President Revises Rationale For War
Bush, Cheney Stress Iraq's Capabilities
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 8, 2004; Page A04
President Bush and Vice President Cheney said yesterday that the war in Iraq was justified because Saddam Hussein could have made weapons of mass destruction.
The new rationale offered by the president and vice president, significantly more modest than earlier statements about the deposed Iraqi president's capabilities, comes after government experts have said it is unlikely banned weapons will be found in Iraq and after Bush's naming Friday of a commission to examine faulty prewar intelligence.
"Saddam Hussein was dangerous, and I'm not just going to leave him in power and trust a madman," Bush said yesterday in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" that will be broadcast today. "He's a dangerous man. He had the ability to make weapons at the very minimum."
Cheney delivered a nearly identical message yesterday to a group of Republican donors in suburban Chicago. "We know that Saddam Hussein had the intent to arm his regime with weapons of mass destruction," he said. "And Saddam Hussein had something else -- he had a record of using weapons of mass destruction against his enemies and against his own people."
In the NBC interview, excerpts of which were released by the network, Bush also said the CIA is "ably led" by its director, George J. Tenet, and that Tenet's job is "not at all" in jeopardy. Tenet, in a speech last week, defended the agency's Iraq intelligence. While he acknowledged flaws, he said the CIA did not argue that Hussein was a certain or imminent threat.
Before the invasion of Iraq 11 months ago, Bush and Cheney both argued that Iraq was an urgent threat to the United States, stating with certainty that Iraq had chemical and biological arms and had rebuilt a nuclear weapons program. "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," Bush said in March 2003.
Bush said he would "visit" with the commission he named last week to investigate the Iraq intelligence but suggested that he would not testify before it. Asked about why the commission will not report until next March -- after the presidential election -- while a similar commission in Britain will operate much more quickly, Bush said: "We didn't want it to be hurried. This is a strategic look, kind of a big-picture look about the intelligence-gathering capacities of the United States of America."
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