US Vice President Dick Cheney has echoed President George W Bush's assertion that the US was "right to take action" in Iraq and suggested that countries that opposed the invasion may have done so because they benefited from corruption.
Mr Cheney did not name any specific country, but France, Germany and Russia were among the most outspoken opponents of the invasion.
President Bush said earlier today that despite a new US report finding Baghdad had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and that its nuclear program had decayed, the decision to invade was the right one.
"Based on all the information we have today, I believe we were right to take action and America is safer today with Saddam Hussein in prison," Mr Bush told reporters at the White House.
In the run-up to the November 2nd US election Democrats have seized on the report, as well as mounting violence in Iraq, to put President Bush and Cheney on the defensive over the decision to go to war based on the weapons threat.
Mr Cheney, speaking at a campaign rally in Miami, said that following Wednesday's release of the report by inspector Mr Charles Duelfer "headlines all say 'No weapons of mass destruction stockpiled in Iraq', but we already knew that."
He repeated earlier justifications for the war, including that Saddam had an "evil regime," was a sponsor of terrorism, had used chemical weapons in the past and that Iraq was "a place with a relationship with al Qaeda."
"Delay, defer, wait wasn't an option. The President did exactly the right thing in taking down Saddam Hussein ... That was the place where he [Bush] felt more danger was greatest."
Mr Cheney, who had been one of the strongest advocates of military action against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, added: "The intriguing finding that Duelfer has come up with is the extensive corruption in the UN oil-for-food program."
He said Saddam had used that corruption to try to undermine United Nations sanctions which had been imposed after he invaded Kuwait in 1990.