"War was planned well in advance" - "I was undermined" says Hans Blix (Merged)

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Yeah, okay.. I know there’s those people that started a cult with the sole purpose of damning anything related to the UN and they probably won’t have much constructive to say. Then there’s those people that will say “no s—? we were putting troops in the region! how’d he guess that?”. But for some reason I don’t think he was talking about the military build up that started last fall..

Hans Blix doesn’t specialize in military strategy. Nor does he have intimate insight into what the American hawks were plotting at their undisclosed locations. He did, however, specialize in weapons inpspections and all the political maneuvering associated with them. He maintained contact with the governments involved and spoke in person with many of the people calling the shots. For this reason I believe good ol Hans might have a little insight into the attitudes of these people and may have seen their true emotion better than we could. See the bolded part below…

War was planned well in advance, says Hans Blix

The chief United Nations weapons inspector, Hans Blix, revealed in an interview with a Spanish newspaper on Wednesday that “the invasion of Iraq was planned well in advance, and that the United States and Britain are not primarily concerned with finding any banned weapons of mass destruction”.

The 74-year-old Swede - who announced in March that he would step down from his top post when his contract runs out in June this year - told the Spanish language El Pais paper: “There is evidence that this war was planned well in advance. Sometimes this raises doubts about their [the US and British] attitude to the [weapons] inspections.

He also disclosed that the United States President, George W. Bush, had told him back in October 2002 that he did back the UN’s work to verify US and British claims that Baghdad was developing biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

But he said he knew at the time “there were people within the Bush administration who were sceptical and who were working on engineering regime change”. “By the start of March the hawks in both Washington and London were getting impatient,” he added.

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:-)
slowly but surely truth will come out
using hans blix for arms inspections was only a way to tell the world that USA did its best to disarm iraq but it didn't comply and so they were left with no options but to liberate iraqi people.

did you get my point?
from WMD - 2 - liberation of iraq. how the tune changed with time.

:-)

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Re: War was planned well in advance, says Hans Blix

That is an amazing admission by Hans Blix. He’s quoted a bit more in this article, his comments are slightly buried in the middle of the article.

All this grand fuss over Iraq’s supposed arsenals of WMD… and then none other than Hans Blix publicly states that the invasion was planned “well in advance” and Iraq’s WMD was not the primary motivation for the US and UK. i am not certain what to make of it - the deceit would almost be tolerable had not so many Iraqi civilians be forced to pay the ultimate price.

What gets lost, quite easily perhaps is that, manifestly, ‘regime change’ has now opened a pandora’s box of pre-emptive strikes against any sovereign nation.

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there are very slight chances of finding WMD unless USA plant a few itself and then discover them accidently :-) recently they have been finding a lot of evidence by accidents.

amazing thing is this that USA didn't share any of its intelligence with UN and inspectors. they always claimed that they know exactly where these WMD are hidden but now since they are in iraq, they are still pondering about the WMD. :-)

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Re: Re: War was planned well in advance, says Hans Blix

Nadia, thanks for the BBC article :k:

Has he asked Bush about this yet??

I don’t think so.. at least not in the near-term. If our leaders get too happy with this concept it will eventually lead to only bad things. Remember, the USSR was defeated by being forced to overexert itself.. the US is not immune from this - we only have a slightly higher threshold.

What I think this article truly says, going back to my favorite crisis, is that, like Suez, the UN was expected to fail and only called upon to lend a false sense of legitimacy to an inherently illegitimate act.

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Want a good laugh? Keep in mind what you just said…

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In my view, Blix said something which is very simple. Its anybody's guess when did the US Administration actually decided to invade Iraq, but the troop movement started well before the inspections regime re-started. Its clear that a decision was made that Iraq has to be taken care of. It was clear that US (and possibly UK) will be the main forces to take over Iraq.

