Straw gave incorrect answers – Blix
by Chris Ames
The BBC reports that
Former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw gave some incorrect answers to the UK’s Iraq war inquiry, former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has said.
Mr Blix told the BBC he was “puzzled” by some of the evidence that Mr Straw gave to the panel.
He said that Mr Straw had been incorrect to suggest, in 2002, that UN weapons inspectors were not being allowed access to certain sites.
You can watch the full interview on BBC News Channel today at 04.30 and 23.30 GMT and on BBC World News at 04:30, 09:30, 15:30, 21:30 GMT.
Update: I have watched the interview online. Because it is the HardTalk, the format of the programme is to be quite challenging to the interviewee. But nevertheless what strikes me about it is that interviewer Jonathan Charles keeps quoting Blix from late 2002/early2003 as being sceptical about Iraq’s approach to inspections and saying that he thought Saddam might have weapons. He does not seem to have grasped Blix’s point that scepticism and thinking someone might be hiding something are perfectly reasonable ways of addressing this sort of issue and are very different from hard evidence.
But the point where Charles’ really falls down is in this exchange:
Blix: … if Iraq had come with a declaration in November of 2002 which said sorry, well there was a general was hiding all this stuff, and here it is, well I think it might have come out differently.
Charles: Well that’s the point, isn’t it? In the end they were prepared to give diplomacy a chance, they were prepared to give weapons inspections a chance and Saddam Hussein didn’t play ball.
Blix: Well, what could he do? He didn’t have the weapons.
Charles: Yes but he didn’t admit that he didn’t have the weapons. He couldn’t admit that.
Blix: No, he said they didn’t have weapons.
Charles: But no-one believed him because actually at the same time he was hiding materials from you.
Blix: No, he didn’t really…
Charles: Playing cat and mouse…
The passage illustrates how prevalent many of the myths about the pre-war inspections still are. Having suggested that Saddam was at fault for not handing over weapons he did not have and wrongly claimed that he did not admit that he didn’t have them, Charles fell back on a fallacious claim that Saddam was hiding materials. When Blix denied this, he fell back on a quote from Blix from before the inspections started, describing Iraq’s behaviour in the 1990’s.
Blix also gave a strong hint that if he was asked to attend the Inquiry he would go, although, “I do not try and shoot my way in anywhere….”
3 Responses to “Straw gave incorrect answers – Blix”
Comment from Tony Simpson
Time February 8, 2010 at 11:40 am
Blix seemed to win over Jonathan Charles. When will the Inquiry hear his testimony, which is central to assessing what Blair, Straw and others have said? And when will it call Sir Richard Dearlove, chief British spook at the time? This omission is all the more puzzling in the light of an MI6 mission to Iraq in early 2003 which was apparently undertaken by Michael Shipster to make contact with the head of Iraqi intelligence (Tahir Jallil Habbush). According to the Mail (6 August 2008), Shipster “reported that it was highly unlikely that the Iraqi regime had stockpiles [sic] chemical and biological weapons that could fall into the hands of Islamist terrorists … ” Ron Suskind, author of a book called THE WAY OF THE WORLD, says Dearlove confirmed Shipster’s meetings and report.
Solomon Hughes brought to light this intriguing episode in his comments on Brian Jones’ informative posting entitled “Cooking up the right answers,for the wrong reasons”. Solomon writes:
“Now it seems likely that this ‘late intelligence’ was from the Shipster mission, that MI6’s contact Tahir Jalil Habbush had told them the WMD were “disassembled”. The real truth – presumbaly known by Habbush – was that the weapons programmes were “disassembled” in the sense of completely brought to an end ten years previously. However, this seems to be translated into “disassembled” in the sense of current weapons, kept in pieces in some shed or bunker. Which seems an odd, deliberate msireading. If this late intelligence is not from Habbush, it must mean some other contact entirely made up some non existent WMD in their minds, and then stated these non existent WMD were disassembled, which doesn’t make much sense …”
All this rather confirms Blix’s assertion to Charles that the intelligence case made for war was crumbling in 2003, following readmission of the inspectors in November 2002.
Comment from John Bone
Time February 8, 2010 at 12:54 pm
“The way of the world” has some very interesting information. Suskind reports that he interviewed Dearlove at Pembroke College and that Dearlove confirmed the Shipster mission, and that the results were available to the top people in both the UK and US a month before the invasion.
Comment from Lee Roberts
Time February 8, 2010 at 10:12 am
If Blix had tried to “shoot his way in”, he might have prevented the invasion. He could still send Blair, Brown, and Straw to prison.