Disarming Iraq – The search for weapons of mass destruction (book review)

Title :- Disarming Iraq – The search for weapons of mass destruction.

By :- Hans Blix

Published :- Bloomsbury, London (2004) Paperback (270 pages).

Outline :- The USA pushed the UN to go to war in Iraq over the supposed possessions of weapons of mass destruction. Previously the UN nuclear inspection team had been kicked out of Iraq, as the CIA had infiltrated the UN team and set up illegal monitoring etc. Hans Blix (An Australian) was called in to lead  anew UN team. The first thing he did was to delay the entry into Iraq, and to clean out the CIA from his UN team, and set up protocols to ensure independent verifiable professional results could be generated. Then he took his team into Iraq to investigate all the CIA claims. He found nothing, and could prove such, but being a full professional his final report read that it is always possible that their team could have missed something. The US then took this loop hole to invade, and indeed found nothing. The book emphasizes the need to separate out politics and fiction and deliver a scientific and reliable result. The reputation of the UN weapons inspection team was restored and is the bases of today’s work practices.