A good segment from Monday’s Hardball with Chris Matthews. I think Blix fairly summarizes what went down:
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, sir, about the�watching and listening to the administration leaders as they made the case for war with Iraq before we went to war a year ago this week. Did you think there was anything unclear or dishonest even about the presentations made by the president, vice president and secretary of state?
BLIX: Well, I never felt that there was any bad faith. I think they were convinced what they were saying.
But I think that they were inclined to put exclamation marks where they should have a question mark. And, of course, there were some scandals in the material. The question of the contract that was alleged to have been concluded by Iraq with Niger about the import of uranium oxide turned out to be a forgery. And already before I knew that, I was questioning it, because I couldn’t quite see why the Iraqis should import uranium oxide, which is a very, very long way from a bomb.
MATTHEWS: What about the whole question of a nuclear threat, period, do you think that was overplayed by the vice president and others?
BLIX: Yes, I think the nuclear was the most overplayed. It was also the most serious.
But, already in the autumn of 2002, not only the inspectors, but also institutes in Washington were questioning whether this�the so-called aluminum tubes were for the�to make centrifuges. And they said they could have other uses. And I think it is now totally established that they were for rockets. So the nuclear, which was the most important, was also the most overblown.
MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you about the nuances here, sir, because you�re the expert and you speak to�you’ve had the opportunity to speak to our leaders. Was there a nuance of difference in approach to this war between the president and the vice president?
BLIX: You know, the vice president was extremely convinced. Probably–he appeared from the quotes that I’ve seen the most convinced. But President Bush was also convinced.
In the autumn of 2002, for instance, he was referring to some pictures about a nuclear installation where they used to make centrifuges and they had seen on pictures that there was an extension on it. And he said, what more evidence do we need? Well, not long thereafter, they were looking into�inside this by both inspectors and journalists and they were empty. So one has to be more cautious with the evidence. Satellites see the roofs, but inspectors see the inside.
MATTHEWS: Did the vice president seem to be more or less supportive of your efforts to try to avoid war with inspections?
BLIX: Well, he was clearly very, not say disdainful, of inspections.
In a speech that he made in August of 2002, he said that inspection is useless, at best. So I think he belonged to the group of people which presumably included people in the Pentagon, too, who really had no faith whatever in inspectors. Regrettably, they probably had more faith in the defectors. Mr. Rumsfeld has a great deal of faith in the defectors. And that led them wrong.
We were closer to the reality than the defectors were.
MATTHEWS: Well, here’s a statement in The London Daily Telegraph by Ahmad Chalabi, one of�the key defector, who says, “We are heroes in error.” He admits that he gave bad information to the Americans to justify the war so he could get his country back. And he said: “As far as we’re concerned, we’ve been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before it is not important.”
What do you make of that? In other words, the ends justify the means.
BLIX: Well, not in my mind.
I think it is cynical and I think is dishonest to do so. But I think what’s even worse is that the U.S. accepted it.
MATTHEWS: Right.
BLIX: That they believed these things. We knew, for instance, that Khidhir Hamza, who published a book here in the U.S. about being Saddam’s bombmaker, and there are enormous errors in it. And I’m sure that CIA didn’t�knew that as well. But why didn’t they pay more attention to what the inspectors had to say?
MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you about the gullibility of the American leaders, people in the Pentagon, you mentioned, Wolfowitz, I guess Feith, the others involved in this issue, the vice president�s office, Scooter Libby.
Do you think those people were so driven toward war by ideology that they almost were responsible for the gullibility in accepting the case made by Chalabi about weapons of mass destruction?
BLIX: Yes, I think we would like to ask more critical thinking on behalf of our leaders and our�people high up in the administration. They were a little like the witch-hunters of past centuries. They were so convinced that there were witches that it was only a question seeing whether�if you saw a black cat, that was evidence of a witch.
MATTHEWS: OK, sir, thank you very much for joining us. Hans Blix, thank you, former U.N. weapons inspector. Sir, thank you. Good luck with the new book. Thank you.
Blix’s account belies Bush’s feigned act as the reluctant warrior. The administration decided in 2001 or the first half of 2002 to take Saddam out, and the whole WMD saga was a ploy for international cover. Thus the administration cherry picked intelligence from defectors who similarly wanted to remove Saddam, and short-circuited a UN inspections program which could have examined and cleared suspected sites.
Thus it really didn’t matter what happened in Iraq. Bush was determined to be the war hero. The war hero in error.
