Hans Blix: Blair Tried To Force Him To Change Mind About WMD Absence To Placate The Americans

[Hissyspit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1233353/Blair-Bush-orchestrated-obsessed-witch-hunt-Saddam.html

Blair and Bush orchestrated obsessed witch-hunt for Saddam
By TIM SHIPMAN and DAVID JONES
Last updated at 11:59 PM on 04th December 2009

Devastating critique: Former UN weapons expert Hans Blix says Bush and Blair showed 'very bad judgement'

Tony Blair and George Bush were orchestrating a witch-hunt against Saddam Hussein that ended with the Iraq War, according to a former UN weapons inspector.

Hans Blix said the two leaders behaved like 17th century witchfinders in their willingness to oust the dictator.

In an interview with the Mail, he revealed that Mr Blair tried to force him to change his mind about the absence of WMDs in Iraq to placate the Americans.

The former Swedish diplomat, who headed the UN weapons inspection team in the run-up to war, concluded that Mr Blair and Mr Bush 'misled themselves and then they misled the public'.

He said: 'They were convinced they had their witch in front of them, and they searched for the evidence and believed it without critical examination.
'I'm not saying they acted in bad faith (but) they exercised very bad judgment. A modicum of critical thinking would have made them sceptical. When you start a war which cost thousands of lives you should be more certain than they were.'

Mr Blix dismissed the 'dodgy' Downing Street dossier on Saddam's weapons which made the case for war as 'a politician's twist'.

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I'm going to go with 'bad faith.' - H'spit

[kenny blankenship]

1. That should be good enough for a trial, one would think

Enough to get started anyway, and I know there's much more like that out there.
Conspiracy to commit warcrimes. Has a nice ring to it, IMO. Should get good TV ratings, too.

[madokie]

2. Theres thousands of murdered Iraqi souls out there screaming for justice

They'll get it in the end. All these guys are going down big time

[Prometheus Bound]

5. Damn, I hope so.

There must be some room for justice in this world.

[madokie]

11. Yes we can hope

Theres been too much made of this for it to just go away now so my hope is the war criminals live long enough to know that we won't put up with this shit. Americans are no better than anyone else. Off to The Hague I say with the whole lot of them.

I wonder if in the minds of little boots, boot licker and shooter that peoples lives really don't mean anything, so sad if true because that puts them in with the rest of those like hitler, pol pot

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=pol+pot&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=be5ffa94030d2d34

[JohnyCanuck]

3. I'm going to go with 'bad faith.' - H'spit

Me too.

[Hissyspit]

4. He deliberately throws the phrase out there.

He can't "prove" it, but he does say it.

[deminks]

6. "the dodgy dossier"

Dr. David Kelly and the "dark actors" are back again.

from the op:

Then there was the dodgy dossier. In 2004, finally forced to withdraw its utterly fallacious 45-minute claim, Jack Straw informed Parliament that the dossier had been shown to Blix in September, 2002, and he 'shared' the intelligence service's fears.

However, it later emerged that Dr Blix had only seen the dossier before it was ' sexedup' on Alastair Campbell's instructions. And this was, of course, long before his team had set foot in Iraq.

(end snip)

[Egnever]

7. Duh

it was obvious at the time that this was going on.

[Hissyspit]

8. Yes. One thing that has stuck in my craw all this time was when Bush and Blair went off to

those islands in the Atlantic about a week before the invasion. The U.S. media almost to a person portrayed it as a last-minute attempt to avoid having to go to war. It was absolutely clear to me that they were just finalizing plans for the invasion and putting on a show - yet no one would tell the truth. It was insane.

[janx]

15. I remember that Blix was not happy. n/t

[Hissyspit]

9. kick for more eyes

lost in the weekend

[G_j]

10. K&R

[malaise]

12. Bush and Blair should be locked up

for the rest of their lives.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. Shame though it is to agree with the Mail, they're right that Blix should give evidence

to the Chilcot Inquiry. His knowledge of what evidence was presented to Blair before the invasion, and how Blair reacted, are at the heart of what the inquiry is meant to be investigating.

We should note, of course, that the Mail's main attitude in the days leading up to the invasion was to blame France. No, really; their editorials and op-eds frequently attacked Chirac for saying he wouldn't vote for an immediate invasion in a second resolution. Chirac was, of course, saying Blix should have been given more time. So the Mail is conveniently forgetting that it attacked the world politician who supported Blix at the time.

[bleever]

14. "Bad faith" in this case is a euphemism for "war crimes".

Pure and simple.