WASHINGTON, Oct 10: US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Sunday defiantly defended the invasion of Iraq, saying the United States would have taken the same decision even if Washington had known that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.

"He was someone who had an insatiable appetite for weapons of mass destruction. He had the means, he had the intent, he had the money to do it," Rice told the "Fox News Sunday" television programme.

"You were never going to break the link between Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. "And now we know that, had we waited, he would have gotten out of the sanctions, he would have undermined them by both trying to pay off people on the Security Council and doing what he could to keep his expertise in place," Rice said. -AFP