Some of his administration’s most vocal champions are divided on what to do. | AP Photos Bush vets split on Syria

President George W. Bush boldly took the country to war in Iraq a decade ago, but now some of his administration’s most vocal champions of that controversial endeavor are divided over what to do about Syria.

Some former Bush officials say the U.S. shouldn’t strike at Bashar Assad’s regime over the recent chemical weapons attacks on civilians, saying it’s too late to salvage national security interests there. Others argue that if a bombing campaign is warranted, President Barack Obama has yet to make the case.


And a few Bush hands are pressing for a much more aggressive response than the limited military action Obama by all indications is weighing.

( PHOTOS: Scenes from Syria)

John Negroponte, who served as Bush’s director of national intelligence, said his experience with the war in Iraq makes him worry about the accuracy of intelligence that’s driving calculations over how to respond to the chemical weapons attacks that killed hundreds of civilians in Syria.

“I think the concern here is, for those of us who worked on Iraq during the Bush administration, someone like myself who helped set up the [Director of National Intelligence], is the whole issue of how confident can we be of our information, and do we have a sufficient basis to justify action?” he said, adding, “You’ll remember we went to the [U.N.] Security Council convinced we were right about Saddam’s having weapons of mass destruction. That turned out not to be correct.”

President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that the U.S. has “concluded” that the Assad regime used chemical weapons against its own people, crossing what he previously defined as a “red line.” Though Obama has said he hasn’t decided on the next steps, his administration is eyeing its military options. The president spoke with House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday about Syria, and top administration officials briefed some lawmakers that evening.

( Also on POLITICO: Bush not getting 'roped in' on Syria)

Bush, for his part, said on Friday that he was “not a fan” of Assad but acknowledged that Obama faces challenging questions on Syria.

“The president’s got a tough choice to make and if he decides to use our military, he’ll have the greatest military ever backing him up,” he said on Fox News.

Internationally, the case for intervention in Syria could be a tough sell. Evidence of that came Thursday when British Prime Minister David Cameron lost an early vote in parliament concerning Syrian intervention. Negroponte said he was deeply wary of a situation in which the U.S. might decide to go it alone — which administration officials indicated was a possibility, according to reports Thursday night.

( Also on POLITICO: White House offers Hill no timetable on Syria strike)

“Maybe we’re all prisoners of our own experiences,” Negroponte said. “Certainly, what I feel I learned about what happened a decade ago is, we paid a very high political price both domestically and internationally for having preemptively acted without a sufficient base of international support. That is really what preoccupies me the most.”

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who led the Pentagon as the U.S. went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, made headlines when he told Fox News Wednesday that the White House hasn’t justified bombing Syria.

( See POLITICO’s full Syria coverage)

“There really hasn’t been any indication from the administration as to what our national interest is with respect to this particular situation,” he said.

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said in an interview that while the civil war in Syria does involve American national security interests, action at this stage — more than two years into the bloody conflict — would be counterproductive. Obama has taken heat from some corners for saying a year ago that chemical weapons use crosses a “red line,” but then not following through on retaliation sooner.

“It is a mess largely of the president’s own creation,” Bolton charged. “I think our credibility has been damaged, I think the president’s credibility has been. But feckless use of military force would damage the country’s credibility more.”

Bolton said the Syrian opposition contains factions that are deeply hostile to the U.S., and there’s no indication that propping them up would be any better for American interests. The U.S. would be better off focusing on threats emanating from Iran, he said.

“If you use massive military force against Assad, then that will tip the balance, which I think would be a mistake,” Bolton said, acknowledging that the situation is complicated. “If you use minimal force, you won’t make the point about deterrence.”

Elliott Abrams, who served as an adviser to Bush and a member of his National Security Council, disagreed. He said the administration should find and bolster nonradical factions within the Syrian opposition.

Abrams, like Bolton and Rumsfeld, stressed that preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons should be America’s top priority in the Middle East. But Abrams said he views an American show of strength in Syria as a constructive step toward that end.

“I think that this is a proxy war between Iran, Hezbollah and Russia on one side, and the U.S. among others — Turkey, Jordan, Europe — on the other side,” he said. “I think they’re trying very hard to win. They’re trying hard enough, they’re willing to use poison gas and kill 100,000 people.”

Abrams added that Syria is “very important in terms of the entire Middle East, and I think we should be trying to win.”

He and several other Bush veterans, among others, penned a letter to Obama Tuesday, urging him to “respond decisively” to Assad’s reported use of chemical weapons. Among those who signed were Dan Senor, formerly a spokesman for the effort in Iraq; Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and Ambassador Eric Edelman. Edelman said in an interview that he supports military action in Syria as long as it’s “serious.”

“I just don’t know how the administration has any credibility in the region unless it does something,” he said. “However, the caveat is, doing something is not necessarily better than doing nothing. If something isn’t serious, and isn’t seen as being serious — if it’s seen to be checking a box, seen to move on, to change the subject, frankly it’s better to do nothing.”

Edelman, a former ambassador to Turkey and an undersecretary of defense policy under Bush, said American allies in the Middle East are already concerned that if America goes easy on Syria, it will send the wrong message to Iran, considered by U.S. allies in the region to pose a much more serious threat.

“I do think the issue of the president of the United States, having identified a red line in [the Syria] context and also defined a red line with nuclear weapons in Iran, to allow [the line in Syria] to go violated, without response, is to damage his credibility and the credibility of the administration,” he said. “If you talk to diplomats from countries in the region or in Europe, they’re already saying that.”

John Yoo, who served in the Office of Legal Counsel during Bush’s tenure, made the case for military action in Syria, with or without the approval of Congress — the same position he took on Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It seems to me that it is in U.S. interests to overthrow a regime that has used chemical weapons on its citizens, attacked Israel twice, supported insurgents against us in Iraq, and serves as a proxy for Iran and as a conduit to Hezbollah in Lebanon,” he said in an email to POLITICO. “We need not wage war only to defend the territorial United States. We should, and often have, wage war for foreign policy reasons that make the world a better place for the United States.”