With more than half of the US public now having misgivings about the Iraq war, it has become fashionable and easy to brandish criticisms of the war’s rationale. Foremost among them is the failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Not only many journalists, pundits, and politicians but even the Bush administration concedes this retrospective weakness in the rationale. And then, unfortunately, there is much of the peace movement.

No one who cares about peace should argue against the war on these grounds. If WMD were found, would that then be justification? That would be to go along with the Bush administration’s determination to dismiss the UN inspections process. The failure to find WMD is irrelevant in that even if they existed, there was a peaceful and largely successful mechanism in place to find and destroy them. To say this is just to remind us of one of our own prewar arguments – summed up in the sign “Blix not Bombs,” from the February 15, 2003 New York City demonstration, that Hans Blix now has hung on his wall.

Blix’s recently published memoir is a good vehicle for the review that to my mind is now needed. This is not, as he makes clear, the work of a pacifist.

Blix did not initially disapprove of the US military buildup around Iraq, crediting it for Iraq’s increased cooperation between January and March of 2003, and even could have supported an attack if approved by the UN Security Council. He also consistently registered suspicion of the Iraqis. Though keeping an open mind, his “gut” feeling was that they were hiding WMD, and his January 27, 2003 report to the Security Council was celebrated by hawks for its harsh assessment of Iraqi efforts. Blix was not even sympathetic to Iraq’s complaint that the continual bombing by the US in the “no-fly zones” complicated any effort to comply with the request for U-2 spy flights there, notwithstanding that the zones and attacks were not UN-sanctioned.

So much the more telling, then, that the US regarded Blix as an adversary.

Blix gives the background, the history of inspections mandated by Security Council Resolution 687, passed at the end of the first Gulf War. The eradication of biological and chemical weapons was to be verified by the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM), nuclear weapons by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Until verification Iraq would remain under economic sanctions. UNSCOM eventually confirmed the Iraqi destruction of large stockpiles which took place in summer of 1991 according to Iraqi scientists, military officers, and Hussein Kamel, the high-profile defector who said that he ordered it; the destruction wasn’t documented, though, and there was a possibility that other chemical and biological weapons remained hidden.

UNSCOM also found and destroyed additional weapons, but always at sites that Iraq had declared, as required by 687.

Meanwhile the IAEA, where Blix was director general, eliminated the infrastructure of Iraq’s nuclear program and removed all fissile material.

This left Iraq with no ability to produce any significant amount of material for nuclear weapons. By the end of 1998 the Security Council generally agreed that Iraq’s nuclear dossier was pretty much closed. In early 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell went further: Saddam Hussein, he said, did not have “any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction.”

At that time inspections were no longer taking place. They had ended with the US/UK bombing in December 1998, which followed an Iraqi decision that it would no longer cooperate with inspections until sanctions were lifted and UNSCOM reorganized. Blix speculates that Saddam Hussein may have been persuaded by US rhetoric that sanctions would end only if he were ousted, which would have removed the carrot dangled by 687. Iraq also had accused UNSCOM of espionage, a charge that news reports substantiated shortly after the bombing (which Blix does not criticize except tactically).

In late 1999 the Security Council passed Resolution 1284, largely following the recommendations of a panel that had warned against unnecessary confrontation in the inspections process and infiltration by national intelligence agencies. While acknowledging Iraq’s progress toward meeting the requirements of 687, 1284 established the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission for Iraq (UNMOVIC) for continued inspections.

Blix became its head.

The US supported 1284, even with the incoming Bush administration. Powell and National Security Advisor Condeleezza Rice assured Blix of support for UNMOVIC, with Powell promising to look into the issue of providing the inspectors with intelligence. But after 9/11, Blix noticed that “attitudes had certainly changed.” While still voicing support, Rice and Powell told Blix in January 2002 that they doubted Iraq would comply. Shortly thereafter President Bush delivered his State of the Union address branding Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as the “axis of evil.”

