WASHINGTON — President Bush (news - web sites) declared Monday that "knowing what I know today, we still would have gone on into Iraq (news - web sites)," signaling that revelations of flaws in the prewar intelligence had not changed his mind about the wisdom of attacking and removing Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) from power.
Bush acknowledged that no banned weapons had been found in Iraq, but he said they might still turn up. "We still would have gone to make our country more secure," he said, adding that Hussein "had the capability of making weapons."
"He had terrorist ties," Bush said. "The decision I made was the right decision."
The comments, which the president offered during a brief White House news conference, marked something of a political gamble. Polls suggest that up to half the American public now believes that the war was a mistake, given that no weapons of mass destruction have turned up in Iraq.
"I don't think the president is helping himself when he says things like this. It's a real stretch to think that a majority of Americans would have been supportive of attacking Iraq in the absence of either a clear connection to Sept. 11 or an imminent WMD threat," said political analyst Charlie Cook, referring to weapons of mass destruction.
"Statements like this by the president only lend credence to the charges that he was determined to attack, no matter what," Cook said.
Political experts also said that Bush's comments showed he was eager to push back at Democratic claims that he had mishandled national security and the war in Iraq, considered to be the president's strongest suits. At the Democratic National Convention in Boston last week, Bush's opponents tried to build the case that the nation needed new leadership on those issues.
The president repeatedly has called Iraq a "central front" in the war on terrorism and says that a free Iraq would help spread democracy throughout the Middle East. He also has said that Hussein's capacity to make dangerous weapons, and to pass them on to terrorists, presented a security risk.
But his comments Monday were noteworthy in the wake of a Senate Intelligence Committee report last month that said the prewar warnings about Iraq's illicit weapons programs were largely unfounded. The report said the CIA (news - web sites) and other U.S. intelligence agencies had made a series of errors that led to incorrect conclusions that Iraq had stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons and was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program.
Before the war, Bush said repeatedly that Hussein had stockpiled biological and chemical weapons and that the Iraqi leader had not complied with U.N. requirements that he disclose his weapons programs and take other required actions.
"If the Iraqi regime wishes peace," Bush told the United Nations (news - web sites) General Assembly in September 2002, "it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles and all related material."
Now, Bush faces a political problem as he revisits the reasons for war, said Stuart Rothenberg, an independent analyst.
"He's caught between a rock and a hard place," Rothenberg said. "An acknowledgment of error would undercut the whole message of strength and toughness and leadership," possibly eroding the president's base of support.
On the other hand, he said, Bush's recent comments about the rationale for war may prompt some to view him as obstinate to the point of being unwilling to admit a mistake.
In a Times Poll of more than 1,500 registered voters last month, 45% said the war in Iraq was justified, while 51% said it was a mistake. The respondents answered after being told that the Senate Intelligence Committee had found no evidence that Iraq was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction or rebuilding its nuclear program, but that Bush had maintained that the war was justified because it would make the Mideast more stable and the United States safer.
The president spoke with reporters Monday after announcing that he would urge Congress to create the job of national intelligence director to oversee a function now scattered among more than a dozen agencies.
Democratic challenges to Bush's performance on national security matters and the Iraq war were a main feature of the party's convention. In accepting the party's nomination for president, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry (news, bio, voting record) promised "to bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: The United States of America never goes to war because we want to; we only go to war because we have to."
Bush's comments were a firmer statement of an argument he had outlined previously.
On July 12, three days after the Senate Intelligence Committee issued its report faulting the prewar intelligence, Bush told workers at a nuclear weapons laboratory: "Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq. 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."
Bush also turned aside a suggestion from Kerry on Monday that his policies had fueled the recruitment of terrorists.
Kerry, in an interview with CNN, said the Bush administration, "in its policies, is actually encouraging the recruitment of terrorists."
"We haven't done the work necessary to reach out to other countries," Kerry said. "We haven't done the work necessary with the Muslim world."
The president responded: "That's a misunderstanding of the war on terror. Obviously, we have a clear — a difference of opinion, a clear difference of opinion about the stakes that face America.
"The best way to protect the American homeland is to stay on the offense. It is a ridiculous notion to assert that because the United States is on the offense, more people want to hurt us. We're on the offense because people do want to hurt us."
