In an April 23 editorial, the Los Angeles Times falsely asserted that President Bush “has acknowledged with increasing explicitness that he was wrong to believe that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction [WMD].” In fact, while Bush has described the intelligence as “wrong,” has accepted responsibility for “the decision to go into Iraq,” and has said he was “responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities,” he has never stated he was wrong to believe the flawed intelligence or assumed responsibility for the intelligence failures, as Media Matters for America has previously documented. The Times misrepresented Bush's record on taking responsibility for false WMD claims in order to suggest he would not be “repudiating his own record” if he demanded Vice President Dick Cheney's resignation.

Rather than accepting responsibility for his false WMD claims, Bush -- and his aides -- have continued to portray the president as a victim of flawed intelligence, often sidestepping responsibility for intelligence failures or his use of intelligence while continuing to defend the decision to go into Iraq. For example, Media Matters noted that in a December 18, 2005, speech, Bush said: “It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq.”

Little has changed in the administration's position in recent weeks. For example, at an April 17 press briefing, then-White House press secretary Scott McClellan restated the administration position that “the intelligence was wrong” but did not say that the administration had some responsibility for that failure:

Q: Scott, I want to ask you about the National Intelligence Council report that came to the White House in January of 2003, that essentially said the Niger uranium claims were baseless. In view of that report, how did the uranium claim make its way to the State of the Union Address subsequently?

McCLELLAN: I don't know how many times we've been over that. I think we went over that back in July of 2003, and we talked about that. So I would encourage you to look back at the briefing that was provided to you all in this room.

In terms of the intelligence, we have said multiple times that the intelligence was wrong. That's why the president asked the Robb-Silberman Commission, an independent bipartisan commission, to take a look at all the intelligence in the lead-up to the decision to go into Iraq. It was intelligence that was shared with members of Congress, it was intelligence that was very similar to what nations across the world believed, and it's intelligence that the United Nations --

Q: Well, who got the intelligence here?

McCLELLAN: What's important now is that we make sure we move forward in implementing the reforms that were recommended by the Robb-Silberman Commission. We have done that.

An April 13 article in The Washington Post also reported that, according to McClellan, “Bush has repeatedly acknowledged 'the intelligence was wrong.' ”

From the April 23 Los Angeles Times editorial titled "Bush's Third Term":

Suppose Bush didn't stop there. Suppose he also asked Cheney, his mentor and friend but an even more polarizing figure than Rumsfeld, to step down.

We know the objections. The vice president is not a mere presidential appointee but an elected constitutional officer. In choosing a replacement, Bush might be pressured to predetermine the outcome of the 2008 Republican presidential race by anointing one would-be successor over another. Throwing Cheney overboard would be an implicit repudiation of the excessively hawkish foreign policy with which the vice president, even more than Rumsfeld, has been associated.

Unlike most vice presidents, Cheney does not aspire to be president, and he is the consummate Bush loyalist. He would not be giving up a political birthright by agreeing to retire (citing health reasons or a concern about the publicity surrounding the trial of his former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby). And the problem of taking sides in the 2008 election is easily solved. Bush could nominate as Cheney's successor an elder party statesman -- Bob Dole, anyone? -- with no interest in the 2008 nomination.

We even have an answer to the complaint that in jettisoning Cheney, Bush would be repudiating his own record. The truth is that the president, however grudgingly, has recognized that he and the administration made mistakes in the run-up to the war in Iraq and in its aftermath. He has not confessed that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, but he has acknowledged with increasing explicitness that he was wrong to believe that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction.

From an April 13 article in The Washington Post:

Whether White House officials were alerted to the technical team's finding is unclear, The Post article reported. In any case, senior administration and intelligence officials continued for months afterward to cite the trailers as evidence that Iraq had been producing weapons of mass destruction -- the chief claim used to justify the U.S.-led invasion.

McClellan dismissed the news article as “rehashing an old issue,” saying Bush has repeatedly acknowledged “the intelligence was wrong.” The spokesman said Bush's comments on the trailers reflected the intelligence community's dominant view at the time.

“The White House is not the intelligence-gathering agency,” he said.

From a question-and-answer session after Bush's March 20 speech at the City Club of Cleveland:

Q: Mr. President, at the beginning of your talk today, you mentioned that you understand why Americans have had their confidence shaken by the events in Iraq. And I'd like to ask you about events that occurred three years ago that might also explain why confidence has been shaken. Before we went to war in Iraq, we said there were three main reasons for going to war in Iraq: weapons of mass destruction, the claim that Iraq was sponsoring terrorists who had attacked us on 9-11, and that Iraq had purchased nuclear materials from Niger. All three of those turned out to be false. My question is, how do we restore confidence that Americans may have in their leaders and to be sure that the information they are getting now is correct?

