Thursday, March 29, 2007

Iraq Dossier.Com

A new website dedicated to the uncovering of the truth about the HM Government document "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction - The assessment of the British Government", created and maintained by Chris Ames.

" This website is dedicated to telling the truth about the British government's September 2002 dossier Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction - that it was, after all, "sexed-up" by the government's spin doctors. It will use contemporaneous documents, transcripts of oral evidence and freedom of information requests to reveal who really wrote the dossier, how it was "sexed-up" as a result and how the government covered-up the truth. It will also solve the greatest political whodunnit of the century so far: who put the notorious 45 minutes claim in the dossier? "
http://iraqdossier.com/

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Blix: US Held 'Witch Hunt'

Updated: 07:12, Monday March 12, 2007

Hans Blix, the former UN weapons inspector, has accused America of conducting a "witch-hunt" in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

He was speaking exclusively to Sky News as part of our in-depth survey of Iraq.

All this week Sky's Inside Iraq series is focusing on how the country and its people are coping with the aftermath of the invasion - and looking at what the future holds.

Our teams on the ground will be bringing the latest developments, interviews with key players and ordinary Iraqis and expert analysis on the bigger picture.

Mr Blix became a powerful critic of the US-led invasion after his teams failed to find the significant stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that Tony Blair and President George Bush insisted Saddam Hussein was hoarding.

He told Sky News' Anna Botting the invasion was "clearly illegal" and said Mr Blair had not been completely straight with the evidence used to justify military force.

Mr Blix said: "They put exclamation marks instead of question marks. There were question marks but they changed them to exclamation marks.

"And I think they got the political punishment for that. They lost a lot of confidence. Both Bush and Blair ..."

He said that allowing the UN inspectors to continue their work could have avoided the war. More than 130 UK troops, over 3,100 US forces and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died since the invasion as the country threatens to tumble into full-scale civil war.

Mr Blix said: "I think if they'd allowed us to carry on the inspections a couple of months more then we would have been able to go to all the sites suspected of by intelligence.

"And since there weren't any weapons we'd have come with that answer: there are no weapons at all the sites you've given us."

The former Swedish foreign minister added that he hoped Iraqi people could be empowered and turn around their country's fortunes, saying: "I don't see that the US can succeed."

More on This Story:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1255303,00.html

Full Text Of Interview

'It Has Been A Tragedy'

Updated: 21:54, Sunday March 11, 2007

Former United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix was a central figure in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

He warned Britain and the US against military action - and now tells Sky's Anna Botting that the invasion has been a tragedy and that he fears the current American policy will not succeed.

This is the full transcript of the interview:

ANNA BOTTING: When you told Tony Blair that you hadn't found anything, did he look at you sceptically, quizically?

HANS BLIX: Well, he was always a charming person....

BOTTING: Do you think he acted in good faith?

BLIX: I would never dare to accuse any statesman of bad faith unless I had absolute evidence of it. I do think they exercised spin.

They put exclamation marks instead of question marks. There were question marks but they changed them to exclamation marks. And I think they got the political punishement for that. They lost a lot of confidence. Both Bush and Blair lost a lot of confidence.

BOTTING: Should they be censured for what happened in Iraq?

BLIX: Aren't they already? I'm less interesed in punishment than getting the world better.

BOTTING: Was the war illegal?

BLIX: Yes it was. It was clearly illegal. Condoleezza Rice tried some acrobatic number, saying that they were actually upholding the authority of the Security Council. Upholding the authority of the Council when they knew that the majority of the Council were against it? As a lawyer I certainly don't buy that argument.

BOTTING: Could the war have been stopped through diplomacy?

BLIX: I think if they'd allowed us to carry on the inspections a couple of months more (which was the European position) then we would have been able to go to all the sites suspected of by intelligence - British, American or other. And since there weren't any weapons we'd have come with that answer: there are no weapons at all the sites that you have given us.

And I think then the intelligence would themselves have said 'our sources are evidently poor'. They had other sources - they had the defectors, satellite. But they had defectors above all. And the defectors didn't want inspection. They wanted invasion.

And the US after all were witch-hunters. They wanted to see anything as evidence that the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction. We were simply looking for the truth. We didn't assume that they had them. We didn't assume that they did not have them.

