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Was Saddam a danger to the world? No, says Blix
So why did Bush and Blair take us to war? Robert Fox on Hans Blix’s powerful testimony to Chilcot
The former head of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq has landed some heavy body blows against Tony Blair’s reasons for taking Britain to war in Iraq on the basis that Saddam Hussein was ready to deploy weapons of mass destruction.
"I take the firm view this was an illegal war," Dr Blix, a renowned international lawyer and former Swedish foreign minister, told the Chilcot Inquiry in London yesterday.
From the end of 2002 to March 2003 his team of weapons inspectors found no traces in Iraq of chemical and biological weapons that could be a serious threat to the outside world; most had been destroyed after the Desert Storm war of 1991.
They did find some traces of old warheads that could carry both chemical and biological warheads. However, despite carrying out six inspections a day, and visiting a total of 700 sites, they found almost nothing that could be deemed "a major breech" of UN resolutions - though both President Bush and Prime Minister Blair claimed the contrary.
Of these 700 sites, 30 had been pointed out to the Blix team as major weapons establishments by the CIA and MI6 – yet no serious weaponry was found there.
Dr Blix confirmed that Saddam Hussein had abandoned his nuclear programmes after the war in 1991 – and by the winter of 2002 – months before American and British forces crossed into Iraq. Both Washington and London knew this.
One of his most damning criticisms of both the Bush and Blair governments was that once Blix’s UN inspectors were let back into Iraq in November 2002, much of the intelligence on which the allies had been building the case against Saddam was shown to be weak or wrong. Yet, said Blix, no action was taken to remedy this.
In nearly three hours of testimony, Hans Blix gave a fascinating word picture of the war factions in the British and American governments. It was a testosterone-driven team seemingly bent on action – or "high on military" as he colourfully put it. "Were they (the Iraqis) a danger?" he asked rhetorically. "No they were not – they were prostrate. So what we got from this was anarchy, and it was an anarchy worse than tyranny."
Blix stated several times yesterday that he thought that Tony Blair had been "sincere." He had hoped always to get full backing from the UN, but in the end had been "taken prisoner on the American train" to military action. He said that the case put forward by the Blair government was based on "a very constrained legal explanation... You see how Lord Goldsmith [Blair’s Attorney-General] wriggled about and how he, himself, very much doubted it was adequate."
Dr Blix was long the bête noir of the Bush neo-cons, and Vice President Cheney tried to get him sacked several times. The claim by Blair that Blix’s inspectors "had failed!" was shown to be patently untrue by Dr Blix.
He said such inspection teams would be vital in future – but warned that governments like Britain and America should not send their intelligence agents, spies, to join them, as the heavy intelligence presence had undermined the UN inspectors in Iraq in the 1990s.
This is the latest powerful piece of testimony to the Chilcot inquiry that has called into question both the behaviour and explanation of the Blair government for taking to Britain to war in Iraq in 2003.
It ranks alongside that of Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the Foreign Office lawyer who resigned in protest, the claims by the veteran diplomat Carne Ross that vital FO information and documents have been deliberately withheld, and last week’s devastating critique by Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller.
The former MI5 head said that the intelligence was weak to negligible and that the action in Iraq had made the threat of attacks by radicalised Muslims in Britain "overwhelming".
At times during yesterday’s hearings, three of the Chilcot panel sounded like Tony Blair’s apologists as they tried to mount counter-arguments to Dr Blix. But the game is up. The committee must now know that they have to explain why Tony Blair went to war on a whim and a somewhat flaky vision of the world – as evident in the almost hysterical testimony Blair himself gave to the inquiry in January.
More to the point, the Chilcot committee has to explain why those in charge of our destiny here in Britain - in parliament, in the ministries, in the law courts and the military - allowed him to do it almost without question. ·
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Dr. Blix is far above the warmongers who ignored him. A sad pity is that his testimony will again be ignored by those in power which will lower the value of Chilcot but there is not a chance that historians will raise a finger against the shining beacon that Dr. Blix was. He reminded me of UN Secretary General Perez de Cuella before the sinking of the Belgrano for which Thatcher should be imprisoned.
