Okay. You have a good day too. I was ready to be educated by you about the UN Security Council, but you are evidently shrinking away from this opportunity.
Since you have not identified the UN Security Council Resolution where it allegedly "voted against the war in 2003," are you at least willing to admit you're full of bullshit?
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0820-04.htm#1
Published in the August 2002 Foreign Policy In Focus policy report
Seven Fallacies of U.S. Plans to Invade Iraq
by Stephen Zunes
...
1. A War Against Iraq Would Be Illegal
There is no legal justification for U.S. military action against Iraq.
Iraq is currently in violation of part of one section of UN Security Council Resolution 687 (and a series of subsequent resolutions reiterating that segment) requiring full cooperation with United Nations inspectors ensuring that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, delivery systems, and facilities for manufacturing such weapons are destroyed. The conflict regarding access for UN inspectors and possible Iraqi procurement of weapons of mass destruction has always been an issue involving the Iraqi government and the United Nations, not an impasse between Iraq and the United States. Although UN Security Council Resolution 687 was the most detailed in the world body’s history, no military enforcement mechanisms were specified. Nor did the Security Council specify any military enforcement mechanisms in subsequent resolutions. As is normally the case when it is determined that governments violate all or part of UN resolutions, any decision about the enforcement of its resolutions is a matter for the UN Security Council as a whole—not for any one member of the council.
The most explicit warning to Iraq regarding its noncompliance came in UN Security Council Resolution 1154. Although this resolution warned Iraq of the “severest consequences” if it continued its refusal to comply, the Security Council declared that it alone had the authority to “ensure implementation of this resolution and peace and security in the area.”
According to articles 41 and 42 of the United Nations Charter, no member state has the right to enforce any resolution militarily unless the UN Security Council determines that there has been a material breach of its resolution, decides that all nonmilitary means of enforcement have been exhausted, and then specifically authorizes the use of military force. This is what the Security Council did in November 1990 with Resolution 678 in response to Iraq’s ongoing occupation of Kuwait in violation of a series of resolutions passed that August. The UN has not done so for any subsequent violations involving Iraq or any other government.
If the United States can unilaterally claim the right to invade Iraq due to that country’s violation of UN Security Council resolutions, other Security Council members could logically also claim the right to invade other member states that are in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. For example, Russia could claim the right to invade Israel, France could claim the right to invade Turkey, and Great Britain could claim the right to invade Morocco, simply because those targeted governments are also violating UN Security Council resolutions. The U.S. insistence on the right to attack unilaterally could seriously undermine the principle of collective security and the authority of the United Nations and in doing so would open the door to international anarchy.
International law is quite clear about when military force is allowed. In addition to the aforementioned case of UN Security Council authorization, the only other time that any member state is allowed to use armed force is described in Article 51, which states that it is permissible for “individual or collective self-defense” against “armed attack ... until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” If Iraq’s neighbors were attacked or feared an imminent attack from Iraq, any of these countries could call on the United States to help, pending a Security Council decision authorizing the use of force. But they have not appealed to the Security Council, because they have not felt threatened by Iraq.
Based on evidence that the Bush administration has made public, there does not appear to be anything close to sufficient legal grounds for the United States to convince the Security Council to approve the use of military force against Iraq in U.S. self-defense. This may explain why the Bush administration has thus far refused to go before the United Nations on this matter. Unless the United States gets such authorization, any such attack on Iraq would be illegal and would be viewed by most members of the international community as an act of aggression. In contrast to the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91, it is likely that the world community would view the United States—not Iraq—as the international outlaw.
