PRETORIA, July 9 (Xinhua) - United States President George W. Bush strongly defended his Iraq policy here on Wednesday, saying he believed he had done the right thing in Iraq despite discoveries of inadequate information about the country's weapons programs.

　　Bush made the rem arks during a press conference with South African President Thabo Mbeki.

　　"There's no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein's regime was a threat to world peace; there is no doubt that I have done the right thing and ...the facts will show the world the truth," Bush said.

　　"There's going to be, you know, a lot of attempts to try to rewrite history," he added.

　　When a journalist raised the question of the false intelligence information about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium from Africa, Bush did not answer it directly. Instead, he defended his decision to go to war based on a larger body of information.

　　He said that since 1991, the United States has got the information about Saddam Hussein's intention to develop weapons of massive destruction.

　　The inadequate prewar intelligence in Iraq has caused many concerns among Democrats in Washington, many of whom said more was needed despite several investigations under way in Congress.

　　"This is a very important admission," Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle said Tuesday. "It's a recognition that we were provided faulty information. And I think it's all the more reason why a full investigation of all of the facts surrounding this situation be undertaken."

　　Senator Carl Levin, an important Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, echoed Daschle's view, saying, "The reported White House statements only reinforce the importance of an inquiry into why the information about the bogus uranium sales didn't reach the policymakers during 2002 and why, as late as the president's State of the Union address in January 2003, our policymakers were still using information which the intelligence community knew was almost certainly false."

　　On Sunday, Joseph Wilson, an envoy sent to Africa to investigate allegations about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, said the Bush administration manipulated his findings, possibly to strengthen the rationale for war.

　　The Bush administration used purported Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as a major justification for the war on Iraq, and the failure to find such weapons so far has generated intense criticism within the international community. End