Bush honors troops on verterans day

President Bush took an opportunity on Veterans Day to honor the troops by reassuring them they are fighting for a clear and honorable purpose instead of the lies told by those with only political gain in mind. I saw a lefty on a blog articulate all that is going on with these historical rewrites about before the war when he said "the end justifies the means". While GOP forgets they are the in the majority and often acts like they are in the minority, Dems act like they forget there are cameras, video and transcriptions of what they say. Now they are willing to trample the valiant efforts and sacrifices of our troops by lying and undermining the war. Today Bush made it clear that was not going to happen.

I have my theories about the timing of Bush's defense of his decisions to come in full force after the beginning of the year. Today was a clear signal to the troops that he would not let them down, a shot in the arm for his base and a shot over the bow as a warning to democrats who will be caught in their lies when the truth is revealed. While the Dems keep sticking their necks out further and further out, the trap is closing. With three clear encouraging events happening in a short span (Rove's vindication and the ongoing Wilson credibility meltdown, the Alito nomination and today's strong defense of policy and encouragement of victory to the troops) Bush is on his way to a come back.

Here is the text of what he said, transcription courtesy of michellemalkin.com:

"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 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."