May 17, 2005: White House Press Secretary Denies Allegations in ‘Downing Street Memo’

White House press secretary Scott McClellan says accusations stemming from the “Downing Street Memo” (see May 1, 2005) that intelligence was “being fixed” to support a policy of regime change in Iraq are “flat out wrong.” Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was “very public,” McClellan insists. “The president of the United States, in a very public way, reached out to people across the world, went to the United Nations and tried to resolve this in a diplomatic manner. Saddam Hussein was the one, in the end, who chose continued defiance. And only then was the decision made, as a last resort, to go into Iraq.” [CNN, 5/17/2005; United Press International, 5/17/2005]