Bush broadly defends Iraq invasion

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. - President Bush defended his decision to invade Iraq even as he conceded on Monday that investigators had not found the weapons of mass destruction that he had warned the country possessed.

Allowing Iraq to possibly transfer weapons capability to terrorists was not a risk he was willing to take, Bush said.

"Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq," Bush said after inspecting a display of nuclear weapons parts and equipment, including assembled gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment, from Libya.

The hardware was shipped here in March as part of an agreement with Moammar Gadhafi to end his country's nuclear weapons program.

"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 Sept. 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take," Bush said.

The president offered a broad new defense of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq three days after the release of a Senate report that harshly criticized unsubstantiated intelligence cited in advance of the war in Iraq.

The key U.S. assertions leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq - that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was working to make nuclear weapons - were wrong and based on false or overstated CIA analyses, a scathing Senate Intelligence Committee report asserted Friday.

Without directly acknowledging the intelligence was flawed, Bush said a wide array of government leaders, from members of the Clinton administration to lawmakers to the U.N. Security Council, had studied the same intelligence and "saw a threat."

"So I had a choice to make: either take the word of a madman or defend America. Given that choice, I will defend America."

Speaking to reporters in Boston, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said that in the two years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, less nuclear materials have been secured than in the two years before the attacks. He said he has proposed a plan to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism and keep nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists.

"I will appoint a national director of intelligence who will change our ability to be able to gather intelligence that is real, to be accountable and to make America safe," Kerry said. "That's what Americans want - real results, not speeches."

Bush's trip to Tennessee was designed to showcase a victory in his campaign against weapons of mass destruction.

Bush was shown nuclear weapons parts and equipment from Libya and called them "sobering evidence of a great danger."

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. - A left-wing conspiracy?

On Monday, a flap on the wing of Air Force One left its track, forcing President Bush to return from Oak Ridge, Tenn., in a smaller presidential plane.

More than a week earlier, on the Fourth of July, a problem with an engine starter valve on the wing of his plane delayed Bush's departure from Hagerstown, Md.

Two different planes. Two different wings. Both times they were left wings.

The plane troubles for the Republican president apparently were just a coincidence. And the White House said neither malfunction endangered Bush.

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