Democrats Assail Rice as Misleading American Public (USATODAY.com) WASHINGTON (AP) — A handful of determined Senate Democrats on Tuesday assailed President Bush's decision to invade Iraq and said they would oppose Condoleezza Rice's nomination for secretary of state as a principal architect of a failed policy.

Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the senior senator, said Bush with Rice's help steered the country into an unprovoked and unjustified war based on false information that Iraq was a training ground for terrorists.

"Dr. Rice is responsible for some of the most overblown rhetoric that the administration used to scare the American people into believing that there was an imminent threat from Iraq," Byrd said.

Kicking off the Democratic assault, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts charged that Rice, as Bush's national security adviser, provided Congress with "false reasons" for going to war. Had she not, Kennedy said in a speech, "it might have changed the course of history."

Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., accused the Bush administration of lying and said he was voting against Rice's confirmation as a way of trying to stop mistruths. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., charged she concealed the Central Intelligence Agency's skepticism that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium for a nuclear weapons program from Africa.

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