Twenty years on, John Bolton is still defending the US’s Iraq War | The Iraq War: 20 years on

‘It wasn’t flawed intelligence’ that led to the war, says Bolton, a key proponent of the US invasion.

John Bolton was a senior adviser to United States President George W Bush on matters of arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament in the lead-up to the US invasion of Iraq, 20 years ago.

Bolton, one of the strongest proponents for the war, repeatedly made the case that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a threat not just to the United States but also to the wider world, pushing and amplifying claims about weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda.

But were these claims just pretexts used to forward the longtime objective of some in the Bush administration to overthrow Saddam? And how much dissenting evidence was ignored in the run-up to the war?

On UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill speaks to the Bush-era undersecretary of state for arms control and international affairs and later US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.