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United Nations - CIA-Iraq chief weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, whose report cast doubt on Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction, was blocked from reaching that same conclusion in 1999-2000 by the Clinton White House. Before officially joining the CIA weapons hunt earlier this year, Duelfer spent more than 8 years hunting WMD at the United Nations, first for the noted Swede Rolf Ekeus, than the flamboyant Aussie Richard Butler. Butler, known for his repeated clashes with Iraq officials, was eventually forced out of his U.N. job by the French and Russian ambassadors in June...

Saddam's $2m offer to WMD inspector By Francis Harris in Washington (Filed: 12/03/2005) Saddam Hussein's regime offered a $2 million (£1.4 million) bribe to the United Nations' chief weapons inspector to doctor his reports on the search for weapons of mass destruction

A former chief U.N. weapons inspector revealed yesterday that he was offered millions of dollars in bribes from Tariq Aziz, Iraq's ex-deputy prime minister — to give a favorable report on Saddam Hussein's weapons programs. In the latest U.N. oil-for-food scandal bombshell, ex-weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus said he told the U.N. investigative panel headed by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker about the bribe offer, which he said he rejected. "I told the Volcker people that Tariq said a couple of million dollars was there if we report right," Ekeus told Reuters. "My answer was, 'That is not the...

...The pro-Saddam lobby claims that the policy of containment had worked, and should have been continued ad infinitum. But the truth is that, as far as Iraq's various obligations under Security Council resolutions were concerned, containment had failed, and the sanctions had begun to crumble. Even on WMDs it had not worked because Saddam had kicked U.N. inspectors out four years earlier. ...America and its allies could have kept 200,000 soldiers in the Arabian desert for an indefinite number of years as a stick with which to persuade Saddam not to restart WMD programs. Yet then Saddam, assured of survival,...