Bush speaks of 'intelligence failures'

President George Bush tonight appeared to acknowledge that the spectre of Saddam Hussein’s so-called weapons of mass destruction – over which the the United States went to war – might have been the product of an intelligence failure.

The president said “I want to know the facts” about any intelligence failures regarding the deposed Iraqi leader’s alleged cache of forbidden weapons.

But Mr Bush declined to endorse calls for an independent investigation.

Earlier today, the president’s national security adviser admitted that intelligence given to the administration before the Iraq war was probably flawed.

Condoleezza Rice defended Mr Bush’s decision to go to war, but said the United States may never learn the whole truth about Iraq’s weapons capabilities because of looting.

“No one will want to know more than the president the comparison between what we found when we got there and what we thought was there going in,” Rice said on NBC television’s Today show.

When asked if she thought Americans had a legitimate concern about whether intelligence was manipulated to justify the decision to go to war, Rice replied: “The president’s judgment to go to the war was based on the fact that Saddam Hussein for 12 years had defied UN resolutions” regarding his stock of weapons.

Saddam “had been considered a danger for a long time and it was time to take care of that danger,” she said.

Rice’s comments came after former chief weapons hunter David Kay said the allegation Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was wrong, deepening controversy over whether the war was justified.

The issue of weapons of mass destruction was cited by the president as a rationale for going to war against Iraq.

The idea of an independent commission to probe whether Saddam did, or did not, have weapons of mass destruction, has blossomed into an election-year problem for the President Bush, with Democrats and Republicans alike supporting the idea.

Mr Bush said he wants to be able to compare the administration’s pre-war intelligence with what will be learned by inspectors who are now searching for weapons in Iraq.

There is no deadline for those inspectors, the Iraq Survey Group, to complete their work.

“I want the American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts. I want to be able to compare what the Iraq Survey Group has found with what we thought prior to going into Iraq,” he said.

“One thing is for certain – one thing we do know from Mr Kay’s testimony, as well as from the years of intelligence that we had gathered, is that Saddam Hussein was a danger. He was a growing danger.

“And given the circumstances of September the 11th, this country went to the United Nations and said, “Saddam Hussein’s a danger, let us work together to get him to disarm.

“He was defiant, he ignored the request of the international community and this country led a coalition to remove him,” Bush said after meeting with economists.