There is little debate regarding the nefarious nature of the Iraqi regime, but this has never been a legal ground for invasion. When Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978 to overthrow the Khmer Rouge—a radical communist movement even more brutal than the regime of Saddam Hussein—the United States condemned the action before the United Nations as an act of aggression and a violation of international law. The United States successfully led an international effort to impose sanctions against Vietnam and insisted that the UN recognize the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia for more than a decade after their leaders were forced out of the capital into remote jungle areas. Similarly, the United States challenged three of its closest allies—Great Britain, France, and Israel—before the United Nations in 1956 when they invaded Egypt in an attempt to overthrow the radical anti-Western regime of Gamal Abdul-Nasser. The Eisenhower administration insisted that international law and the UN Charter must be upheld by all nations regardless of their relations with the United States. It now appears that the leadership of both political parties is ready to reverse what was once a bipartisan consensus.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0820-04.htm#1
Where were you, do you not remember Rumsfeld, Powell running around trying to scrap up support for the war everywhere they could. Not doing to well either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_and_the_Iraq_War
United Nations Security Council and the Iraq War
...
Many people also felt that many of the governments that had aligned themselves with the US, despite strong opposition among their populations, did so because of their own economic ties to the United States. The United States used strong pressure and threats against other nations to attempt to coerce nations on the Security Council to support them.
For example, Mexican diplomats complained that talks with US officials had been "hostile in tone", and had shown little concern for the Mexican government's need to accommodate the overwhelmingly anti-war sentiment of its people. One Mexican diplomat reported that the US told them that "any country that doesn't go along with us will be paying a very heavy price."
The Institute for Policy Studies published a report[6] analyzing what it called the "arm-twisting offensive" by the United States government to get nations to support it. Although President Bush described nations supporting him as the "coalition of the willing", the report concluded that it was more accurately described as a "coalition of the coerced." According to the report, most nations supporting Bush "were recruited through coercion, bullying, and bribery."
The techniques used to pressure nations to support the United States included a variety of incentives including:
*Promises of aid and loan guarantees to nations who supported the US
*Promises of military assistance to nations who supported the US
*Threats to veto NATO membership applications for countries who don't do what the US asked
*Leveraging the size of the US export market and US influence over financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
*Deciding which countries receive trade benefits under such laws as the African *Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and the Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which, as one of its conditions for eligibility for such benefits, requires that a country does "not engage in activities that undermine United States national security interests".
*Deciding what countries it should buy petroleum from in stocking its strategic reserves. The US has exerted such pressure on several oil-exporting nations, such as Mexico.
At a press conference, the White House press corps broke out in laughter when Ari Fleischer denied that "the leaders of other nations are buyable".
In addition to the above tactics, the British newspaper The Observer published an investigative report revealing that the National Security Agency of the United States was conducting a secret surveillance operation directed at intercepting the telephone and email communications of several Security Council diplomats, both in their offices and in their homes.
This campaign, the result of a directive by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, was aimed primarily at the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan. The investigative report cited an NSA memo which advised senior agency officials that it was "'mounting a surge' aimed at gleaning information not only on how delegations on the Security Council will vote on any second resolution on Iraq, but also 'policies', 'negotiating positions', 'alliances' and 'dependencies' - the 'whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises'." [7]
You know as well as I do that no matter what I say, your conclusions are drawn already.
I notice you've latched on to the one thing, thinking you see a chink in the armour.
I thought you were a legal eagle Dave, so I'm sure you're aware of International law, maybe not.
The Security Council voted against the war in 2003 so under the UN Charter that made going to war in Iraq illegal.
Sure, get off this roundabout. That's probably best.
Which is a good thing really because I don't want to interact with you anymore.
War of aggression[edit]
The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg held following World War II that the waging of a war of aggression is:
essentially an evil thing...to initiate a war of aggression...is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.[54]
Benjamin B. Ferencz was one of the chief prosecutors for the United States at the military trials of German officials following World War II, and a former law professor. In an interview given on August 25, 2006, Ferencz stated that not only Saddam Hussein should be tried, but also George W. Bush because the Iraq War had been begun by the U.S. without permission by the UN Security Council.[55] Benjamin B. Ferencz wrote the foreword for Michael Haas's book, George W. Bush, War Criminal?: The Bush Administration's Liability for 269 War Crimes.[56] Ferencz elaborated as follows:
a prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.[57]
...
