Stansfield Turner, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1977 to 1981 under President Jimmy Carter, took aim at the Bush administration when interviewed for an article published Wednesday in USA Today.

Former CIA directors rarely criticize current presidents or CIA directors.

"There is no question in my mind (that policymakers) distorted the situation, either because they had bad intelligence or because they misinterpreted it," the retired admiral told the daily.

Turner does not believe CIA director George Tenet should resign, but advised him to be cautious because CIA directors "can be made the fall guy" by governments when policies based on intelligence go awry.

More than two months after the fall of Baghdad and the end of regime of Saddam Hussein, no chemical or biological weapons have been reported found in Iraq.

A key reason used by the United States and Britain to invade Iraq was to disarm Saddam of such weapons.

Bush has insisted for weeks that the weapons programs will be found, lashing out at critics he brands "revisionst historians."

Saddam "continually ignored the demands of the free world, so the United States and friends and allies acted," he said Monday.

"And this is for certain: Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States and our friends and allies," he added.

A group of former intelligence specialists, including former CIA analysts, on May 1 called on Bush to investigate the CIA and other spy agencies for failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The failure, said the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), constituted a "policy and intelligence fiasco of monstrous proportions."

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