11 October 2004	Monday	25 Shaban 1425

WASHINGTON, Oct 10: Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards on Sunday disputed a White House assertion that it was right to oust president Saddam Hussein even if he had no illegal weapons because he posed a future threat.

The North Carolina senator, appearing on several television news programs, said Saddam's intent to eventually gather weapons of mass destruction was one of dozens of such threats.

"There are lots of threats waiting to happen all over the world," Edwards said. "That doesn't mean that that justifies invading a country." Edwards was responding to US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who told "Fox News Sunday" that President George W. Bush was "absolutely" correct to have launched the invasion of Iraq even if they had known, as they do now, that the former Iraqi president had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

The two made their comments on one of the US Sunday talk shows, continuing a debate that has dominated the US presidential election in recent weeks. Saddam was "a major and growing threat to the international community" with "an insatiable appetite for weapons of mass destruction," Rice said.

"It was time to take care of him. And this president, post-September 11th, was not going to let threats continue to gather," she added. "It was only a matter of time." Bush says his Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, agreed in the spring of 2003 it was the right decision to invade Iraq but now says it was the wrong war. Kerry has said repeatedly that Bush rushed to war without a plan to win the peace.

Chief US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer made his final report to the US Congress last week, concluding Iraq had no unconventional weapons and undermining the administration's main rationale for going to war.

Edwards also noted that of the three countries singled out by Bush as part of an "axis of evil" and said, "you know, we invaded the one of those three that doesn't have nuclear weapons."

He predicted the situation in Iraq, where a violent insurgency has raged for more than a year since Saddam was driven from power, "and whether the president's going to level with people about that ... will drive the decision on November 2." -Reuters