Bush Still Confident In U.S. Spies

President Bush said Tuesday he has "great confidence" in the intelligence community despite a finding that Iraq did not have the weapons of mass destruction that the White House cited as justification for waging war.

Mr. Bush said he had no misgivings about going to war against Iraq but he refrained from saying — as he once did — that weapons of mass destruction would be discovered. "There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a gathering threat to America and others. That's what we know."

"We know he was a dangerous man in a dangerous part of the world," the president said.

The issue was injected into the presidential campaign when retired chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said he had concluded, after nine months of searching, that deposed Saddam did not have stockpiles of forbidden weapons. Confronted with Kay's statement, administration officials declined to repeat their once-ironclad assertions that Saddam had them.

Kay, in a television interview, said, "Clearly, the intelligence that we went to war on was inaccurate, wrong."

"There is no doubt in my mind the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein," Mr. Bush said. "America is more secure. The world is safer and the people of Iraq are free."

The president spoke with reporters in the Oval Office during a meeting with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski.

Before taking the nation to war, President Bush had no doubt that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, reports CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller, and in many a speech, he said if Iraq would not disarm, the U.S. would lead a coalition that will disarm Iraq.

"The dictator of Iraq has got weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Bush said on Jan. 22, 2003.

"It's very important for us to let the Iraq survey group do its work so we can find out the facts and compare the facts to what was thought," the president said Tuesday.

Despite Kay's conclusion, President Bush said, "I've got great confidence in our intelligence community."

The White House said it is "too soon to draw firm conclusions." without admitting its pre-war intelligence was wrong, a spokesman says US weapon hunters in Iraq must be allowed to finish their work.

Kay is scheduled to testify before a Senate committee Wednesday.