The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States, formulated by the United States, in fact, after World War II. It says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, "Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do." The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter.[57]
Professor Ferencz quoted the British deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry who resigned suddenly before the Iraq war started, stating in her resignation letter:
I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution. [A]n unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances that are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law.[57]
The invasion of Iraq was neither in self-defense against armed attack nor sanctioned by UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force by member states and thus constituted the crime of war of aggression, according to the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in Geneva.[58][59] A "war waged without a clear mandate from the United Nations Security Council would constitute a flagrant violation of the prohibition of the use of force.” We note with “deep dismay that a small number of states are poised to launch an outright illegal invasion of Iraq, which amounts to a war of aggression.”[59][59][60]
Then Iraq Ambassador to the United Nations Mohammed Aldouri shared the view that the invasion was a violation of international law and constituted a war of aggression,[61] as did a number of American legal experts, including Marjorie Cohn, Professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild[62] and former Attorney-General of the United States Ramsey Clark.[63]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Iraq_War
A resolution means nothing without the means to enforce it.
eurocelticyankee wrote:You know as well as I do that no matter what I say, your conclusions are drawn already.
Of course I've drawn a conclusion. Just like you have.
Is your only goal here to try to change the minds of "indecent" Republicans?
Quote:I notice you've latched on to the one thing, thinking you see a chink in the armour.
What "one thing"? You mean the "thing" yesterday where you strutted:
eurocelticyankee wrote:I thought you were a legal eagle Dave, so I'm sure you're aware of International law, maybe not.
The Security Council voted against the war in 2003 so under the UN Charter that made going to war in Iraq illegal.
That "thing"? That line of utter bollocks that you are now trying to shrink from without so much of an admission of error on your part, or an apology to Dave? That "thing"?
So now -- evidently seeing your folly, even though you won't admit to it -- it appears your tune has changed from "the UN voted against the War, therefore it was illegal per the UN Charter," to "... but most legal experts believe a 2nd Res. was needed before an invasion was legal".
Sure, get off this roundabout. That's probably best.
but the UN cannot have any authority to determine
whether it is "legal" for one of its members (like us) to do so.
That wud be infringing upon the sovereignty of America.
The Time Has Come to Say It out Loud
By John Gerassi
Global Research
June 17, 2003
The time has come to say it out loud. Most of my academic colleagues say it privately, but hedge in their classes. Many of my old buddies at Time and Newsweek, where I was an editor for a decade, agree, but tell me they can never say so in print. All my friends fear that if they spell it out the FBI will arrest them in the middle of the night and they will become "disappeared" like hundreds of innocent Moslems who are not even charged with a crime. They know that Attorney General Ashcroft is itching to use the proposed Patriots' Act II, which will certainly become law after US forces suffer casualties in Iraq, to deport native-born critics of the Administration to Antarctica or bury them in solitary confinement in the Arizona desert, as that law permits. But it is now time to say and act upon the fact that the United States, as a state, is Fascist.
We all know, and the media certainly can list the proofs, that those in power in Washington, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and his deputy Wolfowitz, among others, plotted the current anti-Iraq policy years ago. In 1992 they actually wrote it up in a letter to Bush I. Even Ted Koppel read parts of that 96-page letter on Nightline the other day, proving that Bush II's War has nothing to do with 9/11 or al Qaeda or terrorism. In fact, President Reagan removed Iraq from the list of states sponsoring terror back in l982.
To those 1992 conspirators now making policy in the White House, adding up with Bush II as the world's new and dreaded Gang of Four, the goal was and is control of the whole region. Not just to own the oil and gas, but also to control their sale, in order to dictate which developing country the US will help and which it will sink into desperate poverty. After Iraq, they want to invade Iran. Then any other country, especially the oil-rich "...stans" surrounding the Caspian Sea if they balk at US demands and where the US now has bases.
