President George W. Bush ripped into Democratic critics of the Iraq war on Friday, charging them with trying to rewrite history by accusing the White House of manipulating intelligence before the war.

Bush, facing waning public support for the war that has helped push his approval ratings to new lows, hit back at critics who have said his administration misused intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the war.

Democrats responded to Bush's Veterans Day speech by accusing the president of exploiting the holiday to try to shore up his faltering political standing.

Bush said he respected his opponents' right to disagree with him about the decision to go to war against Iraq, and that as president he accepted responsibility for what has taken place there under his watch.

But he added, "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began."

"Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgment related to Iraq's weapons programs," Bush said.

"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," Bush added in a speech that broadly reviewed Washington's declared war on terrorism since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.