Q But what I'm saying, though, isn't it the fact that a former member of the inner circle is saying them that it adds some degree of legitimacy; it's not just dismissible by saying, well, those are Democrats and they're our political opponents?

MS. PERINO: I don't believe -- no, and I don't think that any time that we have argued about this that we've argued just about the messenger when it comes to Democrats either. We argue about it on the merits. And our central objection to the book to the book is that it is not based in fact.

And I think that one of the reasons we are puzzled and surprised and disappointed and saddened by it is because the charge, the loaded charge, in the book is that the President and his senior advisors purposefully misled people into war, and that we sent our young men and women into war, knowing something that we weren't telling the American people.

That is not true. And several independent non-partisan reviews have been done about pre-war intelligence. Is it true that WMD wasn't found? Of course it was. And we admitted that. We have said over and over that the intelligence was wrong. And we have worked very hard at President Bush's direction to change the way the intelligence community works together. But what hurts us is the suggestion that we purposefully sent men and women to war without acknowledging the consequences.

seen at 09:00, 30 May in Whitehouse Press Briefings. Email this to a friend.
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