Washington, July 09: The United States did not go to war with Iraq because of new evidence of Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said today. The US-led forces "did not act in Iraq because we have discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass murder," Rumsfeld told a senate subcommittee.
"We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light through the prism of our experience on September 11," he said, referring to the 2001 terror attacks in the United States that killed some 3,000 people.
"That experience changed our appreciation of (the) vulnerability the US faces from terrorist states and terrorist networks armed with powerful weapons," he added.
Rumsfeld said that Washington did not choose to go to war - the decision was up to Saddam Hussein.
Before the war officials from the Bush administration on several occasions said that military force was needed against the regime of Saddam Hussein because Iraq's weapons of massive destruction threatened the security of the United States and its allies. Bureau Report