US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice has said the US-led war in Iraq will turn out to be a "strategic achievement" for not only President George W. Bush but for the United States.

Interviewed on Fox news in Washington, Dr Rice said today she "would give anything" to revisit the issue of weapons of mass destruction, but said the 2003 invasion was still right even if the weapons were never found.

"I still believe that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is going to turn out to be a great strategic achievement, not just for the Bush administration, but for the United States of America," Dr Rice told Fox.

Instead of a repressive dictator who has sown instability, triggered wars and used weapons of mass destruction, "you now have a young democratic multi-ethnic Iraq", Dr Rice said.

She said she would liked to have had a better system for assessing intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Bush said in an interview last week that he came to office "unprepared for war" and that his "biggest regret" was the US "intelligence failure" on Iraq.

Dr Rice also suggested things could have been done better.

"If I had it to do over again, yes, I'd have the system in place that we have now, not the system that we had then," Dr Rice said, referring to a system of putting alternative views in "a crisper and clearer way".

But she said people worldwide suspected Saddam was hiding his weapons of mass destruction, as he had used them in the past.

"And so while it's fine to go back and say what might we have done differently, the truth of the matter is we don't have that luxury. And we didn't at the time," Dr Rice said.

She also defended the administration's actions during an interview with ABC television.

When asked if Dr Rice would still have pushed for the war in Iraq knowing what she knows now, she replied "You don't have that luxury".

"We were living in a post-9/11 world in which it was very clear that you shouldn't let threats multiple and collect without acting against them," Dr Rice said.