Ex-UN Inspector Ritter: Bush Based War on 'A Lie'

Time has shown that the United Nations did a good job disarming Iraq while President Bush went to war based on "a lie," former U.N. arms inspector Scott Ritter said on Monday.

"The inspectors went in, got good cooperation, got immediate access to the sites they needed to get to, and they found nothing -- nothing related to weapons of mass destruction programs," said Ritter, a former U.S. Marine and senior weapons inspector turned anti-war activist.

"And yet, we heard over and over again that 'The president knows that these weapons exist, the president knows that this is a threat that can only be responded to by the United States acting unilaterally,' because the United Nations was unable or unwilling to complete the (disarmament) task mandated by the Security Council," he told reporters at U.N. headquarters.

"The entire case the Bush administration made against Iraq is a lie," he said.

"The policy of the United States toward Iraq was not disarmament. It has always been regime removal -- eliminating Saddam Hussein from power. It's been the stated policy of the United States since 1991," he said.