Rice says report on Saddam validates move to wage war

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National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that the United Nations would have backed the war against Iraq had it known about newly discovered abuses by Saddam Hussein.

Miss Rice said a report to Congress last week by David Kay of the Iraq Survey Group showed several instances of Saddam lying about his weapons programs to a team of U.N. inspectors led by Hans Blix. The team's failure to ferret out specific, definitive evidence of weapons caused the United Nations to balk at the prospect of war last year, she said.

"Had any one of these examples been discovered last winter, the Security Council would have had to meet," Miss Rice said. "And I believe that they would have had no choice but to take exactly the course that President Bush followed."

As part of a White House effort to gain support for Iraq's reconstruction, Miss Rice highlighted further misdeeds by the Saddam regime.

"Right up until the end, Saddam Hussein continued to torture and oppress his people," she said in a speech to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. "Right up until the end, Saddam Hussein lied to the Security Council.

"And let there be no mistake, right up to the end, Saddam Hussein continued to harbor ambitions to threaten the world with weapons of mass destruction and to hide his illegal weapons activities," she added.

Frustrated by the media's focus on setbacks in postwar Iraq, the administration is rolling out a more positive message blitz that continues with speeches today by Mr. Bush and tomorrow by Vice President Dick Cheney. One of the goals is to curb second-guessing of the president's decision to oust Saddam.

The effort to portray Mr. Kay's report as vindication of the president's decision to wage war did not impress the media, which continue to emphasize U.S. military casualties in Iraq.

"Can you make the bad there go away just by talking up the good?" a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan at a briefing yesterday.