As the administration on Sunday rejected assertions that President Bush misled the American people about Iraq, Democratic Sen. Joe Biden charged that history would judge the president harshly about his actions before and during the war.

He said the American people are starting to "catch on" that they were at least partially "snookered and tricked," though he said that's not the administration's greatest failing.

"President Bush will be judged harshly for the opportunities he squandered to unite the county and unite the world," Mr. Biden said in a speech to the Dallas Democratic Forum at the Melrose Hotel.

Meantime, Stephen Hadley, U.S. national security adviser, said Sunday that "we were wrong" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

But he said Mr. Bush relied on the collective judgment of the intelligence community when he determined that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Hadley said.

"Turns out, we were wrong," Mr. Hadley told Late Edition on CNN. "But I think the point that needs to be emphasized ... allegations now that the president somehow manipulated intelligence, somehow misled the American people, are flat wrong."

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who also attended the rally in Dallas, agreed with Mr. Biden.

"If we're going to go to war, it shouldn't be a faith-based initiative," he said. "We ought to have some facts."

Republican lawmakers and other officials who appeared on Sunday news shows echoed Mr. Bush's Veterans Day speech in which he defended his decision to invade Iraq.

Mr. Bush said Democrats in Congress had the same intelligence about Iraq, and he said many now claiming that the information had been manipulated had supported going to war. The president also accused his critics of making false charges and playing politics with the war.

Democrats contend that they are not playing politics but are trying to clean up the mess made by the administration.

Mr. Biden said that today he would push an amendment that would require Mr. Bush to discuss his plans for Iraq with the Congress and the American people.

He said the lack of a strong plan for ending the war and dealing with insurgents could make Iraq a haven for terrorists and create a civil and regional war.

"The bar has been raised very, very high because of the incompetence of this administration, and it seems very difficult to figure how could we possibly salvage our national interest and bring our troops home at the same time," he said. "If we don't hold him to that [developing and sharing a plan for Iraq], it means in fact that there is no way out because there is no plan."

Mr. Biden said it would be a mistake to leave Iraq now.

"The American people wanted to believe that the president would never take them to war without a plan. They convinced the American people, by not leveling with them, that they had the competence to do this quickly," he said. "The only thing more irresponsible for a leader to do than to go into Iraq without a plan is to leave Iraq without a plan."

Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean rejected Republican criticism on Sunday and said, "The truth is, the president misled America when he sent us to war."

On NBC's Meet the Press, the party chairman disputed Mr. Bush's claim that Congress had the same information – the president withheld intelligence and some caveats about it, Mr. Dean said – and that two commissions had found no evidence of pressure being placed on those within the intelligence community.

In fact, Mr. Dean said, how the administration handled the intelligence it received has yet to be determined by a Senate committee.

Contending that the president has not been honest about the size of the deficit as well as the war, Mr. Dean said, "This is an administration that has a fundamental problem telling the truth."

Mr. Hadley said Mr. Bush received dissenting views about the accuracy of intelligence and relied on the collective judgment of the intelligence community as conveyed by the CIA director. The national security adviser criticized those who continue to say Mr. Bush manipulated the intelligence and made misleading statements.

"It is unworthy and unfair and ill-advised, when our men and women in combat are putting their lives on the line, to relitigate an issue which was looked at by two authoritative sources and deemed closed," he said.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that Democrats have a right to criticize the war but that it was disingenuous to claim that Mr. Bush lied about intelligence to justify it.

"Every intelligence agency in the world, including the Russians, the French ... all reached the same conclusion," Mr. McCain said on CBS' Face the Nation.

In a column for The Washington Post, former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., said he was wrong to have voted to give Mr. Bush the authority to go to war and called the intelligence on which he made that decision "deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda."

"The information the American people were hearing from the president – and that I was being given by our intelligence community – wasn't the whole story," wrote Mr. Edwards, the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2004. "Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war."

E-mail gjeffers@dallasnews.com

Commentary:
I don't buy it. When Bush's poll #'s were high, Biden supported and defended the war. Now that his numbers are in the cellar Biden thinks it's safe to come out against the war. Where was he when it was hard to oppose this war? Coward..

Here's the problem for weak-kneed former war supporters and current war supporters. Will they support winning the war if it can be done with more troops? That's the ONLY way we can win the war. We have two very simple choices; first, lose the war and pull out, or second, put more troops in and win. No one wants to win this war with more troops so there's nothing else left. Get the hell out of there.