'Complicit Enablers'? Not Quite.

When Bush asked Congress that month to hold hearings and to vote on a possible authorization to use force in Iraq, the press pushed back -- hard. "Why is it after 10 or 11 years you can't wait three more months?" one reporter asked. Journalists thought Bush was politicizing the election.

In the lead-up to the war in Iraq, no matter what position the president took, the press took the opposite. Bush supported a so-called "tough resolution," sponsored by Sens. John Warner and Joe Lieberman, authorizing the use of force. Reporters practically came out of their chairs demanding to know why he failed to support an authorization sponsored by Sens. Joe Biden and Richard Lugar.

One reporter quoted foreign leaders as saying that Bush would "destroy the war on terrorism" if he went to war and of course almost all the press said Bush's actions were unilateral -- despite support from Britain, Italy, Spain, Denmark and practically every nation in Eastern Europe.

In early December 2002, after weapons inspectors came up empty-handed after visits to Iraqi sites that we thought contained weapons of mass destruction, I was asked, "Does it undermine the president's credibility at all [that] these sites were pointed to by him and Prime Minister Blair as very suspicious, and inspectors . . . didn't seem to find anything?" That doesn't sound like complicit enabling to me.

I hope I don't ruin the careers of tough reporters by agreeing that they were tough, but Charlie Gibson and David Gregory are right. The press did ask the hard questions, repeatedly. Based on the CIA's conclusions, many of the president's and my answers turned out to be wrong, but you can't blame the press for either the CIA's reporting or decisions reached by the president. It's important to recognize that regardless of the outcome of the war in Iraq -- an outcome still being written -- the press didn't cause it to happen or otherwise enable it.

Usually, retired press secretaries don't object to a little outbreak of internal press controversy. Sometimes we even enjoy it. But no amount of revisionism should be allowed to erase the historical record on this.

The writer was White House press secretary from January 2001 to July 2003.