US vice president attacks Iraq war critics

US Vice President Dick Cheney has attacked critics of the war in Iraq, accusing them of ignoring years of intelligence that proved Saddam Hussein was a danger to America.

In a rare public appearance, he told a conservative think tank in Washington that the warnings “could hardly be more blunt or disturbing”.

“To shrug off such a warning would have been irresponsible in the extreme. And so President Bush faced that information and acted to remove the danger.”

He said a majority of America’s intelligence agencies agreed that “all key aspects – the production and weaponisation – of Iraq’s offensive biological weapons programme are active, and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the (1991) Gulf War.”

“Knowing these things, how could we have allowed that threat to stand? These judgments were not lightly arrived at, and all who were aware of them bore a heavy responsibility for the security of America.

“When the decision fell to him, President Bush was not willing to place the future of our security and the lives of our citizens at the mercy of Saddam Hussein,” Cheney said.

He said his boss had exhausted all courses of action before leading the nation to war and said critics are trying to “rewrite history”.

“If we had not acted, Saddam Hussein and his sons would still be in power.

“If we had not acted, the torture chambers would still be in operation, the prison cells for children would still be filled, the mass graves would still be undiscovered, the terror network would still enjoy the support and the protection of the regime, Iraq would still be making payments to the families of suicide bombers attacking Israel, and Saddam Hussein would still control vast wealth to spend on his chemical, biological and nuclear ambitions.”