In September the policy document The National Security Strategy of the United States of America was released, promoting the policy of preemptive action. It stated: “We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies.” In a speech the month before, Vice President Cheney had already mentioned preemption, appealing to 9/11, and advocating invasion of Iraq over inspections. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and others reportedly feared that renewed inspections might “torpedo” the plan to invade, described in summer of 2002 by the New York Times.

But the US also pursued a new Security Council resolution. Passed in November, 1441 declared that Iraq had not complied with prior resolutions but would be given a last chance. It had to cooperate “immediately, unconditionally, and actively” with the inspectors. Any “further material breach” meant that the Council would “consider the situation and the need for compliance.” The resolution also mandated a “currently accurate, full, and complete declaration” of all weapons programs, and that “false statements or omissions.shall constitute further material breach,” which could lead to “serious consequences.”

Blix considered this “a draconian resolution that would not have been accepted by any state that was not under direct threat of armed attack.”

Many in the Bush administration were reported by the New York Times to have preferred its flat rebuff by Saddam Hussein, to justify an attack. That did not happen. But in January 2003 the US pressed the case that the required Iraqi declaration had not been accurate and complete, and that Iraq hadn’t provided immediate and active cooperation with the inspectors. On the first point Blix agreed that, while the Iraqis “cooperated tolerably on procedure,” they had not eagerly cooperated on such issues as aerial surveillance and private interviews. But on the second Blix demurred:

despite the overall harshness of his January 27 report, he did not rule out the possibility that Iraq had no more weapons to report.

The March 7 reports of Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, were more encouraging to those who hoped for a peaceful outcome. Though noting unresolved questions, Blix praised the Iraqis for the destruction of missiles and greater cooperation regarding aerial surveillance and other issues. ElBaradei reported that no evidence had been found of any rebuilding of nuclear weapons capability. He also said that aluminum tubes Iraq had attempted to import were not related to nuclear weapons production, contradicting Colin Powell’s presentation to the Security Council on February 5; and that a document alleged to have shown a deal between Iraq and Niger for the import of raw uranium was inauthentic, undermining a claim President Bush had made in the State of the Union.

For Blix “it was not difficult.to discern how the US administration swung from seeing the inspection reports as potential assets in underpinning a future demand for armed action to identifying them as an impediment, the authority of which the US needed to undermine.” Through spokesmen and the media, the US subsequently tried to do so with claims that Blix had avoided mentioning the discovery of a drone and cluster bomb that, the US concluded, were for the delivery of chemical weapons. Blix had in fact mentioned the drone, but not drawn the same conclusion; he adds now that the US “must have known that the US Air Force itself did not believe the Iraqi drones were for the delivery of biological and chemical agents.” The cluster bomb was an apparent relic found in an old factory store, with no detectable traces of chemical agents. After its few days in the media spotlight, Blix never heard about it again from the US or anyone else.

In fact, says Blix, no intelligence provided by the US or other countries to UNMOVIC regarding proscribed activity, such as alleged mobile biolabs – also mentioned in Powell’s presentation – had ever panned out. There was a problem at the top. As former lead State Department intelligence official Greg Thielmann put it, the Bush administration “has had a faith-based intelligence attitude.We know the answers, give us the intelligence to support those answers.” Unsupportive evidence – such as the Air Force’s view on the drones, the US Department of Energy’s on the aluminum tubes, or the State Department Intelligence Bureau’s on the Niger document – did not disturb the expressed public certainty. Blix puts this down to “a deficit of critical thinking,” though Thielmann’s conclusion – not noted by Blix, but shared by others in the intelligence community – is rather that the administration molded intelligence to support the decision to invade.

(Today Powell claims that analysts who knew better at the time didn’t brief him, but Thielmann says otherwise.)

The US appropriated the determination not just of intelligence but also of whether Iraq was in compliance with 1441, and of what to do if it was not.

