Bush: Time Will Prove That America Was Right in Overthrowing Saddam

President Bush emphatically states that time will prove that America was right in overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime. In response to a journalist's question about whether the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has called America's credibility into question, he said Iraq had an ongoing weapons program, supported by intelligence reports over the past decade. President Bush did not specifically refer to the weapons themselves, but U.S. officials have insisted in recent interviews that these weapons will be found. The existence of such weapons in Iraq was the main reason for the U.S.-led coalition's attack on Iraq. Yesterday, Secretary of State Colin Powell also vehemently denied allegations that President Bush's administration manipulated evidence regarding the weapons of the former Iraqi regime to justify the war against Saddam Hussein. Mr. Powell stated on Fox News that there was no doubt that Saddam's regime possessed chemical and biological weapons before the U.S. attack in March. He angrily refuted media claims that the White House paid less attention to intelligence gathered that did not support the case for war. One of the classified documents from last year, parts of which have been declassified and made public, indicated that direct information about Iraq's prohibited weapons had not been obtained but concluded that the Baghdad regime likely possessed materials that could be used in chemical weapons. The British government has also denied that it distorted its intelligence information but promised to establish stricter regulations for the use of intelligence evidence in published reports.