CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS ACTION FUND
The Progress Report
by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, and Ali Frick
December 3, 2007

IRAQ
Rove's Revisionist History

A little over a week ago on PBS's The Charlie Rose Show, President Bush's former political adviser Karl Rove attempted to re-write the history of the lead-up to the Iraq war by claiming the Bush administration did not push war in the fall of 2002 for political purposes. It is widely believed that "the vote's timing" was part of an effort to increase pressure on the party's wavering senators to back the president. Yet Rove told Rose, "The administration was opposed to voting on it in the fall of 2002." "We didn't think it belonged in the confines of the election." Rove's version of events was disputed last Friday by former White House chief of staff Andrew Card, who told MSNBC, "that's not the way it worked." Direct contradiction by a senior member of the administration, however, did not deter Rove. He reiterated his claim in an interview with the Washington Post, saying that it is "disingenuous" for "Democrats to suggest they didn't want to vote on it before the election." Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer also discredited Rove's claims, flatly saying that "it was definitely the Bush administration that set it in motion and determined the timing, not the Congress." "Karl in this instance just has his facts wrong," added Fleischer. While multiple people have contradicted Rove in the days since he first made his comments, not a single individual has stepped forward to support his "far-fetched" claims.

THE WHITE HOUSE'S POLITICAL PUSH: Nine months before the war began, Rove and then-White House Political Director Ken Mehlman delivered a power-point presentation to California Republicans "about the outlook for the GOP in House and Senate races in November," in which they counseled that a "focus on war" should be the top priority of the party's electoral strategy. A top White House aide who was involved in pre-war discussions told Newsweek's Michael Isikoff that "the president's advisers wanted to use the upcoming election to pressure skeptical Democrats to back the president -- or face being portrayed as soft on national security." "The election was the anvil and the president was the hammer," the aide told Isikoff. Bush pollster Matthew Dowd told a group of Republicans that "the No.1 driver for our base motivationally is this war." "Weeks before the vote, Republican candidates across the country began running ads attacking their Democratic opponents on issues of war and national security, with some even using imagery of Saddam Hussein. When Bush was asked on Sept. 13, 2002, about Democrats who wanted to delay the vote until after the U.N. Security Council acted, he replied with political pressure. "If I were running for office," said Bush, "I'm not sure how I'd explain to the American people -- say, 'Vote for me, and, oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I'm going to wait for somebody else to act." In a press conference days later, Bush exclaimed "we've got to move before the elections."

CONGRESS'S HESITATIONS: During a Sept. 4, 2002 meeting, Bush "made it clear" to congressional leaders that "he wanted Congress to vote before it adjourned." Then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), said he tried to put the brakes on Bush's plans, asking "directly" if they "could delay" the vote until after the election" in order to "depoliticize it." Daschle later recounted that Bush just "looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: 'We just have to do this now.'" Daschle conceded that he would go along with the President if Bush insisted on a vote before the election, saying on Sept. 10, "I don't think we have much choice but to respect the decision." But Daschle spoke ardently in public on multiple occasions against politicizing the vote. "We've got to be very careful about politicizing a war in Iraq or military efforts," Daschle told reporters. A vote too close to the election "could jeopardize a thoughtful and deliberative debate," he added. Daschle wasn't the only member of Congress speaking out against a rushed vote. "I do not believe the decision should be made in the frenzy of an election year," said Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA). "I know of no information that the threat is so imminent from Iraq" that Congress cannot wait until January to vote on a resolution, said then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

ROVE'S DISINGENUOUS ARGUMENTS: On Fox News Sunday yesterday, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) confronted Rove on his revisionist history, challenging him to "retract" his "outrageous comments." But Rove refused while changing his story in the process. On The Charlie Rose Show, Rove had said definitively that "the administration was opposed to voting on it in the fall of 2002." But after being confronted about this statement, Rove backtracked, claiming that he was just saying that it's "simply not true" that Bush "was the only person pushing the Congress to vote on the war resolution before the November election." Rove then cherry-picked old Daschle quotes that he claimed supported his point. In particular, Rove pointed to a Sept. 16, 2002 quote from Daschle, in which he said, "I think there will be a vote well before the election, and I think it's important that we work together to achieve it." Rove doesn't mention that at the time Daschle made his comment, he had already tried to stop Bush from pushing for an early vote, but had been rebuffed by the President.