US: President Bush has ordered the publication of parts of a secret intelligence assessment, following reports that it concludes that the war in Iraq has made the problem of international terrorism worse.
Suggesting that details of the report were leaked in order to damage Republican chances in November's mid-term elections, Mr Bush said people were drawing the wrong conclusions from newspaper accounts.
"Some people have guessed what's in the report and have concluded that going into Iraq was a mistake. I strongly disagree. I think it's naive. I think it's a mistake for people to believe that going on the offence against people that want to do harm to the American people makes us less safe," he said during a joint press conference with Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai.
Pointing out that the 9/11 attacks came before the US invasion of Iraq, Mr Bush said that Islamist terrorists would find another reason to attack the US if there was no war in Iraq.
"You know, in the past, Osama bin Laden used Somalia as an excuse for people to join his jihadist movement. In the past, they used the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was a convenient way to try to recruit people to their jihadist movement. They've used all kinds of excuses," he said.
The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) which draws on information from all US intelligence agencies, was completed in March but its conclusions remained secret until last weekend, when a number of newspapers reported on its findings.
With Republicans worried that the reports could undermine White House claims that the Iraq war has made the US safer, Mr Bush yesterday ordered his intelligence chief, John Negroponte, to declassify parts of the NIE.
"We'll stop all the speculation, all the politics about somebody saying something about Iraq, somebody trying to confuse the American people about the nature of this enemy," Mr Bush said.
Democrats in the House of Representatives yesterday failed to win support for a secret session of the House to discuss the intelligence findings.
The Republican leadership in Congress is seeking to push through a defence spending Bill and legislation covering the treatment of detainees suspected of terrorism before the current session ends on Friday.
The White House negotiated a final version of the detainees Bill with key Republican legislators over the weekend.
It includes a broader definition of "unlawful enemy combatants" to embrace anyone "who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents" in the "war on terror".
To speed the Bill's progress, Republican leaders are trying to persuade Senate judiciary chairman Arlen Specter to abandon his effort to give terrorist suspects habeas corpus rights - the right to challenge their imprisonment in court.