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The US invasion of Iraq was the biggest act of deception committed against the interests of the American people and the nation. Let me explain in more detail why I consider it to have badly damaged America and its prestige.

It is one thing to claim that Iraq's former tyrannical ruler Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), but then to deliberately mislead the United Nations Security Council with falsified intelligence in order to garner global support for aggression against a sovereign nation state is yet quite another. It is known that Iraq had initially harboured ambitions to develop a nuclear program along with weapons of mass destruction but they never followed through.

However the Israelis scuttled such attempts early on in 1981 by destroying the French built nuclear reactor at Osirak and thereafter Saddam Hussein was only mainly able to develop and use bio-chemical warfare against his restless Kurdish foes in the North of Iraq, the massacre of Halabja still conjures vivid images of the savage act of brutality.

Thereafter when Saddam's Iraq was expelled from Kuwait by Allied forces in 1990-1991, heavy UN sanctions were levied upon his regime, to contain him and make it impossible for him to develop his biochemical and weapons of mass destruction programs. UN inspectors now having access, inspected facilities in Iraq and ensured that Saddam's regime was forced to co-operate with them. Now the Bush administration claimed Saddam played a game of "cat" and "mouse" with the inspectors only allowing access to safe sites and shifting detectable materials around the country in an effort to buy time and exhaust the UN effort at seeking compliance.

This may be partly true, as it is known that Saddam was ruthless in any respect and he banked on the fact that the Europeans were less hawkish and keen on seeking a diplomatic solution. However it was wrong for Bush to exploit this aspect as a justification for war or aggression against Iraq. Hans Blix, the lead UN inspector back then verified in the run up to the war (April 2003) in 2002 on several occasions that evidence was inconclusive and more time was needed for more intrusive and comprehensive inspections to take place. In blatant disregard for world opinion (massive anti-war demonstrations soared across the globe's capital cities), the UN resolutions and Chinese and Russian objections against the use of explicit "threat of war" as a measure of resolving the problem, the Bush administration had

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