- Aug 20, 2000
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Was titled, What's with Hans Blix's new stance on Iraq? Wasn't getting any replies, so the title was jazzed up to better fit in with the mindsets of this forum. 
How have Hans Blix, the late David Kelly and other UN weapons inspectors become the darlings of the anti-war movement when they were central to the case for waging war on Iraq?
The UN inspectors didn't provide an alternative to war; they laid the ground for war. From 1998, when the first lot of inspectors left Iraq, to the eve of Gulf War II in 2003, inspectors raised suspicion after suspicion about the Ba'athists, describing them as 'bastards' and 'moral lepers' in charge of a 'terribly dangerous rogue state', and accusing them of trying to develop the Plague, anthrax bombs, smallpox, other viral programmes and, in the words of one author, 'God knows what else' (2).
The period between 1998, when UNSCOM officials left Iraq as then US President Bill Clinton and UK prime minister Tony Blair launched their bombing campaign Operation Desert Fox, and 2002, when under Blix the inspectors returned, is referred to in weapons inspection circles as the 'dark years'. During this time the inspectors, bitter at having to leave Iraq, tried desperately to convince the world that Saddam was still a threat that needed to be neutered. They gave public speeches and contributed to books and newspaper articles on Iraq's alleged weapons programmes. Some of them helped Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg with their book Plague Wars: A True Story of Biological Warfare, first published in 1999 and republished in 2000. That book describes Iraq as 'one of the most dangerous rogue states in the world today', and as the possible site of the 'first biological war of the millennium'. Iraq is an 'immediate danger', it declared (4).
The final nail in Iraq's coffin was provided by Hans Blix. Today he takes an 'I told you so' approach to Bush and Blair, contrasting his own rational approach to Iraq's alleged WMD with America and Britain's hysterical warmongering, and declaring that Saddam got shot of his WMD 10 years ago. He's changed his tune. At the end of January 2003, six weeks before Bush and Blair launched their war, Blix said no such thing about Iraq having no WMD. Instead, like other weapons inspectors before him, he raised suspicions and, in the words of one report, 'buttressed' the pro-war campaign (11).
In his speech to the UN Security Council on 27 January 2003, Blix asked awkward 'questions that need to be answered'. On chemical weapons he raised the problem that: 'Some 6,500 chemical bombs containing 1,000 tons of chemical agents and "several thousand" chemical rocket warheads are unaccounted for.... Inspectors found a "laboratory quantity" of thiodiglycol, a precursor of mustard gas.... Iraq has prepared equipment at a chemical plant previously destroyed by the UN....' On biological weapons he said: 'Iraq has declared that it produced about 8,500 litres of [anthrax], which it states it unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991. But Iraq has provided little evidence for this production and no convincing evidence for its destruction.' He also warned, ominously, that Iraq's anthrax 'might still exist' (12).
Indeed, Blix approached the inspections with the attitude that if he and his team didn't find WMD that still wouldn't be evidence that said WMD did not exist. Before setting off to inspect Iraq, he told a reporter that 'not seeing something, not seeing an indication of something, does not lead automatically to the conclusion that there is nothing' (13).
(2) (4) Plague Wars: A True Story of Biological Warfare, Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg, Pan Books, 1999
(11) The damning of Saddam, Robin Gedye, Toby Harnden in Washington and Toby Helm, Daily Telegraph, 28 January 2003
(12) An update on inspection, Hans Blix, United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, 27 January 2004
(13) The anthrax hunter, Julian Borger, Guardian, 10 April 2002
Edit: Forgot that FuseTalk uses the opposite link code of every other forum out there.
How have Hans Blix, the late David Kelly and other UN weapons inspectors become the darlings of the anti-war movement when they were central to the case for waging war on Iraq?
The UN inspectors didn't provide an alternative to war; they laid the ground for war. From 1998, when the first lot of inspectors left Iraq, to the eve of Gulf War II in 2003, inspectors raised suspicion after suspicion about the Ba'athists, describing them as 'bastards' and 'moral lepers' in charge of a 'terribly dangerous rogue state', and accusing them of trying to develop the Plague, anthrax bombs, smallpox, other viral programmes and, in the words of one author, 'God knows what else' (2).
The period between 1998, when UNSCOM officials left Iraq as then US President Bill Clinton and UK prime minister Tony Blair launched their bombing campaign Operation Desert Fox, and 2002, when under Blix the inspectors returned, is referred to in weapons inspection circles as the 'dark years'. During this time the inspectors, bitter at having to leave Iraq, tried desperately to convince the world that Saddam was still a threat that needed to be neutered. They gave public speeches and contributed to books and newspaper articles on Iraq's alleged weapons programmes. Some of them helped Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg with their book Plague Wars: A True Story of Biological Warfare, first published in 1999 and republished in 2000. That book describes Iraq as 'one of the most dangerous rogue states in the world today', and as the possible site of the 'first biological war of the millennium'. Iraq is an 'immediate danger', it declared (4).
The final nail in Iraq's coffin was provided by Hans Blix. Today he takes an 'I told you so' approach to Bush and Blair, contrasting his own rational approach to Iraq's alleged WMD with America and Britain's hysterical warmongering, and declaring that Saddam got shot of his WMD 10 years ago. He's changed his tune. At the end of January 2003, six weeks before Bush and Blair launched their war, Blix said no such thing about Iraq having no WMD. Instead, like other weapons inspectors before him, he raised suspicions and, in the words of one report, 'buttressed' the pro-war campaign (11).
In his speech to the UN Security Council on 27 January 2003, Blix asked awkward 'questions that need to be answered'. On chemical weapons he raised the problem that: 'Some 6,500 chemical bombs containing 1,000 tons of chemical agents and "several thousand" chemical rocket warheads are unaccounted for.... Inspectors found a "laboratory quantity" of thiodiglycol, a precursor of mustard gas.... Iraq has prepared equipment at a chemical plant previously destroyed by the UN....' On biological weapons he said: 'Iraq has declared that it produced about 8,500 litres of [anthrax], which it states it unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991. But Iraq has provided little evidence for this production and no convincing evidence for its destruction.' He also warned, ominously, that Iraq's anthrax 'might still exist' (12).
Indeed, Blix approached the inspections with the attitude that if he and his team didn't find WMD that still wouldn't be evidence that said WMD did not exist. Before setting off to inspect Iraq, he told a reporter that 'not seeing something, not seeing an indication of something, does not lead automatically to the conclusion that there is nothing' (13).
(2) (4) Plague Wars: A True Story of Biological Warfare, Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg, Pan Books, 1999
(11) The damning of Saddam, Robin Gedye, Toby Harnden in Washington and Toby Helm, Daily Telegraph, 28 January 2003
(12) An update on inspection, Hans Blix, United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, 27 January 2004
(13) The anthrax hunter, Julian Borger, Guardian, 10 April 2002
Edit: Forgot that FuseTalk uses the opposite link code of every other forum out there.
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