On Powell's insistence, UN was involved to try and gain some kind of legitimacy for this plan, just as Mr Baker did in 1991. While US diplomats were trying to arm-twist the swing votes, in the back ground, Pentagon continued the troops build-up. They really wanted to have UN's backing, but never really needed it for action. Once the troop build-up was complete, Mr Bush walked up to the mic, and issued his ultimatum to the UN staff to get out of Iraq, as the bombing will start.

So, inspections were really irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. It was just the cover to make sure enough military resources are deployed in the region to make it a quick and successful invasion. Blix must have felt terribly used, once he figured out the whole game-plan. Hind sight, ofcourse, is always 20/20.

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^
i rest my case
:-)

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[QUOTE]
Originally posted by spoon: *
What I think this article truly says, going back to my favorite crisis, is that, like Suez, **the UN was expected to fail and only called upon to lend a false sense of legitimacy to an inherently illegitimate act.
[/QUOTE]
*
You're welcome, Spoon. No prob.
So you do not believe that the US will extend its sights towards Iran, or Syria?

i think i agree with what you wrote above.

>>...inspections were really irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.<<
Now the damage is done. The US has managed to successfully ingrain into so many peoples' heads that Iraq is sitting on top of this Armageddon-arsenal of WMD. The kind of mental images that were being associated - of Iraq with its finger upon a trigger that would potentially unleash a chemical holocaust, and thus the invasion of Iraq was such a 'necessity'.

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I hope chemical weapons aren't used within the coming days.

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^
i hope so too but then americans are not trust worthy. :-)

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we do not need to listen to Hans Blix to know that war was planned in advance. Here is a link to the BBC article.BBC NEWS | UK | Politics | Blair 'delayed US strike on Iraq' All of this rubbish about Saddam having links to the terrorist cells is mere propoganda. This was plan and simple " I am bully and do what i like" scenario.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by EntityParadigm: *
^
i hope so too but then americans are not trust worthy. :-)
[/QUOTE]

They never have been. Ppl like Kissinger and co are just an example of how trust worthy American Government has been in past!
Bunch of criminals.

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A diplomatic way of speaking… (see his quotes in the BBC article).

[Blix] said the coalition had appeared to use “shaky” evidence, including forged documents, as a pretext for making war on Iraq. …] Mr Blix used a BBC radio interview to criticise the Bush administration for its use of questionable intelligence, including forged documents, in its effort to show that Iraq possessed banned weapons. He said it was “very, very disturbing” that US intelligence had failed to identify as fake documents suggesting that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger.

Source: Blix attacks ‘shaky’ intelligence on weapons, Gary Younge, Richard Norton-Taylor and Patrick Wintour
The Guardian, 23 April 2003

Blix: ‘US undermined inspectors’, BBC, 23 April 2003

…] “The US was very eager to sway the votes in the Security Council, and they felt that stories about these things would be useful to have, and they let it out,” he said. "And thereby they tried to hurt us a bit and say that we had suppressed this.

“It was not the case, and it was a bit unfair, and hurt us. [We] felt a little displeased about it.”

He also reiterated his disquiet at how documents the International Atomic Energy Agency “had no great difficulty finding out were fake” managed to get through US and UK intelligence analysis.

Also disturbing, he said, was the question of who was responsible for the falsification.

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Hans Blix vs the US: ‘I was undermined’

Why are the invaders afraid of letting an independent body like UN verify the existence or otherwise of WMD?

Hans Blix vs the US: ‘I was undermined’](http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=399573)

For the first time since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, confronted the Americans openly yesterday, accusing the Bush administration of lacking credibility in its efforts to hunt down Iraq’s banned weapons.

Mr Blix, 74, derided by Washington for his failure to find the “smoking gun” that would have convinced the UN to give legal backing to the war, also accused Washington and Britain of deliberately undermining his efforts before the war.

He warned the Security Council that only UN inspectors, and not the teams being assembled by America, would be able to provide an objective assessment of any materials that might be found in Iraq.

Mr Blix spoke out as the diplomatic blood-letting seen in the run-up to the conflict risked resurfacing with the first full discussion by the Council on the next steps in Iraq.

