Monday, March 12, 2007

Blix Slams Blair on Iraq

Blix, in the eyes of US WarHawks
A common sop about the war against Iraq and the failure to find the WMDs used as a justification for invading is the line about "who could've known?"
Well, if anyone was listening, they could have easily known. The top UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, was telling everyone that they could find no evidence of any weapons of mass destruction. Remember that the UNSCOM inspectors would dutifully inspect, usually by suprise visits, every suspected site that US intelligence could or would point out to them.
Now Blix is poking a sharp stick at Tony Blair's performance in ginning up the evidence for pre-emptive war. In an interview with Britain's SKY News, Blix accused Blair of spinning the truth.
"Describing the conflict as "clearly illegal", Mr Blix, who led the UN search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq until June 2003, refused to specifically accuse the prime minister of open deceit.

"However, he said pre-war intelligence such as the UK government dossier which claimed Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and could deploy some within 45 minutes, appeared to have deliberately overstated the case for war.

"I would never dare to accuse any statesman of bad faith unless I had absolute evidence of it. I do think they exercised spin," said Blix.
So there it is. Blix suspects Blair of outright lying, I'm sure he doesn't have any doubt, but he won't say it unless he's given absolute evidence of it and I don't think TB is about to hand that over just yet.

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