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Is the US acting as a sole superpower by snubbing UN? Post your views

Washington: Looking for a way to divert attention from the non-discovery of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq, the US has sought to link "existing" evidence that the Saddam Hussein regime possessed WMDs with the September 11 terrorist attacks.

"The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass murder. We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light, through the prism of our experience on September 11," US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 9.

"On that day, we saw thousands of innocent men, women and children killed by terrorists, and that experience changed our appreciation of our vulnerability and the risks the US faces from terrorist states and terrorist networks armed with powerful weapons," he said.

The objective in the global war on terror was to prevent another attack like September 11 or a biological, nuclear or chemical attack that would be worse, Rumsfeld said.

"We can say with confidence that the world is a better place today because the United States led a coalition of forces into action in Iraq," he said.

On the recent attacks on coalition forces in Iraq, Rumsfeld dismissed the "widely-held impression" that Hussein's loyalists were operating freely throughout the country.

"That is clearly not the case. While there have been isolated incidents in other parts of the country, most of the recent attacks have been concentrated in Baghdad and in the three corridors that reach to the West, the North and East out of the Iraqi capital," he said.

PTI