Hans Blix, who led UN weapons inspections in Iraq before the March 2003 invasion, wrote in The Independent on Sunday that President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were reaching for pretexts to defend the war.
Blix pointed to the Iraq Survey Group report, a 1,000-page document by US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, which found that Saddam Hussein had eliminated most of his chemical and biological arsenal after the 1991 Gulf War and that his nuclear program had largely decayed.
The report also found that Saddam had hoped to revive weapons development once international sanctions were lifted. Blix characterized that finding as the latest rationale the two governments had adopted to justify the invasion.
Blix argued that the international community had "succeeded in disarming Saddam without knowing it," and noted that Duelfer reached a similar conclusion: Saddam had deliberately cultivated the impression of still holding weapons to appear more formidable than he was.
Blair acknowledged in a recent Labour Party speech that the pre-war case for Saddam's threat had proved incorrect, but both he and Bush continued to defend going to war.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in October 2004, in its own words.