BOTTING: Do you sense the same happening now with Iran?

BLIX: There are similarities which are strong. But also dissimilarities. We see the pressure being increased on Iran. They go to the Security Council, they have some economic sanctions. Clearly at the time of the 'if' and 'when' they ask for military sanctions, clearly the Russians and the Chinese would say no.

I would hope that the majority of the Council would also be against it. Then maybe the Americans would say, as usual, the Council is impotent and someone who's more responsible in this world will have to do something about it and go in.

I wouldn't be surprised if people in Washington who reason that way. But the atmosphere in Washington has changed a good deal. The American people are tired of military adventures.

BOTTING: Do you think, therefore, that it's better that Iran has nuclear weapons than that there's another war? Where do you draw the line?

BLIX: That's fairly far down the line...

BOTTING: But it's a line that we may face in five or six years time.

BLIX: Well, why bomb now if you have that in five or six years time...

BOTTING: In order to stop them getting the capability...

BLIX: But they have now succeeded in enriching perhaps a gram of uranium. They have a long way to go to industrial grade production.

BOTTING: If you have only two options: One is that Iran has nuclear weapons and the other is a war, which would you choose?

BLIX: We are not there yet. I am not going to choose today. I am saying drop your demand for preconditions. That's what prevents you from sitting down with the Iranians.

The Iranians say 'we are ready to sit down, we are ready to discuss the question of enrichment'. So why not take them up on that? I think it's a silly diplomatic dance about a tactical advantage and they should find a diplomatic way out of that.

BOTTING: When you see the pictures of the latest bloodshed do you watch in horror?

BLIX: I think everything in Iraq after the invasion has been a tragedy. The only positive thing I think is the disappearance of Saddam Hussein.

BOTTING: Are you optimistic about Iraq's future?

BLIX: In the short term, no. There are lots of intelligent people and well educated people. I met some of them who were my opposite numbers. You must empower them. They must feel that they have the future in their hands. Whether they will succeed, I don't know. But I don't see that the US can succeed.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1255285,00.html

Ritter on Blix

After the event

Hans Blix has decided that the Iraq war was 'clearly illegal'. Fine, but discovering a bit of backbone now is four years too late.

In a statement reflective of the blinding obvious reinforced by the convenient passage of time, Hans Blix, the former head of the UN weapons inspectors operating in Iraq prior to the March 2003 invasion by the US and UK, in a slap at the policies of George Bush and Tony Blair, noted that "If they'd [Bush and Blair] allowed us to carry on the inspections a couple of months more, then we would have been able to go to all of the sites suspected of by intelligence. And since there weren't any weapons, we would have been able to come up with that answer: there are no weapons at all the sites you've given us."

If only it were that simple. This is the very same Hans Blix who, in an effort to appease the United States in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, met with then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice prior to issuing a statement demanding the Iraqis be pro-active and produce evidence that they were no longer producing weapons of mass destruction. "They [Iraq] need to be active to convince the security council through us that they do not have any more weapons of mass destruction or that if they are there, they deliver them to us so they can be destroyed," Blix said, virtually reading from a US-provided script. "Iraq must do more than they have done so far in order to make this [weapons inspections] a credible avenue," Blix concluded.

Blix was dismissive of the 12,000 pages of documents which the Iraqis had provided in December 2002, in response to UN security council resolution 1441's demand that the Iraqis provide a new, full accounting of its WMD programs, noting they did not provide "any new evidence" about the WMD programs, or the lack of them. By rejecting the Iraqi declaration as incomplete, Hans Blix not only reinforced the US assertion that Iraq had failed to comply with its disarmament obligation, he also paved the way towards the current conflict in Iraq.

Hans Blix, the distinguished international lawyer, forgot that he was charged with a mandate of investigation, not indictment. By choosing to embrace the American policy line that Saddam Hussein was guilty simply because Iraq was unable to prove a negative, Hans Blix took on the mantle of co-conspirator in a war which never should have been fought. Contrary to public opinion, Hans Blix is not a figure worthy of admiration, but rather a moral and intellectual coward who could have spoken truth to power when it counted, but refused to do so.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/scott_ritter/2007/03/
the_convenient_amnesia_of_a_mo.html