Bush: U.S. ‘Did the Right Thing’ in Iraq

“America did the right thing,” President Bush declared Wednesday in a robust defense of his Iraq policy in which he argued that the hunt for suspected weapons of mass destruction there has already turned up enough evidence to justify the war.

“There’s a lot more to investigate,” Bush said before a gala fund-raiser for the Republican National Committee. “Yet, it is now undeniable – undeniable – that Saddam Hussein was in clear violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441,” which threatened Iraq with “serious consequences” if it failed to disarm.

“It is undeniable that Saddam was a deceiver and a danger,” Bush said. “The Security Council was right to demand that Saddam disarm and America was right to enforce that demand.”

Bush said that a team of U.S. weapons hunters in Iraq led by David Kay has found proof that Saddam, Iraq’s deposed president, had the ambition and ability to use weapons of mass destruction, even though the team has found no weapons.

“Since the liberation of Iraq, our investigators have found evidence of a clandestine network of biological laboratories, the advance design work on prohibited long-range missiles, elaborate campaign to hide these illegal programs,” Bush said.

Earlier Wednesday, Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, asked Americans to be patient with rebuilding efforts in the region and with the weapons hunt for weapons of mass destruction.

Like Bush, Rice – speaking in Chicago – also portrayed Kay’s interim report as favorable.

Critics of the war have lambasted the president for using the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify military action. Bush’s remarks and Rice’s speech were the first in a planned counterattack in which Bush administration officials are attempting to ease public misgivings about setbacks in postwar Iraq.

With his poll numbers slipping and doubts rising about Iraq policy, Bush will come forward again Thursday in New Hampshire with a speech to emphasize areas of progress. On Friday, it will be Vice President Dick Cheney’s turn, and he is expected to use a speech in Washington to take on opponents of the administration’s policies.

“If you looked at some of the media here, you wouldn’t know about some of the great progress that we are making in Iraq,” presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said Wednesday. “There’s some important progress that we are making, and it’s the responsibility of this administration to keep the American people informed about those successes.”

Bush argued repeatedly that his action in Iraq against what he claimed was “a gathering threat” made not only the United States – but the world – a safer place.

“I was not about to leave the security of the American people in the hands of a madman. I was not going to stand by and wait and trust the sanity and restraint of Mr. Saddam Hussein,” he said. “America did the right thing.”

Rice said Kay has made remarkable progress in three months, uncovering evidence of materials and equipment that could have been used to make weapons banned to Iraq by U.N. resolutions. Given more time, she told the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, the team will “put together the true story of what has happened, what came of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.”

She also said Kay’s report makes clear that Saddam never complied with U.N. inspectors and suggested that if the U.N. Security Council had known that last winter, it would not have rejected the U.S. request for authorization to make war.

“Right up until the end, Saddam lied to the Security Council. And let there be no mistake, right up to the end, Saddam Hussein continued to harbor ambitions to threaten the world with weapons of mass destruction,” she said.

The White House public relations push comes as Congress begins to debate Bush’s $87 billion proposal for Iraq and Afghanistan. Although lawmakers are expected to pass something close to his request, opponents have called it too expensive at a time the U.S. economy is shaky.

Rice cautioned that movement toward democracy in Iraq might be slow.

“We must remain patient,” Rice said. “Our own history should remind us that the union of democratic principle and practice is always a work in progress.”

Added Bush: “This nation will stay the course, until Iraq is free and peaceful and prosperous.”

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Associated Press writer Nicole Ziegler Dizon contributed to this report from Chicago.