US President George W. Bush made the right decision to go after Saddam Hussein but the timing of the invasion was wrong, Bill Clinton said in an interview with Timemagazine.
"I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the UN inspections were over," the former president said in the interview, published today.
"I would not have done it until after (former UN chief weapons inspector) Hans Blix finished his job."
Mr Clinton spoke to Timedays before the release of his memoirs, My Life, on Tuesday. It was his first print interview as part of the high-profile publicity campaign.
"We went in there because (Bush) bought the Wolfowitz-Cheney analysis that the Iraqis would be better off, we could shake up the authoritarian Arab regimes in the Middle East, and our leverage to make peace between the Palestinians and Israelis would be increased," Mr Clinton told Time.
The results have been mixed so far, he said.
"I think right now, getting rid of Saddam's tyranny, ironically, has made Iraq more vulnerable to terrorism coming from in the outside," Mr Clinton said. "But any open society is going to be more vulnerable than any tyranny to that."
During a two-hour interview conducted on Thursday, Clinton also touched on his affair with White House intern Ms Monica Lewinsky and his battle with independent counsel Mr Ken Starr.
"I was involved in two great struggles at the same time: a great public struggle over the future of America with the Republican Congress and a private struggle with my old demons.
"I won the public one and lost the private one," Mr Clinton said. "I don't think it's much more complicated than that."
Of Mr Starr, Mr Clinton said the special prosecutor represented "the new right that runs the Washington Republican Party."
"This was not about evidence. This was about a struggle for power. I think that they really saw us as usurpers. They thought the only reason they lost the election to Jimmy Carter was Watergate," he said.