12-7-05,9:17am
A fierce debate is now raging in Washington in which the opposition is accusing Bush & Co of having misled the US, when they asserted that weapons of mass destruction in Iraq constituted a threat that required the country to go to war.
Some two hundred thousand men have been sent to Iraq and by now more than two thousand American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives as a result of an armed action to eradicate weapons – which did not exist.
It is not difficult to understand why this is painful. The administration is trying hard to pin the blame on the CIA and other intelligence units. Vice President Cheney says that all received the same (erroneous) information regarding the weapons, all reached the same conclusions and all carry the same responsibility.
What was the reality?
First, as regards the aim of the war.
Perhaps the most important – though least discussed – aim was to protect the production in and shipping of oil from the countries around the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia, with the holiest Muslim sites, had become a problematic host country to American armed forces. Iraq, with a US friendly government, could become a good alternative host to an American military presence in the area.
Another – presented – aim was to make Iraq a democratic and human rights model for the region. One cannot but support such an aim and feel that the toppling of Saddam was a great gain. However, the aim of promoting human rights has been overshadowed by the American mistreatment of prisoners in the old Saddam prisons. The aim to introduce democracy by armed force has proved problematic. The occupation has strongly stimulated terror and bloodshed. That an Iraqi democratic government could hardly accept American military bases could be concluded from statements made at a recent Cairo meeting by Sunni, Shia and Kurdish leaders that they wanted a time-table for the American exit from Iraq.
The Bush administration must have understood that the war rationale that would be easiest to sell would be that the US was threatened by weapons of mass destruction. During the autumn of 2002 and until the attack on Iraq in the middle of March 2003 the Bush administration asserted categorically that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, prepared a new nuclear weapon program and cooperated with Al Qaeda. What evidence did they have?
Iraq had stopped UN inspectors during the 90s as if there had been weapons to conceal. The accounting of chemical and biological weapons was deficient. Aluminum pipe imports were claimed to be for the enrichment of uranium. A contract that had surfaced in Italy between Iraq and Niger regarding the purchase of uranium oxide was mentioned by Bush in an address to the US Congress. Despite the fact that within the administration there was knowledge that the document was unreliable.
Was the political leadership itself convinced? Perhaps they avoided asking questions, which could have undermined a desirable good faith? At a meeting in the State Department in the autumn of 2002 then Deputy Secretary of Defense, Wolfowitz, indignantly asked me: “Are you not convinced that they have weapons of mass destruction?”
As we approached the outbreak of the war the assertions that there were weapons of mass destruction grew more intense. They reached a peak in a speech by Colin Powell in the Security Council. In the very same period the credibility of the assertions sank, when the IAEA revealed that the uranium contract was forged and that the aluminum tubes were probably intended for missiles. No weapons of mass destruction had been found in any of some 700 UN inspections, of which several dozens had been to sites, which the intelligence agencies had indicated as probable weapons stores.
The responsibility for going to war must be judged against the background of what the US government knew – or ought to have understood – in March 2003, when it actually launched the war. At that point in time there was hardly any reason to believe that Iraq was planning to resume its nuclear weapon program. The grounds for believing that there were biological and chemical weapons had been substantially weakened.
Recently it was asserted on the American side that a computer had been stolen in Iran containing a missile related program from which it must be concluded that Iran was preparing to make nuclear weapons. Who would dare to put faith in such “evidence” today? In Iraq the US was supported by an “alliance of the willing”. Are there any states volunteering the next time the Bush administration cries wolf?
Publisher's Note: To read excerpts and to purchase Dr. Blix’s book, see Disarming Iraq
