Posted on 09/16/2003 8:29:32 PM PDT by nwrep
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix now believes Iraq destroyed its weapons of mass destruction 10 years ago and that intelligence agencies were wrong in their weapons assessment that led to war.
In an interview with Australian radio from Sweden, Blix said the search for evidence of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons would probably only uncover documents at best.
"The more time that has passed, the more I think it's unlikely that anything will be found," Blix said in the interview, which was broadcast on Wednesday.
"I'm certainly more and more to the conclusion that Iraq has, as they maintained, destroyed almost all of what they had in the summer of 1991," Blix said.
In 1991, the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found what it called a secret nuclear weapons programme in Iraq. It spent the next seven years dismantling Baghdad's nuclear capability, until its inspectors were thrown out of Iraq.
Before ordering the invasion that toppled President Saddam Hussein, U.S. President George W. Bush referred to an imminent threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as a prime justification for war.
"In the beginning they talked about weapons concretely, and later on they talked about weapons programmes...maybe they'll find some documents of interest," Blix said.
Blix spent three years searching for Iraqi chemical, biological and ballistic missiles as head of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.
U.N. inspectors left Iraq in March this year as American and British forces prepared to invade. Calls for their reinstatement have been denied, with the U.S. occupation authorities preferring instead to set up their own body, the Iraq Survey Group.
After more than five months of searching, no weapons of mass destruction have been found by the Iraq Survey Group, which consists of about 1,500 experts.
U.S. officials said in July that the search had uncovered documents pointing to a programme to develop such weapons.
But the U.S. media network ABC News reported on Monday that a draft report by the Iraq Survey Group provides no solid evidence that Iraq had such arms when the United States invaded.
The U.S. government has consistently said the search for weapons of mass destruction will take time and that it is confident evidence will eventually be uncovered.
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I think you are right. They weren't there. The WMD was a fraud perpetrated by this administration.
It doesn't matter, Hans. Iraq was ordered to show evidence of its destruction of its WMD's. It didn't. Too bad. There are consequences to such failures.
Then why the hell were we still finding crap in Iraq as late as 1995?
Blix, you were a bumbling idiot then, and you are a bumbling idiot now!
Who is one to believe. Hitting my head against the wall. (Not)
All they had to do was comply with the inspections. Which, by the way, is why Blix is wrong and the Administration will be proven right. Why did Iraq obstruct the inspection process if they had nothing to hide?
Here's an allegory I used in a response on another forum.
See if it works for you.
(The kid and his toys part)
Think that even a liberal could understand it when put this way?
...12 years and many failed resolutions to prove that "weapons of mass destruction" (that IRAQ admitted that they had and were itemized at the end of Gulf War I) were destroyed under the terms negotiated back in '91.(Imagine that you looked in your child's room and saw all his toys on the floor. You say, "I want these all picked up....and DON'T JUST THROW THEM UNDER THE BED!" You come back in the allotted time....he cracks open the door and says, "See?" And you tap you foot and say, "Let me look under your bed", and he refuses....14 times.)
Since we cannot be assured of the destruction of what we KNOW he had (much less if he was producing more) and given that there are simple ways to reach this land(Anthrax....suitcase dirty nukes)and given that they had missiles that could reach Israel, we gave a final, no sh*t, final ultimatum.
He refused and the rest is history.
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