For more than a year after 9/11, the Bush administration made similar comments about Hussein's nuclear ambitions, and also his ties with terrorism.
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," Vice President Dick Cheney said in August 2002.
"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice said on CNN in September 2002.
These statements, and others made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, turned out to be based on faulty intelligence.
Some disagreed with the Bush administration's intelligence assessments, including former Commander of US Central Command Gen. Anthony Zinni, and even argued that the administration lied about Hussein's nuclear ambitions and links to terrorism.