Iraq scientist risked his life to prevent unnecessary war between the United States and Iraq, but to no avail.

When Saad Tawfiq watched then-US Secretary of state Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations on February 5, 2003, he shed bitter tears as he realized he had risked his life and those of his loved ones for nothing. As one of Saddam Hussein's most gifted engineers, Tawfiq knew that the Iraqi dictator had shut down his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs in 1995 - and he had told his handlers in US intelligence just that.

And yet here was Powell - Tawfiq's television was able to receive international news through a link pirated from Saddam's spies next door - waving a vial of white powder and telling the UN Security Council a story about Iraqi germ labs.

"When I saw Colin Powell, I started crying - immediately. I knew I had tried and lost," Tawfiq told AFP five years later in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

Now in his 50s, a round-faced man with a small moustache and lively eyes behind delicate spectacles, Tawfiq described how the CIA set up an elaborate operation to recruit Iraqi weapons scientists and then ignored the results.

The next time you hear any candidate, Republican or Democrat, saying that the whole world believed Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program or WMD's you remember Saad Tawfiq.

The administration KNEW there was no reason to invade Iraq, and I find it hard to believe that a Senator who served on the Committee on Armed Services in 2003 would not have had access to this information. Unlesss they did not want to know.