No nation (certainly not Cuba) must be allowed to maintain an independent course, say the Gang of Four. The world's worst dictators (in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Turkey, Kazakhstan et al) are acceptable if they trade by Washington's rules. If not, a "regime change" is the next move. Bush II's War on Iraq is only the beginning. It's part of what in polite circles is called Globalization. In real terms it's just plain Americanization.
Most Americans support Bush II and his Gang of Four. So did the Germans support Hitler. He won over 60 percent of the vote in a fair election. He repeated ad nausea that it was the others' fault and the Germans believed him. It was the Czechs who stole the Sudetenland, he said. Repeat it often, Goebels advised him, and the world will believe it. And now, he would advise Bush II, say over and over that Saddam gassed his own people in the village of Halapja and the world will believe it, even if the CIA's senior political analyst on Iraq at the time, who had access to the classified investigation of the incident, reported that it did not happen (NYT 10/31/03). The media said it did, without proof, almost every day since Bush said it during his State of the Union address. And again in his March 15 radio talk. Goebels would have been proud.
Both the CIA and the FBI found no connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq. Bush II said there was one. He offered no proof. So what. He repeated it so often most Americans believe it. That's like when daddy Bush said that Saddam was going to attack Saudi Arabia after Kuwait. Totally absurd, and everyone in the media knew it. Saddam may be a scumbag but he isn't mad. But the media repeated it so often most Americans, who don't even know where Saudi Arabia is, believed it.
To go against the Gang of Four is to be ostracized from Washington. The end of a Journalism Career. Notice Bush II's last press conference. Only those reporters on his "goodie" list could ask him questions. Those who usually pose tough questions were silenced. CBS's veteran reporter-anchorman Dan Rather admitted in a BBC interview on his way back from Iraq that even he was intimidated by the Gang of Four: "It's that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions."
Who is really threatened by Saddam? Israel? Saddam knows very well that if he attacks it Iraq will be permanently exterminated. The American people? How absolutely ludicrous: his longest range missiles, which according to the UN inspectors violated the 93 miles maximum by all of 30 miles, couldn't even reach the immense and oppressive US base on the Island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. So why do Americans support a bloodthirsty liar whose bombs kill children? Americans don't even know that the UN does not sanction the US/British bombing of Iraq's self-defense guns.
The sanctions that the US did force the UN to adopt have already killed more than half a million Iraqi children, as reported by the UN and Bill Moyers on Public Television. But we know from the My Lai massacre that American soldiers are trained to view children of enemies, even tiny babies, equally as enemies, and kill them (raping the young girls first, of course).
What has happened to the US when murderers and liars run our affairs and neither Congress nor ordinary Americans seem to care? Such Fascists as Elliot Abrams, guilty of lying to Congress and pardoned by Bush I (NYT 12,/07/02), member of the Israel lobby, now in charge of Palestine affairs at National Security; John Negroponte, who as US ambassador to Honduras during the Contra wars, helped Generals Alvarez, chief of Honduras' Armed Forces, and Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, head of Battalion 3-16, create the death squads responsible for the torture and murder or hundreds of men and women, including nuns opposed to the war, now US ambassador to the UN (LATimes 03/25/01; Sister Laetiti Bordes, s.h., 08/24/01); John Poindexter, former vice admiral convicted of five felonies of lying to Congress and obstruction of justice pardoned by Bush I, now in charge of the Pentagon's electronic surveillance system which plans to spy on all Americans' banking, credit card, and travel! transactions without a search warrant (NYT 11/10/02): Otto J. Reich, a Cuba-born anti-Castro fanatic whose office engaged in prohibited acts of propaganda (New Yorker, Oct. 14 & 21, 2002) and appears to want to execute anyone saying one word in favor of the Cuban revolution, now boss of all Latin American US diplomats; Gerald A Reynolds, a longtime foe of Affirmative Action, in charge of Bush II's Office of Civil Rights (NYT 06/27/01); Harvey L. Pitt, a corporate lawyer who has represented the industries opposed to regulations by the SEC, to head the SEC; and on and on, plus all the disgustingly anti-poor, pro-big business lawyers being nominated by Bush II to judgeships around the country.
