"I want the American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts," Bush told reporters at the White House.

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain has broken party ranks to join Democratic demands for an independent probe into how US intelligence got it wrong given the failure by searchers to find weapons of mass destruction Bush insisted were in Iraq.

CNN reported that Vice President Dick Cheney called congressional leaders about Iraq on Friday and the White House is exploring a range of options on the subject of an investigation related to the weapons.

"McCain is the guiding light on this," said a Republican insider who predicted that the Bush administration may shift its view and accept an investigation.

"Clearly, this has been a bad hair week for the administration," the source said, while noting that a probe does carry plenty of risks for the administration in an election year.

The source noted that it was pressure from McCain that helped to persuade the administration to accept an independent commission to study the events leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Meanwhile, the president gave no public sign yet he planned to yield to the demands for a probe, though he did not completely shut the door on the idea. Instead, Bush stuck to a position that the US government will compare in an internal CIA probe the pre-war intelligence with what the weapons hunters have found.

"I want to be able to compare what the Iraq Survey Group has found with what we thought prior to going into Iraq," Bush said when asked if he would support an independent probe.

Condoleeza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, on Thursday acknowledged that there may have been some flaws in the intelligence.