Extracts from Blix book..

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The_Pikeman

Also known as Howski
Nov 20, 2001
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Published in the guardian today .... they make from some intresting reading, although it's mostly about Blair.
Blair lacked critical thinking, says Blix
Why Blair was convinced by the intelligence in his fight against evil
US tried to force the issue of 'smoking guns'
I found this bit intresting....
On mobile labs [Wolf] noted that "we have provided you information that Iraq not only has these mobile plants but also produced agent recently."

Similarly, he noted that on chemical weapons the [Unmovic] document did not draw on "shared information that demonstrates the continuation of a programme beyond the Gulf war."

I have no doubt that Wolf was convinced about the validity of the findings of US intelligence, which had been kindly "shared" with us. We tried in our inspection work to verify such findings. However, we would not present claims by intelligence agencies as our findings unless we found that there was credible evidence supporting them. The claim that there were mobile labs for the production of biological agent had been made by several intelligence agencies. We took it seriously and looked for the labs, investigating various places where they might have been linked to water and electricity. However, without finding evidence we would not assert, as Wolf evidently wanted us to do, that they existed.

After many months of occupation, claims that certain trucks that were found were the famous biolabs have been recognised as "embarrassing". I am not aware of any other intelligence "shared" with us that has been substantiated by credible evidence.

On the following Sunday March 9 the New York Times had a detailed article in which Washington officials revealed that inspectors had recently discovered "a new variety of rocket [the cluster bomb] seemingly configured to strew bomblets filled with chemical or biological agents over large areas". The officials provided the information to reinforce the US view that inspectors had found "incriminating evidence in Iraq."

The weapon had a short but intense political life span lasting from Thursday to Monday, when it was mentioned by US Ambassador [John] Negroponte in the informal consultations of the security council. Thereafter we never heard about it again.

On the same Sunday, Colin Powell appeared on Fox TV ... He focused on the drone and said the US would "be making some news about it in the course of the week". They did.

There was no doubt that this time the administration was set to inject the drone and cluster bomb as issues - indeed, even as "smoking guns", which the inspectors had deliberately chosen to belittle

James Bone, the UN correspondent of the London Times, easily outdid Washington. He now repeated the incorrect Washington assertion that I had not mentioned the drone in my council presentation, and characterised this as "an apparent attempt by Dr Blix to hide the revelation to avoid triggering war".

[In the security council] the drone and the cluster bomb were taken up in some detail by US Ambassador Negroponte, albeit without any direct criticism of Unmovic or myself. He said the drone had not been declared and that this was a serious omission.

I used the occasion to note the relevant fact that Unmovic's cluster/benchmarks document, which we had now declassified, nowhere asserted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction but showed numerous discrepancies and deficiencies in Iraq's accounts of such weapons. I said that intelligence gathering was difficult and necessary. While we had great respect for it, we must soberly assess the results.

If the Washington officials had failed to set the issue ablaze more generally, they had at any rate very successfully ignited Mr Bone. The next day, March 12, the London Times had an article by him with the headline "Blix should turn the 'smoking gun' on his own head". He explained in the article that it was time for me to resign. I had, so he said, discredited myself and "betrayed the trust of all those many millions around the world who put their faith in the United Nations."

He ended the column by saying that, "when history of this tumultuous time is written, Dr Blix will be the man who tried to hide the 'smoking gun'".

Presumably, the [US] aim was both to give publicity to the alleged smoking guns and to erode confidence in the inspectors.
-How.