Nineteen days after the invasion of Iraq, Hans Blix was asked about the fact that no biological or chemical weapons had been found. He said:
United States as well as the United Kingdom always told us that Iraq possessed those weapons. We never accepted this statement as an established fact. Establishing this was exactly what our work consisted of. Sadly, both Governments were seen to be very impatient in the first days of March. And they did not leave us to finish the task. A few months were need for us to determine if the Iraqi possessed the arms the Americans and British insisted they had. I am very curious to know if they are really going to find them. I believe that no one has more interest in this than I.
Today Blix published an article in The Guardian, in which he said that the responsibility for the war must rest "on what those launching it knew by March 2003."
During an interview with Jim Lehrer, March 17, 2004, Blix offered what may be the most informed opinion on the circumstances that led to the invasion of Iraq. He said:
... I think there was not enough critical thinking, neither in the intelligence agencies nor at the governmental level. (...) It was a little like the witch hunts, the same mentality as the witch hunts of past centuries that we are convinced they exist and then you are inclined to look at any evidence as proof of that.
In today's article in The Guardian, Blix called the invasion a tragedy ...
... for Iraq, for the US, for the UN, for truth and human dignity. I can only see one gain: the end of Saddam Hussein, a murderous tyrant. Had the war not finished him he would, in all likelihood, have become another Gadafy or Castro; an oppressor of his own people but no longer a threat to the world. Iraq was on its knees after a decade of sanctions.
The elimination of weapons of mass destruction was the declared main aim of the war. It is improbable that the governments of the alliance could have sold the war to their parliaments on any other grounds.
According to Blix, "Iraq was not a real or imminent threat to anybody" in 2003.
He goes on to say that Bush and Blair "were on thin ice, but they preferred to replace question marks with exclamation marks. They could not succeed in eliminating WMDs because they did not exist. Nor could they succeed in the declared aim to eliminate al-Qaida operators, because they were not in Iraq."
Another "declared aim" was to bring democracy to Iraq, "but five years of occupation has clearly brought more anarchy than democracy."
Blix speculated that increased security for Israel might have been an undeclared aim, but "it is hard to see that anything was gained by a war which has strengthened Iran."
He lamented the impact that the invasion had in the world's efforts to limit the use of armed force between states. "If preventive war is accepted for one, it is accepted for all."
Blix opines that "the spectacular failure of ensuring disarmament by force, and of introducing democracy by occupation, will work in favour of a greater use of diplomacy..."
He concludes with "Washington and Moscow must begin nuclear disarmament. So long as these nuclear states maintain that these weapons are indispensable to their security, it is not surprising that others may think they are useful."
The title of The Guardian article sums the illegal invasion of Iraq quite well:
A war of utter folly.