Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards said Sunday that trusting intelligence reports claiming Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction was one of the biggest errors of his career. He made the admission on ABC's "This Week."
The concession came days after the top US weapons inspector in Iraq concluded that Saddam's government had held no nuclear, biological, or chemical arsenal, undercutting the central rationale the Bush administration used to launch the war.
Edwards and presidential nominee John Kerry both voted in 2002 to authorize the invasion. Edwards defended that vote as appropriate but placed responsibility for the war's course on President George W. Bush, arguing that Congress had been supplied with faulty intelligence.
Kerry's campaign had maintained that Bush moved to war prematurely, denying the United Nations a chance to verify whether Iraq held banned weapons. Edwards endorsed that criticism on Sunday.
At a presidential debate two days earlier, Bush had been asked to name his three biggest mistakes. He declined to identify any, saying the decision to go to war in Iraq was correct.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in October 2004, in its own words.