BUSH: That's a great question. [Applause.] First, just if I might correct a misperception. I don't think we ever said -- at least I know I didn't say that there was a direct connection between September the 11th and Saddam Hussein. We did say that he was a state sponsor of terror -- by the way, not declared a state sponsor of terror by me, but declared by other administrations. We also did say that [Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Al-] Zarqawi, the man who is now wreaking havoc and killing innocent life, was in Iraq. And so, the state sponsor of terror was a declaration by a previous administration. But I don't want to be argumentative, but I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks on America.

Like you, I asked that very same question: Where did we go wrong on intelligence. The truth of the matter is the whole world thought that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. It wasn't just my administration, it was the previous administration. It wasn't just the previous administration; you might remember, sir, there was a [United Nations] Security Council vote of 15 to nothing that said to Saddam Hussein: disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences. The basic premise was, you've got weapons. That's what we thought.

When he didn't disclose, and when he didn't disarm, and when he deceived inspectors, it sent a very disconcerting message to me, whose job it is to protect the American people and to take threats before they fully materialize. My view is, he was given the choice of whether or not he would face reprisal. It was his decision to make. And so he chose to not disclose, not disarm, as far as everybody was concerned.

Your question, however, the part that's really important is, how do we regain credibility when it comes to intelligence? Obviously, the Iranian issue is a classic case, where we've got to make sure that when we speak there's credibility. And so, in other words, when the United States rallies a coalition, or any other country that had felt that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction is trying to rally a coalition in dealing with one of these non-transparent societies, what do we need to do to regain the trust of not only the American people, but the world community?

And so what I did was I called together the Silberman-Robb Commission -- Laurence Silberman and former Senator Chuck Robb -- to take a full look at what went right and what went wrong on the intelligence, and how do we structure an intelligence network that makes sure there's full debate among the analysts? How do we make sure that there's a full compilation of data points that can help decision-makers like myself feel comfortable in the decision we make?

The war on terror requires the collection and analysis of good intelligence. This is a different kind of war; we're dealing with an enemy which hides in caves and plots and plans, an enemy which doesn't move in flotillas or battalions. And so, therefore, the intelligence-gathering is not only important to make a diplomatic case, it's really important to be able to find an enemy before they hurt us.

And so there was a reform process they went through, a full analysis of what -- of how the operations worked, and out of that came the NDI [National Directorate of Intelligence], John Negroponte and Mike Hayden. And their job is to better collate and make sure that the intelligence-gathering is seamless across a variety of gatherers and people that analyze. But the credibility of our country is essential -- I agree with you.

From Bush's December 19, 2005, press conference:

Q: You talked about your decision to go to war and the bad intelligence, and you've carefully separated the intelligence from the decision, saying that it was the right decision to go to war despite the problems with the intelligence, sir. But, with respect, the intelligence helped you build public support for the war. And so I wonder if now, as you look back, if you look at that intelligence and feel that the intelligence and your use of it might bear some responsibility for the current divisions in the country over the war, and what can you do about it?

BUSH: I appreciate that. First of all, I can understand why people were -- well, wait a minute. Everybody thought there was weapons of mass destruction, and there weren't any. I felt the same way. We looked at the intelligence and felt certain that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Intelligence agencies around the world felt the same way, by the way. Members of the United States Congress looked at the National Intelligence Estimate -- same intelligence estimate I looked at -- and came to the same conclusion, Wendell [Goler, Fox News White House correspondent].

So in other words, there was universal -- there was a universal feeling that he had weapons of mass destruction. As a matter of fact, it was so universal that the United Nations Security Council passed numerous resolutions. And so when the weapons weren't there, like many Americans, I was concerned and wondered why. That's why we set up the Silberman-Robb Commission to address intelligence shortfalls, to hopefully see to it that this kind of situation didn't arise.

Now, having said all that, what we did find after the war was that Saddam Hussein had the desire to -- or the liberation -- Saddam had the desire to reconstitute his weapons programs. In other words, he had the capacity to reconstitute them. America was still his enemy. And of course, he manipulated the oil-for-food program in the hopes of ending sanctions. In our view, he was just waiting for the world to turn its head, to look away, in order to reconstitute the programs. He was dangerous then. It's the right decision to have removed Saddam.