Bob Woodward: Bush trying to rewrite history with new memoir

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/15/AR2010111506915.html

In his memoir "Decision Points," former president George W. Bush passionately defends his 2003 decision to invade Iraq, citing, among other things, a Jan. 27, 2003, report to the U.N. Security Council by Hans Blix, the Swedish director of the U.N. inspectors who had spent two months looking for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

But Bush makes selective use of Blix's January report, citing elements that support the idea that Hussein was not cooperating and leaving out parts that indicate his government was. More to the point, however, Bush fails to mention two subsequent Blix pre-invasion reports in February and early March, weeks before U.S. bombs struck Baghdad. Those show Iraq cooperating with inspectors and the inspectors finding no significant evidence that Hussein was hiding such arms programs.

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In one of several passages in the book where he questions his decisions, Bush writes that he should have pushed harder on the intelligence, but adds, "at the time the evidence and logic pointed in the other direction." His most interesting personal reflection follows: "If Saddam doesn't actually have WMD, I asked myself, why on earth would he subject himself to a war he most certainly will lose?"

Hussein did not have those weapons and the inspections were beginning to show it, but neither Bush nor most Americans at the time were prepared to accept the idea that it is almost impossible to prove a negative.

Back in 2005, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking intelligence" to justify going into Iraq. Bush responded by saying, "It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." He should have remembered that as he wrote this section of his book.

Staff writer Bob Woodward contributed to this report.