Bush wants 'all the facts'

President George Bush, declaring he wants “all the facts,” tonight ordered an independent investigation into intelligence failures in Iraq but said he wants to first consult with former chief weapons inspector David Kay.

Bush, trying to quiet mounting election-year criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike, said he will name an independent, bipartisan inquiry into the Iraq problem and gaps in other areas, such as secretive regimes like Iran and North Korea and stateless groups such as terrorists.

Bush defended his decision to go to war based on intelligence that Kay now says was erroneous.

Kay has concluded that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction.

“We do know that Saddam Hussein had the intent and capabilities to cause great harm,” Bush said after meeting with his Cabinet.

“We know he was a danger. And he was not only a danger to people in the free world, he was a danger to his own people. He slaughtered thousands of people, imprisoned people.”

“What we don’t know yet is (reconciling) what we thought and what the Iraqi Survey Group has found, and we want to look at that,” the president said.

“But we also want to look at our war against proliferation and weapons of mass destruction, kind of in a broader context. And so, I’m putting together an independent, bipartisan commission to analyse where we stand, what we can do better as we fight this war against terror. I want to know all the facts.”

The British government hinted today it was prepared to follow the US lead and hold an inquiry into why intelligence on Iraq appears to have been badly flawed. A senior judge cleared the UK government last week of distorting that intelligence.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s official spokesman said Blair would announce soon what action he would take in response to growing calls for an inquiry.

He said his government had ”been talking with the US administration and were keeping in close touch with their thinking on how to approach this issue.”

The announcement may come Tuesday.

Kay threw the Bush administration’s rationale for war in Iraq in doubt with his determination that Saddam did not have the weapons of mass destruction that the United States had insisted he possessed.

Kay told Congress last week that “it turns out we were all wrong, probably” about the Iraqi threat.

He went to see the president in the White House today.

The president did not set a timetable for the investigation to report its findings, and he side-stepped a question about whether the country was owed an explanation before the November elections.

Bush’s decision to go to an outside commission comes amid assertions that America’s credibility is being undermined by uncertainty over flawed intelligence used as a basis for invading Iraq.

He initially reacted coolly to setting up such a body, then decided during the weekend to go forward.

By establishing the commission himself, Bush will have greater control over its membership and mandate.

A senior White House official said the body would be patterned after the Warren Commission, which conducted a 10-month investigation that concluded in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President John F Kennedy.

In appointing the members, Bush will draw heavily from experts familiar with problems in intelligence, the White House official said, describing them as “distinguished citizens who have served their country in the past.”

Senator Jon Corzine, whose measure to set up a similar bipartisan commission to investigate pre-war intelligence was defeated in the Senate last July, said any investigative panel must be able to probe the collection and analysis of intelligence as well as the use of the information, “including whether there was any misrepresentation or exaggeration of the intelligence.”

“We must not lose sight of the big picture,” Corzine said. “Americans are fighting and dying in Iraq because of what the administration told us about the intelligence.”