Bush defends US invasion of Iraq

A defiant President George W. Bush Wednesday fiercely defended the invasion of Iraq as a key part of the global war on terrorism he launched after the September 11, 2001 strikes.
Bush glossed over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq and said September 11 had forced the United States to look for the most likely place for terrorists to get chemical, biological or nuclear arms.
"We had to take a hard look at every place where terrorists might get those weapons," he told supporters here. "One regime stood out. The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein."
Bush cited Saddam's WMD history and Iraq's place on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism as evidence backing his decision to launch the March 2003 invasion.
"There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks," he said. "In the world after September 11 that was a risk we could not afford to take."
His comments came ahead of an official report expected to say that Saddam Hussein had no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons before the war and no concrete plans to build any.
The Washington Post, quoting officials familiar with the report by Charles Duelfer, the chief US weapons inspector in Iraq, concluded that Saddam was not able to make weapons of mass destruction before the war.
But Bush, slamming his Democratic rival for the presidency, John Kerry, for having a "September 10 mindset," said the United States had to stay on the offensive against terror threats.
"In the war on terror, Senator Kerry is proposing policies and doctrines that would weaken America and make the world more dangerous.
"After September 11, our object in the war on terror is not to wait for the next attack and respond, but to prevent attacks by taking the fight to the enemy," he said. "Tyrants and terrorists will not give us polite notice before they launch an attack on our country. I refuse to stand by while dangers gather," he vowed.
Bush repeated a condemnation of Kerry for saying that pre-emptive US military actions ought to pass a "global test" for legitimacy, in their debate last week.