Carolyn Kaster, Associated Press
	President Bush waves to the crowd before giving a Veterans Day speech at the Tobyhanna Army Depot, in Tobyhanna, Pa. yesterday. In the address, Mr. Bush offered a forceful defense of the war in Iraq, saying it is the central front in the war on terror and that extremists are trying to establish a radical Muslim empire extending from Spain to Indonesia. Click here to a full text of his speech from the Associated Press.
	Charles Dharapak, Associated Press
	Karl Rove, President Bush's deputy chief of staff, left, walks with Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Republican Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport in Avoca, Pa., after Bush made a speech about the war against terror yesterday. Specter will chair the confirmation hearings for Bush's Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. in January.

TOBYHANNA, Pa. -- President Bush and leading congressional Democrats yesterday lobbed angry charges at each other in an increasingly personal battle over the origins of the Iraq war.

"It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," Mr. Bush said, as he used a Veterans Day address at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in northeast Pennsylvania to lash out at critics. "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will."

Democrats retaliated with a barrage of statements accusing the president of skewing the facts, just as they maintain that he did in the run-up to the invasion of March 2003.

Although the two sides have long skirmished over the war, the sharp tenor yesterday resembled an election-year campaign more than a policy disagreement.

In a rare move, Mr. Bush in his speech took a direct swipe at his Democratic presidential challenger last year, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, while the White House issued an unusual campaign-style memo attacking Sen. Edward Kennedy, another Massachusetts Democrat. Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman followed with a speech blistering 10 Democrats for "political doublespeak."

From their campaign-style war rooms, the Democrats and allied liberal interest groups churned out "fact sheets" dissecting Mr. Bush's comments and comparing them with past statements and investigative findings in an effort to undercut his arguments. Mr. Kerry accused the president of "playing the politics of fear and smear on Veterans Day."

The fierce back-and-forth underscored how central Iraq has become in the political environment leading into next year's midterm congressional elections. After a succession of setbacks for Mr. Bush, including slow Hurricane Katrina relief and a failed Supreme Court nomination, his public standing in opinion polls has tumbled to the lowest level of his presidency.

Anxious White House advisers believe that although other bad news will fade, Iraq remains the most significant long-term threat to the president's political fortunes.

Without more tangible signs of progress in the coming months, they believe, Mr. Bush will find it enormously difficult to reassert his leadership of the country and steer his party through next year's elections.

The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 64 percent of Americans disapprove of how Bush is handling the war, and 60 percent believe it was not worth fighting -- in both cases, the worst numbers for the president since the invasion.

The perjury indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who resigned as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has revived the issue of the administration's truthfulness in building the case for war, and nearly 3 in 5 voters in the Post-ABC poll do not consider Bush honest.

In an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released yesterday, 57 percent of respondents said they did not think the administration has high ethical standards.

Mr. Bush's approval rating in that poll remained at an all-time low of 37 percent.

Mr. Bush's speech yesterday was intended to address the truthfulness issue and turn the tables. Some critics, he complained, "are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war.

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war," he told the supportive crowd, "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."

Mr. Bush also said the troops in Iraq deserve to know "that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them."

Taking aim at Mr. Kerry, who recently announced his support for a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq, the president quoted the senator's statement in voting in 2002 for a congressional resolution authorizing use of force against then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

At the time, Mr. Bush noted, Mr. Kerry said "a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat and a grave threat to our country." Mr. Bush added that other Democrats "who had access to the same intelligence" also voted for the resolution.

Mr. Kerry later yesterday fired back: "This administration misled a nation into war by cherry-picking intelligence and stretching the truth beyond recognition. That's why Scooter Libby has been indicted. ... The mistake we made was trusting the president, and it's a sad day when an administration's word is no good."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Mr. Bush had "resorted to his old playbook of discredited rhetoric" and was "attacking those patriotic Americans who have raised serious questions about the case the Bush administration made to take our country to war."

And Mr. Kennedy, who voted against the war resolution, said: "It is deeply regrettable that the president is using Veterans Day as a campaign-like attempt to rebuild his own credibility, by tearing down those who seek the truth about the clear manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war."

Democrats contend that it was the administration's statements, now shown to be baseless, that caused them to believe the worst about Saddam's arsenal.

They cite such comments as then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's references to a "mushroom cloud" and Cheney's assurance that Saddam was working to build nuclear arms.

The exchange of fire heated up as the day wore on. White House press secretary Scott McClellan said it was "regrettable that Senator Kennedy has found more time to say negative things about President Bush than he ever did about Saddam Hussein" and added: "If America were to follow Senator Kennedy's foreign policy, Saddam Hussein would not only still be in power, he would be oppressing and occupying Kuwait."

And Mr. Mehlman, addressing a GOP dinner in Fort Wayne, Ind., mocked Democratic calls for further investigation into the handling of intelligence before the war. "Maybe this investigation will reveal that they were brainwashed," he said, according to prepared remarks released by the RNC. "Or that, like John Kerry, they were for the war before they were against it for short-term political gain."

Party strategists said neither side can afford to let the other define how the war began. "We cannot allow a mythology to develop that somehow it was inappropriate to be frightened" of Saddam, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., said in an interview.

"The president absolutely should take on what I would describe as the surrender wing of American foreign policy."

Jim Jordan, a former adviser to Mr. Kerry, said Mr. Bush's speech reflected weakness. "It was driven by a petulance and frustration, and it had the tone of a president with an approval rating of 35 percent," he said. "He's sounding less statesmanlike when he needs to seem more."

In flying to Pennsylvania, Mr. Bush chose a battleground state in next year's election.

Standing before a warehouse full of current and former troops, he spoke under a banner that read "Strategy for Victory" and next to a sand-colored Humvee and a 59,000-pound array of satellite and radar dishes.

The crowd cheered him exuberantly, especially when he embraced a constitutional amendment to ban the desecration of the American flag -- a proposal he has supported for years but almost never mentions in speeches.

At another point, as he denounced terrorists, someone in the audience yelled out, "Give 'em hell, George."

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., was on hand, but notably absent was fellow Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, who trails badly in his bid for re-election next year. His press secretary, Robert Traynham, said the senator was speaking at a long-scheduled American Legion luncheon in Philadelphia and could not be in two places at one time.