The Swedish diplomat is back in the news lecturing everyone on Iran, North Korea and world disarmament. Naturally, he uses the Iraq War as an example of his disarmament efforts being short-circuited. In a speech hosted by the Arms Control Association, he bemoans the "hyping and spinning that takes place in international affairs" and then does a lot of "spinning" of his own by failing to mention other historical facts in the lead up to the Iraq War.
According to the Global Security Newswire,
[Blix] noted that there was little U.S. reporting on ElBaradei's claims before the invasion of Iraq that a document alleging an Iraqi attempt to buy uranium was forged. The Bush administration used the document to make its case against Iraq, but after the war conceded that ElBaradei was correct.
Nice piece of revisionism. In fact, the British report that reviewed this issue stated categorically that the president's uranium reference in his 2003 State of the Union address was "well-founded" and based on intelligence having nothing to do with the forged documents and ElBaradei's claim. Here are the relevant bits, on pages 123 and 125:
We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government's dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that:
'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa'
was well-founded.
And:
From our examination of the intelligence and other material on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa, we have concluded that:
a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.
b. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible.
c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium and the British Government did not claim this.
d. The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it.
Blix continued:
"We carried out 700 inspections at 500 different sites … and said to the Security Council, and said to the United States and the Brits that we find no weapons of mass destruction," he said. "Out of these places that we visited, there were about three dozen places or sites that were given to us by intelligence agencies in different countries and in none of them could we find any weapons of mass destruction."
"My belief is that if we had been allowed to continue to carry out inspections for a couple of months more, we would then have been able to go to all the sites which were given by intelligence, and since there weren't any weapons of mass destruction we would have reported that there weren't any," he said.