The Council’s members sparred openly over the role of the UN in identifying weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And Mr Blix, who could now be the biggest obstacle to the removal of sanctions, which George Bush is seeking, rubbed salt in the wounds. London and Washington had built the case for invading Iraq on “very, very shaky” evidence, he said. He referred to documents alleging that Iraq had imported uranium for nuclear weapons from Niger that he later revealed to have been faked.

“I think it’s been one of the disturbing elements that so much of the intelligence on which the capitals built their case seemed to have been shaky,” he said, hinting that Britain the US might have allowed the information to surface to undermine inspections.

Mr Blix would not rule out that evidence of banned weapons might yet be uncovered. But he added that it was “conspicuous that so far [US inspectors] have not stumbled upon anything evident”. He cautioned the Americans to “examine everything critically”, noting that some Iraqis might be motivated to claim more than they knew.

Even in Washington, officials spoke of fears that inspectors deployed by the US might never find evidence of weapons of mass destruction that constituted the main political justification for invading Iraq. US officials are worrying out loud that Iraqi agents might have been able to destroy incriminating materials in the days of chaos that followed the taking of Baghdad. Senior officials believe the US military might have contributed to the difficulties by failing to secure potential weapons or intelligence sites during the frenzied looting.

The new standoff in the Security Council is about whether UN inspectors, told to pack their bags and leave Iraq 24 hours before the first bombs fell on Baghdad, should be sent back in to identify any weapons finds now being made. The US, determined to keep the anti-war camp out of the decisions on Iraq’s future, stands alone in resisting calls from other members, notably Russia, to send UN inspectors back.

The role of Mr Blix is directly linked to the issue of when UN sanctions on Iraq can be lifted. President Bush asked the UN last week to end the sanctions. But Russia has argued strongly that under UN resolutions, sanctions can only be lifted once Iraq is certified as weapon-free and that that can only be completed by Mr Blix.

Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said yesterday: “We are looking forward, not backward. Saddam Hussein’s regime is gone, and we will need to reassess the framework design to disarm the regime given the new facts on the ground.” In a sideswipe at Mr Blix he said: “I think it’s unfortunate if Hans Blix would in any way criticize the US at this juncture. The US is working with Iraqis to build a new country for them.”

Peter King, a Republican congressman, flatly dismissed Mr Blix’s claims, accusing him of “manipulating evidence”.

John Negroponte, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said: “For the time being, and for the foreseeable future, we visualize that [inspections] as being a coalition activity,” he said. “The coalition has assumed responsibility for disarming of Iraq.”

This puts the US directly at odds with the remaining members of the Security Council. Even Britain is making behind-the-scenes efforts to argue the case for giving Mr Blix a role in looking for weapons and certifying that they have been eradicated or do not exist. France took other members by surprise by asking for an immediate suspension of UN sanctions on Iraq. That move may be designed to mend fences with Washington, which has also called for an end to the sanctions. But France is also insisting on the return of UN inspectors.

**Mr Blix, who is said to be livid that the US is assembling its own inspection teams, said: “We may not be the only ones in the world who have credibility, but I do think we have credibility for being objective and independent.” **

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Re: Hans Blix vs the US: 'I was undermined'

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by chosen1: *
Why are the invaders afraid of letting an independent body like UN verify the existence or otherwise of WMD?
[/QUOTE]

Because, it will confirm the war is about OIL, OIL, OIL. Not about WMD.

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UN Arms Inspector Blix Criticizes U.S. Over Iraq, Grant McCool
Yahoo News, 23 June 2003

The longer the United States and Britain occupy Iraq without finding weapons of mass destruction, the more conceivable it is that Baghdad destroyed them after the first Gulf War in 1991, chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said on Monday.

Blix, to retire next week after heading inspections before the U.S.-led war on Iraq began in March, also spoke critically at a think tank meeting of one of Washington’s key arguments for overthrowing Iraq President Saddam Hussein.

