“Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States,” Bush

ELIZABETH, New Jersey, June 16 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – In a sign the Iraq invasion may play a prominent role in the Coming U.S. Presidential elections, U.S. President George W. Bush angrily defended Monday, June 16, his case for Iraq invasion and his efforts to prevent future attacks like those of September 11, 2001.

U.S. opposing Democrats accused Bush’s administration of exaggerating the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the United States to lead the nation into war.

Also a top White House anti-terrorism advisor who quit five days before the start of the invasion, accused Bush of not doing enough in the fight against “terrorism”.

However, Bush lashed out at those he branded "revisionist historians," according to Agence-France Presse (AFP).

The U.S. and British leaders have come under mounting pressure over the handling of alleged evidence of weapons of mass destruction used to justify the Iraq invasion.

After portraying Saddam as an imminent threat to the United States, the administration's rationale for war has shifted several times, and on Monday Bush omitted any mention of alleged unconventional arms in Iraq.

"Saddam Hussein was a threat to America and the free world in '91, in '98, in 2003. He continually ignored the demands of the free world, so the United States and friends and allies acted," Bush told business leaders in New Jersey.

"And this is for certain: Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States and our friends and allies," said Bush, who was heading back to Washington after a long weekend with his father in Maine.

The President's comments came as a former top aide, Rand Beers, was quoted as saying that he quit his post as a top counter-terrorism official with Bush's National Security Council out of disillusionment with the administration's strategy for thwarting future attacks.

"The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They're making us less secure, not more secure," Beers told the Washington Post.

The former official has gone to work as national security adviser to Democratic Presidential aspirant Senator John Kerry, who could be the challenger to Bush in the 2004 elections, AFP reported.

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and other senior officials strongly denied that a special Defense Department unit only used reports from defectors associated with an Iraqi opposition group to make the U.S. case that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda posed an imminent threat.  

Faced with mounting questions over whether intelligence was politicized to justify a war with Iraq, Feith attacked the accuracy of press accounts on the role of a Pentagon unit set up to review U.S. intelligence on “terrorism”.

“They're making us less secure, not more secure," Beers

He said the basic intelligence assessments of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs had barely changed since the previous administration under President Bill Clinton.

Analyst experts have become increasingly critical of the way in which intelligence evidence was used before Bush launched the controversial Iraq invasion.  

James Lindsay, a Brookings Institution specialist and former adviser to the Clinton White House, said "the administration got it wrong" over the weapons information.

"It's hard to believe the Iraqis could have had the amounts of chemical weapons the administration was talking about" before the war, declared Lindsay.

Bush also took on charges in some quarters that he has shortchanged efforts to protect U.S. targets from “terrorist” attacks in favor of more dramatic actions like the war in Iraq.

"The best way to protect the homeland is to hunt the killers down one at a time and bring them to justice, which is what America will do," said the president.

"This government will use whatever technologies and skill is necessary to secure America by hunting down those who would harm us one person at a time. It is a charge we have been given and it is a charge we will keep," he said.

The Bush administration made what it considered a strong case to the U.S. public and the United Nations for military action against Iraq to counter the threat of Saddam's weapons programs and his links with “terrorism”.

However, more than two and a half months passed since the invasion was complete and the U.S. has not yet produced any solid evidence to support its claims on both issues.

Charles Pena, a specialist on defense policy at the CATO Institute in Washington, said though no weapons of mass destruction nor links with al-Qaeda had been found, "Now it's not discussed".

U.S.-led forces have yet to locate conclusive evidence backing Bush's central case for war: that Saddam possessed chemical and biological weapons, pursued nuclear arms, and might one day have armed “terrorists” with them.

And the U.S. Congress is looking into U.S. intelligence claims leading up to the war.

The Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees are to hold joint hearings into whether an intelligence breakdown occurred. But there are few accusations against the President.  

Lindsay highlighted how most Democrats voted to give Bush a virtually open hand to declare war against Iraq. He predicted that the most that would happen in America would be a reorganization of the intelligence services.