Bush challenges 'misimpressions' about Iraq

WASHINGTON: US President George W Bush on Saturday challenged what he called public "misimpressions" about Iraq as he battled a gloomy assessment of the war in an intelligence report and the fallout from a book portraying him as in denial over it.   

With five weeks to go before midterm congressional elections, and Democrats seizing on both revelations, Bush said the leaks of a US intelligence report indicating the Iraq war had increased the threat of terrorism created "a lot of misimpressions about the document's conclusions."   

The president has since declassified 3-12 pages of the National Intelligence Estimate prepared by the 16 US spy agencies.   

The report's judgment that the Iraq war has become a "cause celebre" for Islamic extremists was seen by Democrats as bolstering their campaign argument that Bush's policies in Iraq had put Americans at greater risk.   

Bush used his weekly radio address to challenge that interpretation.   

"Some in Washington have selectively quoted from this document to make the case that by fighting the terrorists in Iraq, we are making our people less secure here at home," Bush said.   

"This argument buys into the enemy's propaganda that the terrorists attack us because we are provoking them," he said.   

Democrats, who hope the Nov. 7 election will be a referendum on the increasingly unpopular war, focused their own radio address on Iraq.   

Illinois congressional candidate Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq veteran who lost both legs in the war, accused Republican lawmakers of failing to hold Bush accountable for what she said was a failed strategy in Iraq.   

"Instead of a plan or a strategy, we get shallow slogans like Mission Accomplished and Stay the Course," said Duckworth, a Democrat who delivered the radio address on behalf of her party. "The National Intelligence Estimate revealed the unhappy truth: the war in Iraq has led to more terrorism, not less."   

The White House also grappled this week with questions raised by a new book, "State of Denial," by journalist Bob Woodward, who claims Bush resisted demands to boost US troops in Iraq and was misleading Americans about the level of violence there.   

The book by the Pulitzer-prize winning reporter who helped break the Watergate scandal in the 1970s went on sale on Saturday, two days ahead of schedule.   

The NIE report said the Iraq war was giving rise to a new generation of jihadist leaders and operatives and was "breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."   

But Bush pointed to parts of the report that he said back up his case that pulling out of Iraq would only serve to embolden terrorists.   

"Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight," the report said.   

Bush encouraged Americans to read the NIE report for themselves. But Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard University, said the document was highly damaging to the administration because it exposed mistakes.   

"They have done things that they ought not to have done -- such as invading Iraq -- and they have left undone things that they ought to have done -- such as a serious effort at Israeli-Palestinian peace," Walt said. "As a result, they have made jihadis and other extremists look like heroes."