WASHINGTON (AP) – Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday joined the Bush administration’s attack on Iraq war critics, quoting Clinton administration officials who contended in the late 1990s that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a security threat to the United States and its allies.

At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld noted that the Iraq Liberation Act, passed by Congress in 1998, said it should be U.S. government policy to support efforts to remove the Saddam regime from power. He noted that President Bill Clinton signed the act and ordered four days of bombing in December 1998.

With Democrats accusing President Bush of having misled the American public about the urgency of the Iraqi threat prior to his order to invade in March 2003, Bush on Monday threw back at Democratic critics the worries they once expressed about Saddam.

“They spoke the truth then and they’re speaking politics now,” Bush charged.

Rumsfeld continued Bush’s assault on war critics, citing the words of Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger, Clinton’s national security adviser.

Rumsfeld quoted Berger as having said of Saddam in 1998, “He will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983.”

Rumsfeld also said the U.S. troops now fighting in Iraq deserve to know the truth about the reasons for going to war.

“People who are willing to risk their lives need to know the truth,” he said. “They need to understand that they are there based on decisions that were made in good faith by responsible people and that this world is going to be a lot better off with Saddam Hussein gone and that country on a path toward democracy.”

He said prewar claims by the Bush administration – later shown to be wrong – that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction at the time of the invasion were based on honest mistakes by intelligence analysts.

Rebutting Rumsfeld, a former Clinton administration National Security Council spokesman, P.J. Crowley, said the defense secretary was quoting Berger and other former administration officials out of context.

“The context during the ‘90s was preserving sanctions” against the Iraqi regime, Crowley said. “Everyone recognized that Saddam would be a threat and would reconstitute weapons of mass destruction if he broke out of containment.” It was the Bush administration that chose to abandon the sanctions, he added.

Shortly before Rumsfeld spoke, the Republican-controlled Senate defeated, on a 58-40 vote, a Democratic effort to pressure Bush to outline a timetable for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. It then overwhelmingly endorsed a weaker, nonbinding statement calling on the administration to explain its Iraq policy and declaring that 2006 “should be a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty.”

Iraq and a host of other problems, from the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina to the indictment of a senior White House official in the CIA leak investigation, have taken a heavy toll on Bush.

Nearing the end of his fifth year in office, Bush has the lowest approval rating of his presidency. In AP-Ipsos polling, a majority of Americans say Bush is not honest and they disapprove of his handling of foreign policy and the war on terrorism.

Referring to the current situation, Rumsfeld said, “We are in the midst of a war that threatens free people across the world,” as evidenced by terrorist attacks in the United States, London, Madrid and other cities. He said the world must face up to the “dark vision” of a network of “Islamo-fascists” and extremists.

“They seek to build in Iraq what they once had in Afghanistan – a safe haven,” he said. “And then to expand throughout the region and beyond.”

While noting that many Americans want to know when U.S. troops will leave Iraq, Rumsfeld said it would be a grave mistake to leave prematurely.

“We must be careful not to give terrorists the false hope that if they can simply hold on long enough, they can outlast us,” Rumsfeld said.

There are about 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

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