WASHINGTON -- In the wake of a Senate report that ripped intelligence in prewar Iraq, President George W. Bush on Monday defended his decision to invade Iraq.

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Bush's remarks came three days after a Senate panel harshly criticized the intelligence behind his charges that Saddam was amassing dangerous arms. The report found that the key assertions made by the Bush administration the run-up to war were wrong and based on false or overstated CIA analyses. (More About Senate Report.)

Even as he conceded that investigators had not found the weapons of mass destruction that he had warned the country possessed, the president said allowing Iraq to possibly transfer weapons capability to terrorists was not a risk he was willing to take.

"We removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after Sept. 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take," Bush said.

On Monday, Vice President Dick Cheney accused his Democratic rivals of rewriting history.

Cheney, on a re-election campaign swing through Pennsylvania, told a fund-raiser that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq rid the world of a "gathering threat" to peace and security.

He also accused Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and his running mate John Edwards of hypocrisy in criticizing the administration's war policies.

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Both had seen the same prewar intelligence on Iraq that Bush saw and both of them supported the decision to go to war, Cheney said.

Speaking during a visit to the Oak Ridge lab in Tennessee, Bush viewed hardware that was shipped to the lab in March as part of an agreement with Moammar Gadhafi to end his country's nuclear weapons program.

Rogue nations that have aided terrorists got a clear signal from the Iraq war -- pursuing nuclear weapons can "carry serious consequences," he said, alluding to Libya.

Gadhafi chose "the wise course" last year and decided to abandon his country's program, he said.