US: Scrambling to limit the damage from a report undercutting his rationale for war against Iraq, President Bush yesterday rewrote a planned speech on the economy to renew his claim that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States that justified military action writes Conor O'Clery in Cleveland, Ohio.
The final report of the chief US arms inspector in Iraq, delivered yesterday to Congress, concludes that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction - Mr Bush's main basis for war - nor was he trying to develop unconventional weapons.
The report, and a claim from former Iraq administrator Mr Paul Bremer that the Pentagon did not provide enough troops to secure Iraq, have played into the charged exchanges on national security in the presidential campaign.
Speaking in Pennsylvania, Mr Bush made a blistering attack on his Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry, for claiming in Thursday's presidential debate that removing Saddam Hussein "was a mistake because the threat was not imminent".
"If America waits until a threat is at our doorstep, it might be too late to save lives," Mr Bush 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."
At the vice-presidential debate in Cleveland on Tuesday - which most commentators scored as a draw - Vice President Dick Cheney insisted the war was justified, as Iraq under Saddam Hussein was "the most likely place to see terrorists coming together".
His opponent, Senator John Edwards, accused Mr Cheney of "not being straight" with the American people and not having a plan for the peace.
The vice president focused on alleged ties between Saddam and the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, although a recent CIA report found no conclusive evidence that Saddam Hussein had given al-Zarqawi support or shelter before the war or that al-Zarqawi was linked to al-Qaeda.
Mr Cheney claimed that at one point some of Zarqawi's people were arrested and "Saddam personally intervened to have them released". Charges of mangling the truth came from both sides. After Mr Cheney said in the debate that he had never suggested a connection between Iraq and 9/11, TV networks yesterday played clips of an interview he gave in 2003 saying Iraq was at the geographic base for the 9/11 terrorists.
Mr Cheney was also criticised for stating wrongly, in an attempt to disparage his opponent's Senate record, that he had not met Mr Edwards before.
Old video was found showing them together in the Senate.
Mr Edwards was faulted for exaggerating job losses and the cost of the war, and for stating that Mr Cheney's former firm, Halliburton, had received a $7.5 billion "no-bid contract" in Iraq after a bipartisan Congress committee concluded that no other US company could have provided the military services involved.
The tone of the exchanges was icy. When Edwards raised Halliburton, Mr Cheney said: "Senator, frankly, you have a record in the Senate that's not very distinguished." The North Carolina senator retorted: "One thing that's very clear is that a long resumé does not equal good judgment." Mr Cheney shot back: "You're not credible on Iraq because of the enormous inconsistencies that John Kerry and you have cited ... whatever the political pressures of the moment requires, that's where you're at."
A CBS poll of undecided voters showed Mr Edwards the winner, but an NBC poll of Republican-leaning swing voters put Mr Cheney ahead in a debate where he used his gravitas to good effect and Mr Edwards came across as unruffled and sincere.
The report of the administration's weapons inspector, Mr Charles Duelfer, was greeted as an "October surprise", the name given to upset disclosures in the month before US presidential elections.
It challenges Mr Bush's assertion in 2002 that Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons; it is seeking nuclear weapons," and Mr Cheney's claim the same year that "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction \ he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us."
In his speech yesterday, Mr Bush said that after September the 11th, America had to assess every potential threat in a new light and "we had to take a hard look at every place where terrorists might get those weapons." There was a real risk that "Saddam Hussein would pass weapons, or materials, or information to terrorist networks," he went on. "That was a risk we could not afford to take."
Mr Bush mocked Mr Kerry for hoping to invite other countries, if elected, to join what he had called "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time". He said Mr Kerry's "global test" for military action would mean the US "sitting around waiting for our grade from other nations and other leaders". Mr Kerry had voted against the first Gulf War in 1991 he said, and "if that coalition didn't pass his global test, clearly, nothing will". President Bush also vowed, to cheers, that he would never join the International Criminal Court, "which would allow unaccountable foreign prosecutors and judges to put American soldiers on trial".