Frank Lautenberg: “Mr. President, in the last couple of hours, a news conference was held with President Bush and Prime Minister Allawi…”

“Mr. President, in the last couple of hours, a news conference was held with President Bush and Prime Minister Allawi, the interim Prime Minister from Iraq, in an attempt to clarify our Iraq policy. What we heard was a peculiar use of words, when a reporter asked President Bush to explain some comments he made on Tuesday. Those comments are on this chart. President Bush--this was on September 21 at the Waldorf-Astoria. The quotation is that of the President when he says: The CIA laid out a--several scenarios that said, life could be lousy, life could be OK, life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like. That is talking about Iraq. The reporter further asked President Bush why, after faithfully relying on CIA intelligence estimates to justify invading Iraq, he now calls CIA intelligence ``just guessing.'' Once again I quote President Bush: I used an unfortunate word, ``guess''; I should have used ``estimate.'' An unfortunate word? It was unfortunate, all right, because many of us in the Congress are taking the quality of our Nation's intelligence very seriously.”