“It is sort of fascinating that you can have 100 percent certainty about weapons of mass destruction and zero certainty of about where they are,” Blix said at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Two months after the fall of Baghdad in a war launched after the United States and Britain accusing Saddam of illegally harboring nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, their troops still have not found any such weapons. “I’m simply saying that the longer we are in this situation without finding anything, the more we have to ask ourselves is it conceivable that they did destroy in '91,” Blix told Reuters Television after the event.

Saddam said the weapons were destroyed in 1991 when a U.S.-led international coalition ousted his army from Kuwait. Blix has said that inspectors made their last significant finds in 1994. Blix’s U.N. inspectors searched for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq from November 2002 to March 2003. Some U.S. officials faulted the Swede for failing to produce tougher reports on Iraq’s purported weapons.

But on Monday, Blix took aim at the Bush administration’s assertions that Washington needed more time to find Iraq’s weapons. “Three-and-a-half months for new inspections was a rather short time before calling it a day and especially when we now see the U.S. government is saying that, ‘look, you have to have a little patience, you know these things take time.’ All right,” Blix told his audience of foreign policy analysts, business leaders, academics and journalists.

Blix, retiring on June 30 after heading the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission since March 2000, said he would like to write a “nuanced view” of the period.

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Yes, but you see, if we gave the UN time Saddam still could have attacked US citizens using a UAV equipped with bio/chem weapons..

..now any pissed Iraqi with a good throwing arm can attack US citizens.

I wonder if Grant McCool is that guy’s real name :konfused:

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Basically, no matter what Iraq did pre-war - it would have been invaded regardless.

**
haha:D … yes i thnk it is.

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Blix bows out of UN role, Greg Barrow, BBC, 29 June 2003

The chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, retires on Monday after a tumultuous few months heading the search for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. In the end, Mr Blix was frustrated as much by the impatience of Washington and London to intervene in Iraq as he was by alleged attempts by the Iraqis to conceal their weapons programmes.

Avuncular, inscrutable, and sometimes infuriating were all adjectives used to describe Mr Blix in the run-up to the war in Iraq. He was an unlikely character to hog the international limelight. But for weeks the media followed his every step, hanging on each of his words to see whether this time Hans Blix would give more to the pro- or the anti-war camp. But he gave little away and some say this marked Mr Blix out as a very special weapons inspector.

“I would say that Blix was probably the best,” said Nathaniel Hurd, an independent adviser on Iraq. “He was able to be punchy at times, vis a vis the Iraqis, vis a vis Washington, vis a vis all parties concerned, but at the same time he clearly was interested in being professional and not necessarily in being a grand figure on the world stage.”

In the time Mr Blix and his team of inspectors spent in Iraq he could not say with any certainty whether Baghdad had or had not re-activated its chemical and biological weapons programme. He wanted more time, but that was something Washington did not want to give.

**In an interview with the BBC earlier this month, he admitted he was mildly amused now that both America and Britain are asking for more time to complete their search for weapons of mass destruction.

“I am patient and I certainly will watch what they come out with - but I would make the comment, however, that that patience was not shown to us inspectors in the middle of March,” he said.

“If some little more time had been given to us, maybe we would have been able to come further in our exploration. But then, there was no patience.”**

In the end, Mr Blix was never able to complete his work in Iraq - but in the eyes of many, he leaves his post in New York with his integrity intact. “For those observers who have seen the UN and UN officials so often bend to US pressure, he at least was able to provide one example of an individual in a very high-profile position under great pressure trying to be professional and to do his job rather than to play favourites,” said Nathaniel Hurd.

There is no disguising the fact that there was bad blood between Mr Blix and some of his counterparts, particularly those in the Bush administration. But as he sets off for retirement, he says he only wishes them well. “I would be as eager as anybody else would be to find the truth about the weapons of mass destruction,” he said.

Mr Blix will return to Sweden, where he will watch developments from afar. And he says he will be honing those skills developed in the search for Iraq’s weapons - by hunting instead for field mushrooms and blueberries in the countryside around his home.