Dubya came out swinging on Veteran's Day against critics of his war in Iraq, accusing detractors of re-writing history on how the war started.

An excerpt from the NYT story:

The president spoke at the Tobyhanna Army Depot near Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He talked not only about why Americans are at war - "the terrorists are as brutal an enemy as we've ever faced, unconstrained by any notion of our common humanity or by the rules of warfare" - something he has mentioned in almost every speech, but turned on his critics more directly than he usually does.

"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," he said. "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will."

Before going to war, Mr. Bush said, Democrats and Republicans alike were privy to the same intelligence that indicated former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

"Some Democrats and antiwar critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war," he said. "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."

The Senate's Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said Mr. Bush had "resorted to his old playbook of discredited rhetoric about the war on terror and political attacks as his own political fortunes and credibility diminish."

"Attacking those patriotic Americans who have raised serious questions about the case the Bush administration made to take our country to war does not provide us a plan for success that will bring our troops home," Mr. Reid said. "While the Bush administration continues to stonewall the Congress from finding the truth about the manipulation of pre-war intelligence, Democrats will continue to press for a full airing of the facts."