‘Disarming Iraq’: Hans Blix is not truthful about Saddam’s violations

Saddam Hussein’s violations of the first 17 United Nations resolutions against him ended in 1998, former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said Monday (March 15).

Blix was not telling the truth, and he must have known better.

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly asked Blix, who appeared on cable TV's "The O’Reilly Factor" to promote his new book, whether Blix understood why Americans were angry that Saddam could violate 17 U.N. resolutions while the United Nations did nothing about it.

O’Reilly said that eventually, in the winter of 2002-03, Saddam even failed to comply with Resolution 1441, Saddam’s last obligation, which required, among other things, that Saddam cooperate fully with the arms inspectors.

Blix rebutted:

BLIX: Well, I beg your pardon. He was cooperating a fair amount on access. I did not think that in January he was cooperating sufficiently on...

O’REILLY: Right. And you said so.

BLIX: I said so.

O’REILLY: But 17 violations doesn't sound like cooperation to me.

BLIX: Those 17 violations were before 1998.

O’REILLY: OK, but it was a cumulative effect of this guy snubbing his nose at the world.

BLIX: Sure, sure.

Unfortunately, O’Reilly wasn't prepared for this interview, or he wouldn’t have let Blix get away with that whopper of an untruth.

Those 17 violations were before 1998?

Blix was telling O’Reilly that Saddam had stopped violating the 17 early U.N. resolutions. Those were the resolutions Saddam had agreed to, principally to secure a cease-fire after the U.S.-led coalition chased Saddam’s army from Kuwait in 1991.

Blix made it appear as if the only order Saddam had left to comply with in 2003 was Resolution 1441, adopted Nov. 8, 2002, and only that part of Resolution 1441 that Blix was charged with enforcing.

Blix’s version of history is tidy. But it is demonstrably incorrect.

Take U.N. Resolution 688, adopted by the Security Council in 1991. It required that Saddam stop repressing his people, and that he stop the systematic mistreatment of minorities. Had Saddam stopped repressing the Iraqis in 1998 or 2003?

No. The U.N. Commission on Human Rights found in 2001 that Saddam's regime was continuing to inflict grave violations of human rights, and that Saddam’s repression was all-pervasive. Saddam’s abuses had not stopped in early 2003.

Take U.N. Resolution 686, also adopted in 1991. It required that Saddam return more than 600 prisoners of war, mostly Kuwaitis, but also other nationalities, including one American pilot. Had those 600 POWs been released by 1998 or 2003?

No. Saddam never met his duty to release or account for the 600 POWs. Many experts now believe all the POWs were murdered. Saddam obviously had violated terms of the 1991 cease-fire.

Take U.N. Resolution 1373, under which Saddam was required to stop supporting terrorists. Had Saddam complied with that resolution by 1998 or 2003?

No. Saddam was continuing to pay relatives of suicide bombers who had murdered Israelis, and he was providing refuge to known terrorists from outside Iraq.

Take U.N. Resolution 687, adopted in 1991. It required that Saddam cooperate with the U.N. weapons inspectors in reporting all his illegal weapons and that he destroy all those weapons in front of the inspectors. Had Saddam complied with that resolution by 1998 or 2003?

No. Blix himself revealed Saddam’s continued violation of Resolution 687 under questioning by O’Reilly. Saddam’s scientists had told Blix that Saddam’s illegal anthrax was destroyed in 2001. That’s a little later than 1998, isn’t it?

Here’s that exhange between O’Reilly and Blix:

O'REILLY: Where do you think the 10,000 liters of anthrax went?

BLIX: I think they might have destroyed them in the summer of 2001.

O'REILLY: 2001?

BLIX: Yes.

O'REILLY: And where would that be? Where would that destruction take place?

BLIX: Well, the UNSCOM [earlier U.N. arms inspectors] went and we also went to a site where they said they had disposed them in the ground. There was no question but that they had destroyed a lot of anthrax, a lot of chemical evidence on this site.

O'REILLY: Did you find traces in the ground?

BLIX: Yes.

O'REILLY: You did?

BLIX: Yes, they do. But the problem was, you see, you couldn't verify the quantity of them. They had not allowed the inspectors to be there. So UNSCOM and we, too, suspected they might have spirited it away.

They had not allowed the inspectors to be there. That itself was a violation of Resolution of 687, and, if the Iraqi scientists can be believed, that was in 2001.

Blix speculated on O’Reilly’s show that Saddam did not fully cooperate with the U.N. arms inspectors in late 2002 and early 2003 not because he had large amounts of illegal weapons, but either because he knew he was doomed or because he was too proud to let outsiders into such places as his palaces.

In any case, Saddam had not cooperated. He again had breached U.N. orders dating to 1991.

As Blix continues his speaking tour as author and expert on Saddam’s compliance with and violations of U.N. resolutions, he has to be much more careful with the facts than he was on O’Reilly’s show.

Saddam had not stopped violating the U.N. resolutions by 1998. Blix is wrong to say otherwise. In late 2002, Resolution 1441 itself found that Saddam had failed to comply with the centrally relevant Resolutions 686, 687, 688 and 1284, and it declared the U.N. was determined to enforce yet another five resolutions, comprising Resolution 986 on the abused U.N. oil-for-food program and Resolutions 661, 678, 707 and 715.

One year ago, Saddam still was violating the most important of those U.N. resolutions, as Americans, Britons and their coalition partners lined up on Iraq’s border, preparing to end Saddam’s fascist repression forever.

Frank Warner