Hans Blix's utter dishonesty

In a March 20 column in The Guardian, Hans Blix, head of UN inspections in Iraq in 2003, shares several falsehoods. First, he claims, "The contract that George Bush held up before Congress to show that Iraq was purchasing uranium oxide was proved to be a forgery." Bush never held up a contract before Congress. In any case, the intelligence that indicated that Saddam had attempted to purchase yellow cake was not base on a forged contract. As FactCheck.org noted in 2004, "Ironically, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who later called Bush’s 16 words a “lie”, supplied information that the Central Intelligence Agency took as confirmation that Iraq may indeed have been seeking uranium from Niger. " In addition, "Both the US and British investigations make clear that some forged Italian documents, exposed as fakes soon after Bush spoke, were not the basis for the British intelligence Bush cited, or the CIA's conclusion that Iraq was trying to get uranium."

Blix also claims, "Nor could they succeed in the declared aim to eliminate al-Qaida operators, because they were not in Iraq." This is also a falsehood, Ansar al-Islam, an al Qaeda affiliate, began its operations in Iraq PRIOR to the invasion.

However, the most dishonest aspect of Blix's column in suggesting that he and his inspectors gave Iraq a clean bill of health prior to the invasion. Nothing could be further from the truth.

On March 18, 2003, British Prime Minister Tony Blair addressed the House of Commons and offered these words:

On 7 March, the inspectors published a remarkable document. It is 173 pages long, and details all the unanswered questions about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. It lists 29 different areas in which the inspectors have been unable to obtain information. On VX, for example, it says: “Documentation available to UNMOVIC suggests that Iraq at least had had far reaching plans to weaponise VX”. On mustard gas, it says: “Mustard constituted an important part . . . of Iraq’s CW arsenal . . . 550 mustard filled shells and up to 450 mustard filled aerial bombs unaccounted for . . . additional uncertainty” with respect to over 6,500 aerial bombs, “corresponding to approximately 1,000 tonnes of agent, predominantly mustard.” On biological weapons, the inspectors’ report states: “Based on unaccounted for growth media, Iraq’s potential production of anthrax could have been in the range of about 15,000 to 25,000 litres . . . Based on all the available evidence, the strong presumption is that about 10,000 litres of anthrax was not destroyed and may still exist.”

On that basis, I simply say to the House that, had we meant what we said in resolution 1441, the Security Council should have convened and condemned Iraq as in material breach. What is perfectly clear is that Saddam is playing the same old games in the same old way. Yes, there are minor concessions, but there has been no fundamental change of heart or mind.

It’s important to note that Saddam played “the same old games” between 1991 and 1998. After seven years of inspections, UNSCOM personnel left Iraq after the Iraqis stopped cooperating with UNSCOM. Prior to leaving Iraq, however, Richard Butler, head of the U.N. weapons inspection commission, said Iraq had enough biological weapons to “blow away Tel Aviv.”

Now, if inspectors were uncertain about Saddam’s WMD programs after being in Iraq for seven years, does anyone seriously believe Hans Blix and his team could have found out the truth after just a couple of months? After reviewing Hans Blix’s book, Disarming Iraq, Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek International described the lack of cooperation Saddam provided prior to the invasion:

More revealing are Blix’s difficulties with the Iraqis. Time and again he and his colleague Mohamed ElBaradei tried to explain to the Iraqis that they needed to cooperate for the inspections to confirm what they claimed—that they had no weapons of mass destruction. After repeated requests to talk to Saddam Hussein, which were turned down, Blix and ElBaradei met with the Iraqi vice president (a powerless Hussein stooge). At that meeting, ElBaradei sternly explained that it was ‘‘incomprehensible’’ that Iraq had not taken the steps the United Nations had demanded. There was no response….It was behavior like this that led Blix and many others to assume that the Iraqis were not coming clean because they had something to hide.

Zakaria’s review also mentioned one aspect of Blix’s past with Iraq that most of the media have ignored:

From the mid-1970’s through the early 90’s, Iraq continuously, persistently and ambitiously sought nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. All Western intelligence services underestimated the extent of these efforts. International agencies, chiefly the International Atomic Energy Agency, headed by Hans Blix, actually gave Iraq a clean bill of health during these decades. As a result, everyone, including Blix, was wary of Iraq’s declarations that it had destroyed its old stockpiles and wasn’t building new ones.

If Iraq had been able to fool intelligence services and intelligence agencies during those decades, why would anyone have any confidence in Blix and his inspectors in 2003? As Kenneth Pollack noted in The Threatening Storm, “[I]f faced with the threat of imminent invasion, Iraq would probably go along with a new inspection regime for some period of time, just to forestall the invasion and buy time in the expectation that the United States would eventually become distracted by other events, allowing Iraq to start cheating again. Pursuing the inspections route is a dead-end street.”