Dems fume over Iraq in Bush 9/11 speech

Claim president refuses to give up partisanship

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updated 12:01 p.m. ET Sept. 12, 2006

CAPITOL HILL - Some leading Democrats on Capitol Hill say President Bush shouldn't have used the memory of the Nine-Eleven attacks to defend the Iraq war.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid complains that "the American people deserved better." Reid says the president could've used the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks to reclaim what Reid calls a "sense of unity, purpose and patriotism" that came in 2001.

Senator Ted Kennedy says outright that Bush "should be ashamed" of giving a speech that "had nothing to do with Nine-Eleven." The veteran Massachusetts lawmaker says the anniversary wasn't the time to debate the president's Iraq policy.

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And Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel, who oversees efforts to win Democratic control of the House, says Americans would've been glad had partisanship been a casualty of September Eleventh. Instead, Emanuel says it's "the one thing the president refuses to give up."