New Delhi, Oct 31 (IANS) Defending the war on Iraq that created much hostility against the US in the Muslim world, former US president George W. Bush Saturday said the world was “much better off without Saddam Hussein” and asked Muslims not to allow terrorists to hijack their religion.
“The world is much better off without Saddam Hussein. There is no question about that. Hussein was a threat to the US,” Bush said here at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.

He was responding to a question on whether he regretted his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 on grounds that Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.

“He was a brutal dictator. He used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. He was not letting weapon inspectors in,” he said.

“Regime change in Iraq was the official policy of the US much before I became the president,” Bush said candidly, adding that as president he was forced to take the tough decision to invade Iraq for the cause of freeing Iraqi people from brutal tyranny.

Responding to a question about his unpopularity in the Muslim world, Bush said he would appeal to Muslims not to let “the propagandists hijack their religion to murder innocent people”.

“Please don’t let the propagandists tell the people that George Bush and America hate you,” Bush said.

“I hate people who hijack a great religion to murder innocent people,” he said.

Bush had famously said that despite having the world’s second largest Muslim population, not a single Indian Muslim had joined the Al Qaeda.