WASHINGTON, Nov 12: US President George Bush said on Friday that those who accuse him of exaggerating intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs to win support for the Iraq invasion were trying to rewrite history. In a Veteran Day speech, Mr Bush said that Democrats and anti-war critics who were ‘claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war’, were ‘deeply irresponsible’ and they were trying to ‘rewrite the history of how that war began’.

But as Mr Bush bashed Democrats, some of his own Republicans distanced themselves from their embattled leader. Passing up the chance to appear with Mr Bush for an American Legion event in Philadelphia, Senator Rick Santorum said the invasion had been ‘less than optimal’, and criticized the manner in which it had been presented by the media and the White House. “Certainly, mistakes were made,” Mr Santorum said.

Republican Sen Chuck Hagel of Nebraska backed Democrats who want the Senate to investigate whether the administration manipulated Iraq intelligence.

Unabated violence in Iraq has overshadowed political progress there, causing to drive Mr Bush’s poll numbers to their worst levels ever, even as the number of US soldiers killed there passed the symbolic milestone of 2,000 last month.

And with the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction which were at the core of Mr Bush’s case for war, Democrats have redoubled their charges that he intentionally exaggerated threat posed to justify the conflict.

Mr Bush, however, reverted to the bare-knuckle sparring he used to bring down opponents before invading Iraq, charging his critics with helping the enemy.

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