But by far the most dangerous fascist in Bush II's government is the man in charge of "justice", Attorney General John Ashcroft. A racist, fanatic fundamentalist, opposed to the civil and bodily (abortion) liberties upheld by the Constitution or the Supreme Court. Ashcroft is in favor of secret arrests, secret detentions, secret trials without appeals, secret verdicts and secret executions, all "odious to a democratic society" as Judge Arthur N. D'Italia of New Jersey's Superior Court said, when he ruled that secret detentions were illegal. Ashcroft not only appealed but ordered state and local governments to stop making public the names of those arrested (NYT 05/05/02).
Like in Nazi Germany of yesterday, an innocent citizen who may or may not have mumbled some criticism of Ashcroft himself will suddenly disappear when out walking his dog, and his family will be allowed to go crazy trying to find out what happened.
Will the innocent citizen then be tortured? Don't laugh: the US already uses torture. Now that the evidence is firm, the debate rages. Should we or should we not? And who decides? But in fact, the CIA has been torturing anti-US suspects for years, in Asia, Africa and especially Latin America. When I accompanied former Attorney General Ramsey Clark to Teheran in l980, I saw a video's of CIA men, or Special Forces soldiers, sometimes in US uniform, showing SAVAK officers how to torture.
I remember very vividly one horrifying case: a naked anti-Shah Iranian hanging six inches off the floor by a chain around his wrists, which were bleeding, in the middle of what appeared to be a cement bunker. Two Iranians in civilian clothes were having difficulty forcing a cattle prod, which was wired to an electric generator, into the man's rectum, because his body kept swinging to and fro. An officer, obviously an American, in uniform but sporting no insignia, pushed the Iranians to the side, grabbed the prod with his right hand, held the prisoner with his left, and rammed the prod as far as he could, turning the Iranian toward the camera, and smiled as if to say "see! it's easy." Then, one of the officers of the SAVAK, which was created, financed and trained for the Shah by the CIA and Israel's secret service, the Mossad, turned on the juice, and while the three men jokingly talked to the cameraman in this silent video, the hapless prisoner kept shaking wildly behind.! When the three turned back to him, he was dead.
Not quite what the Washington Post reported on the front page of its December 26, 2002, issue, but what it did report about systematic torture at CIA and Special Forces centers was bad enough. Since then, the NYTimes has been publishing other torture incidents, including the death of two old farmers tortured for having been forced to fight for Taliban. Enough to make every American democrat ashamed. And agree with the chief of Egypt's Organization for Human Rights who said: "Torture demonstrates that the regime deserves destroying because it does not respect the dignity of the people." (The Nation, 03/31/03). Yes, it is the US which needs a regime change -- before we all become either Gestapo informers or actual goons, or end up rotting in jail.
So who benefits from all this repression at home, torture, destruction and killing of children overseas? Not you or me, not us ordinary Joe and Jane. But the rich, those who profit from controlling world trade, the CEO's of the multi-national corporations, like Goodyear, Texaco, Colgate-Palmolive, WorldCom, which earned more than $12 billion in l996-98 but instead of paying taxes got $535 million in credit and refunds, or General Electric, IBM, Intel, and so many others which paid almost no taxes (NYT 10/20/00), while their CEOs gave themselves such huge bonuses that, combined, they could have built a modest home stocked with a year's worth of healthy food for every poor person in the Third World. In 1997, Occidental Petroleum lost $390 million, but CEO Ray Ironi gave himself a $100 bonus. Sanford Wyle, CEO of Travellers upped him quite a bit, with $230 million. Bill Gates' new mansion cost $53.4 million, more than the budget of 72 countries of the world. In 2000, the rat! io of the average salary of a Japanese CEO to that of a Japanese blue-collar worker was 11 to 1; in the US it was 476 to 1 (Time, 04/24/00). Today the US figures are up another third. Obscene, isn't it? So which country really needs a regime change?
