WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Senator Robert Byrd -- a senior Democrat -- issued a scathing denunciation of White House military and diplomatic policy, particularly of the recently-concluded war in Iraq which he said may have been waged in violation of international law.

"The American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing international law, under false premises," Byrd said, in offering some of the most unvarnished criticism yet by Democrats of the US-led war on Iraq.

"Our costly and destructive bunker-busting attack on Iraq seems to have proven, in the main, precisely the opposite of what was the urgent reason to go in.

"This house of cards built of deceit will fall," said Byrd, a West Virginian and the most senior member of the US Senate, in comments delivered from the Senate floor.