The former UN chief weapons inspector in Iraq and card-carrying Republican is barnstorming America with a blunt message: George W. Bush's war on Iraq was waged on a 'bodyguard of lies.'

'We need regime change, and we need it quick,' Ritter told a gathering of peace activists in New Jersey on Sunday. 'George W. Bush does not have the right…to represent the American people, if he told a lie. And he told a whopper.'

That whopper, said Ritter, was claiming that the US government had evidence that Saddam Hussein was hiding massive amounts of weapons of mass destruction and that was why Iraq must be invaded. The facts, he said, are that 'the inspections worked. The United Nations did disarm Iraq.'

'I want the president impeached because he lied to the Congress of the United States,' Ritter said. 'He may well go out and tell another lie about weapons of mass destruction' being found amid the rubble in Iraq. But, Ritter said, any scheme to plant evidence would run afoul of professional soldiers like those he served with in Gulf War I. 'I can tell you, my fellow officers won’t sustain that lie.'

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