they analyzed the situation and came up with the wrong conclusion," he added.

He acknowledged concerns about leaving the unfinished Iraq war to a Democratic successor. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have said they will bring troops home if elected.

Bush said his "doomsday scenario of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States."

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His statements about prewar intelligence show a much more adult attitude than that expressed by war critics who have seized on the issue to claim that the President deliberately misled the US into war. The dishonesty of those claims should be discrediting the anti war movement.

Bush also gives an interesting to the questions about global warming and the Kyoto agreement. Agreeing to a flawed agreement would have accomplished nothing, he said.