EVERYONE at the time knew Saddam had WMD at the time. EVERYONE!! Saddam liked to strut around like he had them. The number of people who thought he did not have WMD at the time can fill a small van. Saddam was a danger to the world. A large part of the world's supply of oil was on his doorstep. If he took that over or destroyed those oil facilities, it would have taken the world 10 years to recover economically. Bush and Blair did the right thing.
Ah Hans Brix! Saddly I fear he is right. The Arab world is ruled with a feudal system and Saddam Hussein was no different.
Saddam Hussein's crime was that he stuck two fingers up at the US, did not back down all the time allowing his Generals to free hand with their own ideologies.
Hutton 'inquiry' caveat- 'the full detailed postmortem medical report (on Dr Kelly) should not be published for 70 years' !!!!!!!
So whats new about this Chilcott 'inquiry' - and we are harping on about Mugabe for Gods sake. What is really needed is an inquiry about whether the CIA paid for Blairs student banger during his college days ?!
Hans Blix can sleep well at night, no doubt. He must be commended for his frank disclosure to the Chilcot commission, confirming what those of us unbiased and incisive mortals knew all along. If we were to kill all the truly 'evil' world leaders (using which yardstick?) Bush and Blair would be underground by now
They singly and jointly are responsible for murdering at least ten times the people allegedly killed by Saddam Hussein with their illegal unjustified wars.
If there was no oil in Iraq
there would not have been a war
same goes for Afghanistan
History shows us that counties that have no values that can be taken from them are disinterested to empires
Hans Blix is a hypocrite.
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And his attacks on the greatest president in modern history, George W. Bush, are purely politically motivated. Blix is a socialist, and can't stand the american right.
As late as early 2003 Blix reported that there was "no convincing evidence" that Iraq's stocks of anthrax had been destroyed, that there was "strong evidence" that Iraq produced more anthrax than it had admitted, and that "at least some of this was retained".Â
Blix also said that Iraq possesed 650 kilos of "bacterial growth media", enough to make "5.000 liters of concentrated anthrax", and there were 6500 chemical bombs that Iraq admitted producing but whose whereabouts was unknown.
Another quote from Hans Blix, this one from january 2003: "Iraq appears not to have come to an genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament that was demanded of it"
These quotes from Blix are from Karl Roves great new book "Courage and consequence".
Blix was absolutely certain about Iraq still having WMD before the war, and was himself, knowingly or unknowingly building the case for invading Iraq. There was no way that a responsible president, like George W. Bush, could ignore Blix's comments, or all the information from international intelligence agencies(including those of Germany and France) which all seem to agree about Saddam's massive WMD capabilities. Bush made the right decision, even with the wrong information. Saddam Hussein was a genocidal massmurdering psychopath that had to be removed from power, no matter if he had WMD's or not.
Blix, being an deeply committed anti-war activist, as all socialists become when they see an opportunity to criticise the U.S., of course turned 180 degrees as soon as he realised that Bush & co had decided to go to war, and started coming with mindless critique of the administration even though it(his criticism) regularily contradicted his own words from before the invasion.Â
Blix has made a carrier out of his hypocricy, out of his unfair and incorrect attacks on George W. Bush and his administration for a war that was based on incorrect information like that which Blix himself had provided.
The whole world should be eternally thankful to president George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, the U.S. Army and all those who worked to remove one of the worst and most barbaric dictators of this planet from power, and certainly not pay attention to hypocrites like Hans Blix.Â
NeoCeon
Mr. Harris appears to be confused. Hans Blix looked where UK and US intelligence told him to look. He found nothing. Subsequent to the Iraq war of 2003, UK and US intelligence was not found to be any better. Just because a lot of people thought that President Hussein had WMD didn't make it so.
