"We have not yet found the stockpiles of weapons that we thought were there," Bush said in a speech at the port of Charleston, South Carolina, in his clearest acknowledgment of problems with prewar intelligence on Iraqi weapons.

However, he said, "Knowing what I knew then and knowing what I know today, America did the right thing in Iraq."

Bush spoke shortly after CIA director George Tenet defended his agency's work despite prewar intelligence that inaccurately accused ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of maintaining stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

Those accusations were at the heart of Bush's case for going to war. Tenet said in a Washington speech that the intelligence community was neither "completely right nor completely wrong" about Iraq, and said analysts "never said there was an imminent threat."

Bush and other administration officials did say Iraq presented a grave and "gathering" threat.

But Bush said on Thursday he acted properly. "We had a choice -- either take the word of a madman or take action to defend the American people. Faced with that choice I will defend America every time."

Bush's speech to military personnel and others, in South Carolina, a state that had been crawling with Democratic presidential candidates ahead of last Tuesday's primary, was heavily laced with reelection campaign themes of the economy and national security.

He blasted critics of the war, saying, "If some politicians in Washington had their way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power."