WASHINGTON - President Bush said yesterday that Iraq undoubtedly posed a threat to America last year and the U.S.-led invasion was justified, despite his outgoing arms inspector's conclusion that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.
But Bush and his aides backed away from often-stated predictions that such weapons will eventually be found in Iraq. And the president deflected questions about the discrepancies between his dire warnings on Iraq and former chief inspector David Kay's findings.
There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a grave and gathering threat to America and the world
Bush said. And I say that based upon intelligence that I saw prior to the decision to go into Iraq and I say that based upon what I know today. And the world is better off without him.
Kay believes his team's failure to find banned weapons in Iraq points to problems in the intelligence suggesting they were there, and he said over the weekend that the CIA owes Bush an explanation.
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Porter Goss, told the Associated Press yesterday that Kay was doing a favor for the nation's intelligence system with his harsh criticism of the CIA's flawed prewar estimates.
Goss blamed the problem on underestimation of the fear and repression in Saddam's Iraq and insufficient intelligence budgets during the 1990s. He said the intelligence system needs more resources.
I already knew it but I know it in a more reinforced way now and I figure Dr. Kay has done me a favor
Goss said.
Bush, during a meeting with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, said he had great confidence in our intelligence community
and he displayed no interest in such an accounting from the CIA.
The president said he wanted to let American weapons inspectors complete their search in Iraq before drawing conclusions. That work is 85 percent
complete, Kay has said.
Last year, the president made Iraq's alleged weapons cache a central rationale for the Iraq invasion.
On Jan. 22, 2003, Bush told an audience in St. Louis, The dictator of Iraq has got weapons of mass destruction. On the eve of the war in March, he said, Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
Sunday, after nine months of searching, Kay said, I don't think they exist. Kay quit his post on Friday.
Bush cited other reasons yesterday behind his decision to go to war, and he tried to direct Americans' attention to the future of Iraq, not his own past assertions.
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