US: President Bush said yesterday that he had invaded Iraq to protect Americans from "madman" Saddam Hussein. "I acted because I was not about to leave the security of the American people in the hands of a madman.
I was not about to stand by and wait and trust in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein," Mr Bush said in speech in New Hampshire, site of the first presidential primary next year.
"Who could possible think that the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein still in power?" he asked, laying down a rhetorical challenge to critics of his conduct of the war.
His speech had little in the way of new arguments, but he and others in the administration were to make their case repeatedly in coming days in the face of criticism that they exaggerated the threat Iraq posed to justify the war.
Mr Bush spoke to an audience of New Hampshire National Guard troops and reservists. The speech was part of an aggressive new push by the Bush administration this week to revive waning support for the US occupation of Iraq. A nationally televised address about Iraq last month and a speech to the United Nations did little to answer public doubts.
Meanwhile, the White House sought yesterday to paper over any differences with the Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, who complained he was not told of a post-war Iraq reorganisational shake-up.
Mr Rumsfeld's annoyance at the White House emerged during an interview he gave to the Financial Times newspaper, a rare display of public pique within Mr Bush's famously disciplined inner circle.
Under pressure to bring stability to Iraq, Mr Bush on Monday announced a major reorganisation of US efforts to bring control to Iraq, headed by the National Security Adviser, Ms Condoleezza Rice, and including representatives from the State Department and other key agencies.
In the Financial Times interview, Mr Rumsfeld sounded annoyed that Ms Rice had decided to draw attention to a memo establishing the reorganisation by briefing the New York Times.
"I don't quite know what the purpose of the backgrounding was . . . she gave a background, she said what she said and the way I read the memorandum is that it is basically what the responsibility of the NSC is and always has been, which is what's been going on," Mr Rumsfeld said.
He said he did not know Ms Rice was writing the memo, but admitted he wrote memos himself that colleagues did not know about until they received them. He said the memo should not be classified and should be released.
However, answering questions yesterday from reporters in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he was attending a defence ministers' meeting, Mr Rumsfeld said he was "not at all" upset about the memo, which he said apparently had been discussed at a lower level than him and need not have been brought to his level.
"It's not a problem or an issue," Mr Rumsfeld said, expressing surprise that reporters were asking him about it.
White House officials said Mr Bush retained complete confidence in Mr Rumsfeld, that his authority had not been diminished and the Pentagon remained the lead agency in Iraq. - (Reuters)