The Gang of Four are dedicated to these greedy bloodsuckers. They will continue to lie, torture and kill for their patrons. As Hitler would have said: Iraq today, the world tomorrow. It is time to stop them. Or to try, anyway. Like the German Catholic underground. They risked their lives, and most did indeed lose them, because they knew in their souls that to conquer the world is more than a sin; it is the establishment of evil on earth.
...
http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/167/35342.html
Oh horseshit, Brandon. Ten years later, and you're still trying to peddle the same BS. Inspectors were on the ground in Iraq, and they reported no womds and no womd programs. We invaded because that was the goal of the neo-cons, which the Project for a New American Century clearly stated as early as 1997, when they asked Clinton to invade Iraq. They needed a casus belli, so they made up the yellow cake story, and they made up BS such as Cheney saying we knew which palm trees the weapons were parked under, and they stampeded the Congress, who, as always, feared for their electoral prospects.
Don't make **** up.
See, I don't believe for a second Bush & co cared one way or the other whether wmd existed. Smoke & Mirrors, that war was going to happen no matter what, wmd was just a lie, simple as that. Fabricated intelligence, not bad intel but hyped up bullshit. Cheney & co wanted that war and they lied, bullied & coerced their way into it. Ably abetted by Blair I might add. The funny thing is; Cheney & co knew this war was always going to happen, long in advance, regardless of any weapons inspectors reports, none of that mattered, this war was going to happen and yet, and yet they still managed to make a complete and utter horlocks of it.
Correct me if i'm wrong Brandon, one of the basic rules of war regarding an occupying force is, excuse me for pasting, but I'm lazy.
Art. 43.
The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.
Anyway, so I think you should stop trying to absolve the US of any responsibility for what happened after you invaded, ridiculous, hundreds of thousands dead and you're doing a Pontius Pilate. They knew they were going to war, any forward planning, any planning for the peace, nothing, like a bunch of ******* cowboys they rolled into that country, no thought to the consequences or more than likely they just didn't care and still don't. That stupidity in itself was a war crime.
Blix's statements about the Iraq WMD program came to contradict the claims of the George W. Bush administration, and attracted a great deal of criticism from supporters of the invasion of Iraq. In an interview on BBC 1 on 8 February 2004, Dr. Blix accused the US and British governments of dramatising the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, in order to strengthen the case for the 2003 war against the regime of Saddam Hussein. Ultimately, no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were ever found.
In an interview with London's The Guardian newspaper, Hans Blix said, "I have my detractors in Washington. There are bastards who spread things around, of course, who planted nasty things in the media".
but the UN cannot have any authority to determine
whether it is "legal" for one of its members (like us) to do so.
That wud be infringing upon the sovereignty of America.
David, the UN was the brainchild of Roosevelt. It was an American idea.
It's main objective was to stop another Nazi Germany infringing on the sovereignty of others.
You signed up to this from the beginning,
you can't cry foul because it's a two edged sword.
Accepting International law necessitates some loss of sovereignty.
I didn't hear you complaining about the Alabama arbitration.
(Probably because neither of us were born at the time, but you get the idea.)
There was no evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Hans Blix said that their inspections had found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction nor of programs to produce weapons of mass destruction. That you would have invaded Iraq does not surprise me, nor does it dismay me. I've already long ago realized that you are motivated by emotive propaganda, and not facts.
From the Wikipedia article on Hans Blox:
Quote:Blix's statements about the Iraq WMD program came to contradict the claims of the George W. Bush administration, and attracted a great deal of criticism from supporters of the invasion of Iraq. In an interview on BBC 1 on 8 February 2004, Dr. Blix accused the US and British governments of dramatising the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, in order to strengthen the case for the 2003 war against the regime of Saddam Hussein. Ultimately, no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were ever found.
In an interview with London's The Guardian newspaper, Hans Blix said, "I have my detractors in Washington. There are bastards who spread things around, of course, who planted nasty things in the media".
