“We carried out about six inspections per day over a long period of time.
“All in all, we carried out about 700 inspections at different 500 sites and, in no case, did we find any weapons of mass destruction.”
[BBC, July 2010] The UN’s former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix:
“Some people maintain that Iraq was legal. I am of the firm view that it was an illegal war. There can be cases where it is doubtful, maybe it was permissible to go to war, but Iraq was, in my view, not one of those.”
“What I question was the good judgment, particularly of President Bush but also in Tony Blair’s judgment.”
“They thought they could get away with it and therefore it was desirable to do so.”
Of course, getting away with it goes both ways. Blix said he never excluded the prospect that Iraq had begun to revive some form of chemical and biological capabilities.