From the beginning France and others took it rather that a “material breach” could be registered and acted upon only as based on a report from the inspectors. The majority of the Security Council opposed the draft resolution circulated by the US, Britain, and Spain in late February that would have authorized war (on the US-intended interpretation), despite heavy US pressure. Blix comments, “Getting the UN votes authorizing war was the main US preoccupation. That the professional inspectors.had not come to confirm US/UK assertions was apparently not an overwhelming concern of the administrations.” On March 16, Bush met with his British and Spanish counterparts in the Azores to deliver an ultimatum, ostensibly to Saddam Hussein but, Blix suggests, perhaps really to other members of the Security

Council: “to support the resolution or be bypassed.”

Yet the opposition was not to armed action but, Blix stresses, to such action at that juncture. US officials liked to say that the inspections process could not go on indefinitely, but in fact there was no disagreement on this point. In their February memorandum, France, Germany and Russia stressed it, and (following 1284) set a period of 120 days for a remaining assessment by UNMOVIC. The French ambassador and foreign minister later signaled a willingness to shorten the time. Canada meanwhile had proposed an end-of-March deadline for the completion of key benchmark tasks. A last minute Chilean proposal similarly would have given Iraq three weeks or thirty days beyond the March 17 date set down by the US, Britain, and Spain.

Tony Blair offered Blix the possibility of “perhaps a few days” beyond that date. Of all these compromise initiatives the only one not ruled out by the US was Britain’s, and even there the attitude was toleration rather than support. For the US, it wasn’t that inspections couldn’t go on indefinitely; they could not even go on five more days.

Why? The inspectors, Blix recalls, didn’t see any urgency other than that created by the US. As Rice told Blix, it was difficult to keep a large armed force sitting. The New York Times, citing military experts, had reported on November 10 that the ideal time for invasion was late February or early March, before the hot weather that would render unbearable any protective gear against chemical weapons.

Blix doesn’t think that the US had already decided to invade the previous summer, when the force buildup began and President Bush reportedly approved an overall war strategy for Iraq. But what’s important is that in March

2003 the US chose to invade, rejecting all alternatives inconsistent with its claimed unilateral right to initiate war any time it likes. It was final confirmation of the evidence manifest for months, not of US belief that inspections wouldn’t succeed, but of a fear that they would and thus “torpedo” war plans.

As to what explains the “changed attitudes” he perceived after 9/11, Blix speculates that the US decided that it needed to take preemptive action against any country that it thought “might pose a threat to the US.” But that does not account for the “faith-based” approach to intelligence to determine who might pose a threat. Blix also does not consider that the administration’s inner circle had entered office advocating the use of force against Iraq. As noted by Richard Clarke, Paul O’Neil, and other former administration insiders, the militating against Iraq began after 9/11 despite no evidence of its involvement or of any threat. All this (and much more) suggests 9/11 as pretext, and the preemption doctrine as cover, for the pursuit of ends other than defense against terrorism.

Without Security Council endorsement the war was a violation of the UN charter, as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan noted at the time and recently reiterated (and thus also a violation of US law, given that the US Constitution includes as “supreme law of the land” all treaties to which the US is a party). Beyond inspections, peaceful alternatives include multilateral solutions such as Blix’s recommendations: “treaty commitments, like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.the Chemical Weapons Convention [and] regional treaties that establish zones free of nuclear weapons,” none of which the US has shown serious interest in because of their potential to constrain US policy. The US has also recently opposed verification measures for the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, which would ban the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. When we accept the failure to find WMD as a criticism of the Iraq war, as if finding them would be vindication, we are allowing ourselves to be co-opted into the mindset of US policymakers: that with regard to WMD or anything else, US behavior is not to be bound by any treaty or law.

None of this is academic. It is no stretch for instance to imagine a time when, having declared the failure of sanctions against Iran for its development of nuclear weapons capability, the US President announces plans for a preemptive strike. (Perhaps President Kerry, who had made it clear that he would never allow the UN to stand in the way of US policy.) Yes, intelligence in the past has proved to be faulty, but those problems have now been addressed; besides, not only other countries but the IAEA confirms that Iran does indeed have such capability. What would our response be?

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