Press TV. Listen here: http://presstv.ir/Default/embed/435081

The US war against Iraq from 2003 to 2011 was an “unprovoked invasion” carried out under the false pretense that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons, a political analyst in Virginia says.

“This was a completely bogus pretext for the invasion of a sovereign nation and this was really an act of old-fashioned imperial conquest by the United States,” said Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of AttacktheSystem.com.

“The criminal nature of this is obvious; this was certainly in violation of international law and the law of nations,” Preston told Press TV on Monday.

In March 2003, the US invaded Iraq in blatant violation of international law, over Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction,” but no such weapons were ever discovered in the country.

The US-led military invasion plunged Iraq into chaos, resulting in years of deadly violence and the rise of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda in Iraq, which was a precursor of Daesh (ISIL).

More than one million Iraqis were killed as a result of the lengthy occupation of the country, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.

The US war cost American taxpayers an estimated $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans.

“One of the effects of the war in Iraq has been the growth of these terrorist organizations such as ISIS; there wouldn’t be an ISIS today if there had not been the US invasion of Iraq in 2003,” Preston noted, using another acronym for ISIL.

“Not only was this invasion a war crime, not only was it illegal from the perspective of international law, not only was it done under false pretenses, but it also generated tremendously high cost in terms of casualties, in terms of wounded, in terms of financial costs,” he added.

Preston also stated that prominent American author and linguist Noam Chomsky was “absolutely correct” about his recent condemnation of Washington’s foreign policy in the Middle East.

During an interview with teleSUR on Monday, Chomsky called Washington’s 2003 invasion of Iraq “the worst crime of this century.”

“What right do we have to kill somebody in some other country who we don’t like,” Chomsky asserted.

The renowned scholar and intellectual said, “Suppose it had worked… it’s still a major crime, why do we have the right to invade another country?”