WASHINGTON, July 12 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush Monday defended the invasion of Iraq and ouster of Saddam Hussein despite flawed intelligence about alleged weapons of mass destruction stockpiles that have never been found.
Bush repeated that Iraq, which had used poison gas in the past and was known at the end of the first Gulf War to possess such weapons, posed a danger.
"Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq," he said during a visit to Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. "We removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them.
"In the world after September 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take."
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence produced a report Friday that said intelligence used to justify the conflict was wrong, flawed or exaggerated in the lead-up to the conflict. It did not, however, find the administration put pressure on analysts to produce information to justify an invasion.
The report is proving an embarrassment for Bush, who used those intelligence estimates -- combined with Saddam's refusal to adhere to U.N. disarmament resolutions -- as the main justification for war.
Those estimates, which were also used during the Clinton administration, had indicated Iraq had not accounted for stockpiles of chemical and biological agents it had in 1991 and was concealing them.
"My administration looked at the intelligence on Iraq, and we saw a threat," Bush said. "Members of the United States Congress from both political parties looked at the same intelligence, and they saw a threat. The United Nations Security Council looked at the intelligence, and it saw a threat. The previous administration and Congress looked at the intelligence and made regime change in Iraq the policy of our country."
Amid the scandal over flawed intelligence, the president and Congress are vowing a reform of U.S. intelligence agencies. Last month, CIA Director George Tenet, citing family reasons, resigned from his post. His deputy has taken over temporarily, but no choice of a replacement for Tenet has been announced.
Tenet's successor would have to be approved by the Senate following hearings on Capitol Hill.
Oak Ridge was a suitable venue for Bush Monday, who highlighted administration successes in stopping the proliferation of WMD as a result of the overall war against terror.
A main talking point was Libya, a pariah terrorist state for decades, which in December announced it was giving up its nuclear weapons program and opening the country to international inspectors. Its nuclear-program components were shipped to Oak Ridge for safekeeping.
Libya's decision followed months of quiet diplomacy that Bush says was reinforced by the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions and subsequent multilateral agreements to interdict ships at sea suspected of involvement in weapons proliferation.
"This progress came about through quiet diplomacy between America, Britain and the Libyan government," he said. "This progress was set in motion, however, by a policy declared in public to all the world. The United States, Great Britain and many other nations are determined to expose the threats of terrorism and proliferation and to oppose those threats with all our power."
The discovery and dismantling of an international back market in nuclear-weapons materials and components, Bush said, was also a result of U.S. resolve, and his administration would work with allies to convince Iran and North Korea to abandon their nuclear-weapons programs.
Bush repeated that his administration was "determined to challenge new threats, not ignore them or simply wait for future tragedy" and was actively working with allies to isolate and confront terrorists and supporting governments.
National security remains Bush's strong suit with the U.S. public, with public-opinion polls consistently giving him approval in his handling of the war against terrorism. Support for the ongoing war in Iraq, however, has slid.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned last week that there was credible evidence terrorists planned to attempt a major attack soon on the United States, possibly to disrupt the election process.
Bush, like Ridge, assured U.S. residents the administration was working to deal with the threat.
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