I am outraged that Bush choses to present Dems' demands for an investigation into whether and how Congress was misled on the war, as sending the wrong signal to the troops!
Firstly, in much the same way was all pre-war dissent squished. For Dan Bartlett to virtuously state (on PBS Newshour today) that the US is a country that respects debate and dissent, while Bush preachifies that dissent is synonymous to betrayal of the troops is obnoxiously brazen. To do that on Veterans' Day when 2058, and counting, troops are not alive to call themselves veterans is nothing short of immoral.
Dissent and vigorous debate with full and free access to all the information that led the WH to reach their decision to go to War PRIOR to the War would have pulled us back from this yawning precipice through which we have fallen and bruised ourselves hard.
Continued dissent and debate on how and why such pre-war debate did not happen is as relevant to the safety of future troops as it is to current ones. We need to get to the bottom of this story, because we do not want another administration to whisk the Congress into similar misadventures. If Congress is unable to understand the bait and switch mechanisms used by this administration, it will be unable to arm itself against crazy madmen and lying swindlers that may similarly occupy the White House from time to time in the future. Our system of government should be made immune to the mendacity, that we now know inhabitants of the WH including the current one, can resort to.
Democrats should not be cowed a second time into silence. Democrats should see through and resist WH hucksters' tricks and stay the course .