Monday, June 20, 2005; Posted: 12:19 p.m. EDT (16:19 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN)

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Cheney was among the Bush administration's most forceful advocates of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Bush, Cheney and other top officials said war was necessary because Iraq was maintaining illicit stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and concealing a nuclear weapons program from U.N. weapons inspectors and could have provided those weapons to terrorists.