@ Alex Harris
"Saddam buried his WMD components all over Iraq". And why, after all this time can we not find them? We cannot find them because they did not exist, except in Bush/Blair's wet dreams.
Of course Blix was right all along - only an imbecile would believe Bush and Blair's war was based on anything other than vanity, stupidity and a desire for posterity to view them as warrior leaders. Both are charlatans and profound failures - and we will be paying the bill for their folly for a long time.
I do not understand why 'the Chilcot committee has to explain why those in charge of our destiny here in Britain - in parliament, in the ministries, in the law courts and the military - allowed him to do it almost without question.'
Those who want to know why wars happen, please read the book-War is Racket (free to download). Most of the politicians of all parties are controlled by big business and their profit motivation drive the agenda. Blair and most other politicians are just actors set out on the stage to work out what benefits the people who benefit from war. You get us the desired war, poor peoples' children get killed, we make billions, you get your promised reward. Please take a look at what Blair has been making after his retirement. Do you need any further explanation?
Spent a lot of time in Iraq then, Alex? More than Blix and his expert team? No? Thought not. Just because they didn't come out with the answers that the war-mongers wanted doesn't mean he failed: it means he didn't find any evidence despite years searching and exploring. Oh, hang on - perhaps there weren't any WMDs, or doesn't that fit with the plan to oust Hussein? Surely some would have been found by now, if not used, if they were so conveniently 'buried'? You seem to know all about it - where are they? Clinton was being briefed by the same neo-con mindset as egged on Dubya - the arguments were based on unreliable information then, and despite his exhaustive investigations Blix found nothing to back up their arguments. That makes the 'intelligence' a failure - not Blix.
It was not just Blix who failed to find WMD, the later teams led by the US not only drew a blank, but also concluded that Saddam had long abandoned his WMD programme. The Senate Intelligence Committee found in June 2008 that the Bush administration "misrepresented the intelligence and the threat from Iraq" and â??In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.â??
This seems to support Dr. Blix's evidence to the Chilcot inquiry. I hope Chilcot et al don't duck the conclusions that the evidence they have heard demands, but they do appear to be leaning in that direction.
Slowly, slowly the truth is wriggling free, a truth that many of us knew years ago, but could do little to quell the mesmeric lies of Blair and the blatant lies of Bush.
Blix repeats that he thought Blair â??sincereâ?? and therein lies a fundamental cause of much of Britainâ??s woes â?? Blair was the arch-deceiver! He took-in all of his cabinet colleagues and the whole of his New Labour, third-way spoof was just that. This is a massive condemnation of his cabinet, of the Labour Hierarchy, of the trade union movement that sustained him in power, and of Parliament who went along with his various escapades in and around the Middle-East in support of his American neo-con pals.
I must say that the present candidates for leadership of the Labour rump are too contaminated by New Labour and its slavish adherence to Atlanticism (and Israel!) to give any hope for any radical change.
"Saddam died for no reason"??? Are you sure Maja? Perhaps not the reasons assumed, but surely no one can regret his passing. He was truly evil.
Do you have evidence Alex? Blix is an "expert in fertilizwr"...on the same level, it takes one to know one.
Of course Mr. Alex Harris would denigrate Blix's testimony : he is desperately trying to defend the Bush/Blair stance with his head firmly stuck in the ground.
Of course Mr Blix blames everyone else for his team's failures.
Saddam buried his WMD program components all over Iraq. That Blix could not find them is a testimony to his team's ineffectiveness. Bill Clinton was indeed prescient. He ordered the bombing of Iraq in December of 1998 because he too feared the very real threat of a reconstituted Iraqi WMD program. He noted that "The international community had good reason to set this requirement. Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: He has used them. Not once, but repeatedly..."
Next Blix will tell us that the WMD program components- tons of them- were buried because they were excellent fertilizer. He ought to know of course. Clearly, he is an expert in fertilizer.
Looks like Saddam has died for no reason. "that's murder", who is the murderer here, who is to be held accountable, the state or individuals?(i.e. USA & UK, or Blair and Bush)?