Former US presidential candidate senator George McGovern called the conflict in Iraq a "needless and mistaken" war.
And he accused the administration of President George W. Bush of misleading the American people in pursuing the war.
"We are jeopardizing the very liberties we profess to be fighting to save in these costly and, in many respects, self-defeating wars," McGovern, 83, said on Saturday at a conference of Vietnam War draft dodgers and resisters held in this British Columbia Interior community over the past week. "I think it jeopardizes the quality of our lives and the standing of America in the world."
McGovern was a major opponent of the Vietnam War, the draft for which many of the delegates to the conference fled to Canada to avoid.
"We haven't learned as much as we should from the lessons of the past," he said.
McGovern, the Democratic candidate for president against Richard Nixon in 1972, stressed there are wars worth fighting. A World War II bomber pilot, McGovern said he is a supporter of the US military.
"I support our troops in that I don't want them involved in needless and mistaken wars," he said.
He said the Iraq conflict is heading the same way as the Vietnam War.
"This time we're bogged down in the Arabian desert in a country that is no threat to the United States, that had no weapons of mass destruction," McGovern said.
Further, he said, Iraq had no connection whatsoever to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York's Word Trade Center.
But, he said most Americans believe the assertions from the White House that Iraq was involved in those attacks.
McGovern was first elected to the Senate in 1962 and re-elected in 1968 and 1974. He served UN appointments under presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
He left the Senate in 1980 and taught at several institutions.
He has received numerous awards and honorary degrees, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the US' highest civilian honor, in 2000.
Also at the conference was Jeffrey House, a draft dodger turned Canadian lawyer who represents American soldiers seeking asylum in Canada.
House called the Iraq war "a gigantic crime."
Many of the speakers encouraged Canada to remain a haven for those who choose not to fight in Iraq.
RSS