Blix said, ‘We did not say there aren’t any weapons of mass destruction, partly for being cautious.’ But, he said, the inspectors had been to more than 700 sites in 500 places in Iraq, and ‘we didn’t find anything.’
The “anything” Blix is referring to includes the unaccounted for weapons of mass destruction — the anthrax, VX, chemical & biological precursors, chemical rockets & shells, etc. — that UN inspectors knew Saddam had produced but could not verify had been destroyed. The inspection regime agreed to by the Security Council was never about the number of inspections completed. It was about Saddam’s regime actively engaging in disarmament and providing “verifiable evidence” to the Security Council that it had. The UN insistence on this “verifiable evidence” standard began in 1995 when Iraq was caught in a massive deception campaign to hide the scope of its weapons programs from the inspectors. From then on, the UN inspection team’s conclusions on the state of Iraq’s disarmament were to be solely based on “obtaining verifiable evidence including physical materials or documents; investigation of the successful concealment activities by Iraq; and, the thorough verification of the unilateral destruction events.” In other words, Saddam had to prove he got rid of the stuff to ensure that he did not just stash it away somewhere beyond the eyes of the UN. Clinton Defense Secretary Cohen explained it this way in 1998:
[Inspectors] have to find documents, computer disks, production points, ammunition areas in an area that size [California]. Hussein has said, ‘we have no program now.’ We’re saying, ‘prove it.’ He says he has destroyed all his nerve agent. [W]e’re asking ‘where, when and how?'”
Here’s what Hans Blix said on the verification standard in late January 2003 — though somehow I doubt he reminds today’s audiences of what he said back then.
Resolution 687 (1991), like the subsequent resolutions I shall refer to, required cooperation by Iraq but such was often withheld or given grudgingly. Unlike South Africa, which decided on its own to eliminate its nuclear weapons and welcomed inspection as a means of creating confidence in its disarmament, Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance-not even today-of the disarmament, which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace. As we know, the twin operation “declare and verify,” which was prescribed in resolution 687 (1991), too often turned into a game of “hide and seek.” Rather than just verifying declarations and supporting evidence, the two inspecting organizations found themselves engaged in efforts to map the weapons programmes and to search for evidence through inspections, interviews, seminars, inquiries with suppliers and intelligence organizations.
Blix also gave some concrete examples of the difficulty in verifying Iraq’s disarmament without the active help of Saddam’s regime. For instance, January 27, 2003
The discovery of a number of 122 mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions…. They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.
March 6, 2003
The result, so far, is that no underground facility of special interest has been found. Although they may be easier to find than mobile facilities, they are still a difficult target and it is always possible that inspectors have missed a hidden entrance. Like mobile facilities, any dedicated underground CW or BW facility could also have been dismantled prior to inspection. UNMOVIC does not dismiss the possibility that such facilities exist and will continue to investigate reports as appropriate. Given the vast number of potential underground “sites” capable of hosting CW or BW production or storage facilities in Iraq, inspections in this area will have to be dynamic and rely on specific intelligence information…. The long list of proscribed items unaccounted for and as such resulting in unresolved disarmament issues was neither shortened by the inspections, nor by Iraqi declarations and documents.
The fact the Saddam Hussein never complied with UN disarmament resolutions led Defense Secretary William Cohen to state on CNN one month AFTER coalition forces entered Iraq:
I am convinced that he has them. I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out. I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons. We will find them.
And, according to the chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, the French and the Germans believed Saddam had the weapons. Apparently, opponents of the president’s decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power are doing their own twisting of the truth when it comes to the historical record on Iraq.
