Former Chief UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix on the US Rush to War in Iraq, the Threat of an Attack on Iran, and the Need for a Global Nuclear Ban to Avoid Further Catastrophe

The Bush administration's claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq formed the key justification for the war to Congress, the American people and the international community. As the former chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, Hans Blix was at the center of the storm. From March 2000 to June 2003, Blix oversaw the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission's 700 inspections at 500 sites in the run-up to the invasion. Blix is currently the chair of the Swedish government's Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission. His latest book, just published, is Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters. Blix joins us for the hour from Stockholm, Sweden.

AMY GOODMAN: More than five years after the invasion of Iraq, one the war’s leading architects has admitted the Bush administration made mistakes in the lead-up to the war but maintains the decision to invade was justified. Douglas Feith, who served as undersecretary of defense for policy, claimed Monday Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the region even though he had no weapons of mass destruction.

       DOUGLAS FEITH: And so, while it was a terrible mistake for the administration to rely on the erroneous intelligence about WMD, and, I mean, it was catastrophic to our credibility, first of all, it was an honest error and not a lie. But even if you corrected for that error, what we found in Iraq was a serious WMD threat, even though Saddam had chosen to not maintain the stockpiles. He had put himself in a position where he could have regenerated those stockpiles, as I said, in three to five weeks.

AMY GOODMAN: The Bush administration’s claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq formed the key justification for the war to Congress, the American people and the international community. One of the people at the center of the storm was Hans Blix, the former chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq. He joins us today from Stockholm, Sweden.

From March 2000 to June 2003, Hans Blix was executive chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission, which carried out over 700 inspections at 500 sites in the run-up to the invasion. Hans Blix is currently the chair of the Swedish government’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission. His latest book is Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Hans Blix.

HANS BLIX: Thank you very much.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Your response to Douglas Feith?

HANS BLIX: Well, I think there was no way that Saddam Hussein in Iraq could have reconstituted his nuclear program within years after 2003. David Kay went in, and he came out and said, “Well, there are no weapons, but there are [inaudible] programs.” And then he went out, and in went his successor, and he came out after a year and says there are no programs, but there were intentions. In fact, Iraq was prostrate after so many years of sanctions, and it would have taken them many years to recover and to contemplate any nuclear weapons.

AMY GOODMAN: What did you understand at the time? What were you saying at the time?

HANS BLIX: Well, at the time, we were saying that we had carried out a great many inspections and that we did not find any weapons of mass destruction, and we also voiced some criticism of the some cases that the US Secretary of State Colin Powell had demonstrated in the Security Council. My colleague, Mr. ElBaradei, who was the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had revealed that the alleged contract between Iraq and the state of Niger in Africa for the import of uranium oxide was a forgery and that the—also the tubes of aluminum, which had been alleged to be for making of centrifuges to enrich uranium, they most likely were not for that purpose.

So while the evidence that had been advanced from the US side and the UK side had been very weakened, we had carried out some 700 inspections without finding any evidence at all, and we had actually been to something like three dozen sites, which were given to us by intelligence, and had been able to tell them that, no, there was nothing in them, so that all allegations had been weakened very much, but not to the point of saying that there is nothing, because to prove that there is nothing is really impossible.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn back to February 2003 to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell’s address before the UN Security Council, where he made the Bush administration’s case for war. This is some of what he had to say.

       COLIN POWELL: I asked for this session today for two purposes—first, to support the core assessments made by Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei. As Dr. Blix reported to this council on January 27th, quote, “Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it,” unquote, and as Dr. ElBaradei reported, Iraq’s declaration of December 7th, quote, “did not provide any new information relevant to certain questions that have been outstanding since 1998.”

My second purpose today is to provide you with additional information, to share with you what the United States knows about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, as well as Iraq’s involvement in terrorism, which is also the subject of Resolution 1441 and other earlier resolutions. I might add at this point that we are providing all relevant information we can to the inspection teams for them to do their work.

The material I will present to you comes from a variety of sources. Some are US sources, and some are those of other countries. Some of the sources are technical, such as intercepted telephone conversations and photos taken by satellites. Other sources are people who have risked their lives to let the world know what Saddam Hussein is really up to.

I cannot tell you everything that we know. But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling. What you will see is an accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behavior. The facts on Iraqis’ behavior—Iraq’s behavior demonstrate that Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort—no effort—to disarm, as required by the international community.

AMY GOODMAN: That was, well, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell addressing the United Nations February 5th, 2003. Hans Blix, you were the chief UN weapons inspector at the time. Your reaction then and now, more than five years later?

HANS BLIX: Well, Secretary Powell talks about what ElBaradei and I were saying in January 2003, but the invasion took place in the mid-March of 2003. And we started our inspections in Iraq in November, and at the end of that month I think we got the 12,000 pages of report from Iraq, and they were disappointing, apart from the sections about biology, where they had given some new information. But they were disappointed, and we were disappointed in that result.

But the responsibility for taking action, actually go into war, must be assessed at what was known in the middle of March 2003, when the war took place. By that time, we had carried out the 700 inspections without finding any results and also finding a lot of weakness in the evidence that had been presented. So I don’t think that one can seem to rely upon or refer to what the inspectors were saying in January 2003. A lot had happened, and I’m sure that the invasion should—was weighed in what they knew in mid-March 2003, and they should have known and understood that Iraq was not nearly in possession of any significant quantities of weapons of mass destruction. I think they suspected that there were chemical weapons left, because the US military carried protective suits with them, and they donned some of them, as well. But there could have been no illusion that they were on their way to reconstituting their nuclear weapon program.

AMY GOODMAN: They knew a lot about what you thought, both publicly—you also said that you believed that they were bugging you, that you thought it would be Iraq that would eavesdrop, that would bug you, but in fact you felt it was the United States. Could you explain?

HANS BLIX: I hear a little badly what you say on the satellite feed. Could I explain what? Why one thought—

AMY GOODMAN: You had said in 2004 that you believed the United States was bugging you, your office and your home. Can you explain?

HANS BLIX: Oh, I see, OK. Now I hear you better. Well, there were noises on the telephone and things that happened that made me suspect that. I have never said I had any evidence to that effect. But in the light of what I’ve heard since then, I would not be at all surprised. And I’ve been asked about the question, and my only comment has been I wish to heaven that they had listened a little better to what I had to say, if they did listen.

AMY GOODMAN: You went to great lengths to try to find out, is that right? You had a UN counter-surveillance team sweep your home and office for bugs.

HANS BLIX: Yeah, that happened, but that was sort of routine at the UN that they would sweep the office. And I think we mostly assumed that there could be someone bugging us. We didn’t really have any secrets. What we did, we were told to at the Security Council.

AMY GOODMAN: You also learned that the Pentagon was briefing against you, you the chief UN weapons inspector. Explain what that means.

HANS BLIX: Well, there was some occasion when the Washington Post reported that Mr. Wolfowitz had asked the CIA about my character and about my preceding activities. And I didn’t really mind that. I thought it would have been more practical for them to ask the State Department, because they have seen me in diplomatic action since 1961. But I had really no objection to his asking the CIA. I had—there was nothing to hide in my career.

AMY GOODMAN: Hans Blix, we’re going to take a break, then we’re going to come back. Hans Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, currently the chair of the Swedish government’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, has written the book Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters. We’ll talk not only about history but about what is happening today, from Iran to other places around the world. Stay with us.