Bill Bennett: “we have a continual drumbeat going on in this Chamber. It came to a crescendo during the debate over the Iraq…”

“we have a continual drumbeat going on in this Chamber. It came to a crescendo during the debate over the Iraq supplemental, but it goes on even when there is no legislation on the floor dealing with Iraq. There are several themes of this drumbeat that I would like to address this morning. The first theme we hear over and over and over again is the theme of faulty intelligence. How could the President have been so stupid as to have acted on faulty intelligence? Occasionally, the enthusiasm for this theme gets carried away to levels that are inappropriate, as we have the accusation that the President was not just misled by faulty intelligence, he deliberately lied. We hear this again and again, particularly in the media: The President is a liar; he deliberately misled the country. I would like to address that theme for a moment and then another theme we hear over and over which is that the President has made a terrible mistake when he has endorsed the concept of preemptive war. We have these two themes: No. 1, the President is either stupid or a liar because he mishandled the intelligence; and No. 2, he has embraced a historically repugnant doctrine, the doctrine of preemptive war. On the issue of intelligence, let us understand something about intelligence. It is never hard and fast. It is always an estimate. It is also a guess. It is also the best view of the people who are making intelligence decisions and assessments. And it is often wrong.”