About. Fucking. Time.

Our debate at home must also be fair-minded. One of the hallmarks of a free society and what makes our country strong is that our political leaders can discuss their differences openly, even in times of war. When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support. I also recognize that some of our fellow citizens and elected officials didn’t support the liberation of Iraq. And that is their right, and I respect it. As President and Commander in Chief, I accept the responsibilities, and the criticisms, and the consequences that come with such a solemn decision.

While it is perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community’s judgments related to Iraq’s weapons programs. They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing his development and possession of weapons of mass destruction. Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: ‘When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security.’ That’s why more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.

The stakes in the global War on Terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges. These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America’s will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them. Our troops deserve to know that this support will remain firm when the going gets tough. And our troops deserve to know that whatever our differences in Washington, our will is strong, our Nation is united, and we will settle for nothing less than victory.

Mr. President, I’ll say it again: it’s about fucking time. If you’d been pushing back this hard against the liars all along, we wouldn’t have had to waste so much time arguing over questions that were settled long ago, and that victory you speak of would be one hell of a lot closer than it is now. Don’t let up; the rest of us sure haven’t. And we won’t, either.

Update! More here and here. The other quote of the day:

The White House needs to go on the offensive here in a big way—and Bush needs to be very plain that this is all about Democratic politicans pandering to the antiwar base, that it’s deeply dishonest, and that it hurts our troops abroad.

And yes, he should question their patriotism. Because they’re acting unpatriotically.

As Jeff says: plain talk, and the plain truth.

Updated update! Dr Symes says:

This is, hopefully, just a start. For too long, the President’s been absent from the debate. Maybe he thought it was over. After all, it’s been a couple years now. But, of course, anyone watching the news knows it’s never stopped.

The left has continually criticized the U.S. presence in Iraq, undermined the effort and move to build Iraqi democracy because success there would mean they were wrong. The moments of triumph, purple fingers and Constitutions, have shamed them into semi-silence only momentarily.

They won’t stop. And neither should Bush.

Time will tell if this speech was just a one off job. It shouldn’t be. The loony-left needs be combated like the viral infection it is. One time shots won’t permanently suppress it. A steady course of antibiotics, continued long past the point its fever seems broken, is the only prescription.

Bush must follow up on this speech.

He is exactly, precisely right. More please, Mr. President. Immediately wouldn’t be too soon. The libs will jump right in and start repeating their lies more loudly than ever before by way of response, and while their MSM lapdogs have been greatly weakened, theirs is still a fairly loud voice to have to try to shout over. More please, and right now.

Update to the updated update! Good one:

Democrats in Congress today rejected President George Bush’s accusation that they’re trying to rewrite history, which shows they supported the Iraq war based on the same intelligence that drove his decision to send in the troops.

“We had no pre-war intelligence,” said Sen. John Kerry, “History will show that none of the leading Democrats had substantial intelligence. Anyone who remembers what we did then knows that the president is making a baseless allegation. I think history will bear out my contention that we Democrats lacked the intelligence to make such an important decision.”

The junior Senator from Massachussetts said he continues “to faithfully support the troops who uselessly die for a lie in Iraq.”

“Our troops deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war will remain firm in our conviction that we didn’t know what we were doing at the time,” Sen. Kerry said. “It’s important, on Veteran’s Day, to remember that our Democrat commitment to our military hasn’t changed.”

It’s funny ’cause it’s true.

Update, forsooth! Via Glenn’s latest update, Tom Bevan has a cogent and concise little history lesson for the dim, the disingenuous, and the brain-dead:

Yes, we now know there were some dissenting opinions in the mix of intelligence, but that only serves to highlight a point that cannot be overstated: our ability to know exactly what Saddam had or didn’t have depended almost exclusively on his willingness to cooperate with the inspection and disarmament process. Everyone, including Hans Blix, knew this and stated it openly and repeatedly, often citing South Africa as the model for full, accurate, and complete disarming of WMD.

The record shows that is not how Saddam behaved.

Not that the LLL’s will listen to a word of it. They’ve lived by the lie, and they’ll die by the lie. The amusing irony is that we wouldn’t know even now that the intelligence was wrong (an assumption, by the way, and one I remain skeptical of, and will be until we know more about Syria’s pre-war role) if we hadn’t removed Saddam. And protest though they might about how they believe Saddam’s ouster to be a good thing but disagree with the method, the only way he would have ever come out would have been in handcuffs and leg irons.

Update to the nth degree! Another update from Jeff, on Glenn’s terse and right-on response to a shocked — shocked! — liberal’s smug, smarmy request that he “define patriotism”:

The first victory for the anti-war left took place shortly after 911, when war supporters on the right agreed, however reluctantly, that “dissent is the highest form of patriotism,” and that we should not question anyone’s patriotism (though the left was of course allowed to question the patriotism of “chickenhawks”; which is only fair, because we’re all just a bunch of cowardly jingoistic scumtonguers, anyhow).

But Glenn touches on an important distinction that we should now be willing to embrace: namely, that though the anti-war position is not inherently unpatriotic, those in the anti-war movement who use lies and misinformation to harm the country are — and political opportunism that relies on revisionist history and the leveling of false charges in order to regain power is indicative of (a) mindset that (is) profoundly cynical and profoundly anti-democratic.

Jeff, consider it embraced, buddy. I used to be fairly reticent about throwing out such charges myself, but that was a long time ago – back before I realized that the burden of proof is and ought to be on those who are ignoring the working of the democratic process before the war and are now doing their utmost to make the job of our military as difficult as possible by providing rhetorical aid and comfort to the enemy. That, as far as I’m concerned, is the very epitome of unpatriotic behavior, and I’ll just be damned if I’m going to let such people use our natural reluctance to throw out a charge that would make a true patriot’s blood boil as a screen for their true agenda. If the “unpatriotic” shoe fits, the unpatriotic Left can damned well wear it. Lord knows they’ve spent enough time and energy over the years telling us what jingoistic Neanderthals patriotism makes of us. It’s a bit late for them to start wrapping themselves in the flag now.

Flogging a dead Update! How can you tell when a drunken Democrat is lying? His lips are moving, of course. But not to worry, because it looks like the Bush White House is now serious about countering the Democrats’ lies:

It is regrettable that Senator Kennedy has chosen Veteran’s Day to continue leveling baseless and false attacks that send the wrong signal to our troops and our enemy during a time of war. It is also regrettable that Senator Kennedy has found more time to say negative things about President Bush then he ever did about Saddam Hussein. If America were to follow Senator Kennedy’s foreign policy, Saddam Hussein would not only still be in power, he would be oppressing and occupying Kuwait.

Mercifully, Senator Kennedy will never, ever have the opportunity to set America’s foreign policy. That’s a press release from about an hour ago, and can be found here. Following McClellan’s statement is a brief and very blog-like fisking of the Senate’s leading waste of flabby, cirrhosis-raddled flesh, Ted “Relax, I’ll drive” Kennedy. Very damned encouraging, I must say; it now appears that the White House has taken off the gloves and is ready to get back in the fight. Say it with me, y’all: more, please.