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Ex-chief weapons inspector slams Iraq war as 'tragedy'
Looks like Hans takes his job too seriously and can't see past Hussein's intentional misrepresentations, or the fact that WMD was only one facet of the whole problem in any case.Hans Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector, slammed the Iraq war as a "tragedy" and blamed it on leaders ignoring the facts, in a comment piece published Thursday. You mean ignoring the facts according to a dictator known to be a pathological liar? Saddam was playing all sorts of games at the time, as evidenced by statements that he made in captivity that he didn't think the US or the Coalition had the cajones to attack. He got what his ignorance asked for. Writing in The Guardian on the five-year anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, Blix, who clashed with Washington in the run-up to the Iraq war, described the war as "a tragedy -- for Iraq, for the US, for the UN, for truth and human dignity." How many Iraqis was Saddam killing each year on the average? How many Kurds had he gassed? How hard did the US have to work to keep him off the Kurds? What would have happened if we had walked away? Does this have anything to do with human dignity? In the sub-headline to the comment piece, Blix, who headed the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, wrote that responsibility for the war "must lie with those who ignored the facts five years ago". How do you ignore the IA sterilizing every suspected WMD site as fast as the slides are put up for display? At the time of the Iraq war, Blix accused the US and Britain of exaggerating the threat from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's alleged "weapons of mass destruction" -- traces of which have never been found. Apparently we aren't going to discuss all the precursors that I understand were found all over the place? In his comment piece, he said the war was a "setback in the world's efforts to develop legal restraints on the use of armed force between states" and added that in 2003, "Iraq was not a real or imminent threat to anybody." Except Kuwait. And Iran. And SA. and Israel. And anyone who depended on ME oil. Blix wrote that had coalition troops not deposed Saddam, "he would, in all likelihood, have become another Kadhafi or Castro; an oppressor of his own people but no longer a threat to the world." Let's ask Kuwaitis how they would feel about putting Saddam et. al. back in power. He said that one positive sign to emerge from the conflict was that "it may be that the spectacular failure of ensuring disarmament by force, and of introducing democracy by occupation, will work in favour of a greater use of diplomacy and 'soft power'." Means a lot coming from a milktoast who can't find his a$$ with both hands. Posted by: gorb 2008-03-20 |
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