Reply #91: Ritter said in 1998 that Iraq had been "qualitatively disarmed...." [View All]

[mike_c]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/wanniski/wanniski8.html

<snip>

What was that list of 83 names and why is it so crucial? It is the only way Iraq has of proving the negative, an otherwise impossible demand by the hawks in the Bush administration. As Iraq’s UN Ambassador Mohammed Aldouri put it in his remarks Friday, “You cannot give with an empty hand,” an old Arab saying. What Blix finds promising on “substance” in the list is that these are the men who actually carried out the destruction of materials that could be assembled into weapons of mass destruction if Iraqi scientists knew how to do so. When the UN inspectors left Iraq in 1998, they had accounted for 95% of the chemical and biological programs, which led Scott Ritter to say Iraq had been “qualitatively” disarmed. What was left were these “gaps” in the records, which UNSCOM’s Richard Butler insisted was the responsibility of Iraq to prove did not exist. I don’t know if he ever asked Baghdad for a list of names of the workers who destroyed the missing materials, but now Baghdad has supplied the list without being asked for it. If the interviews get started now, Blix will be able to report to the Security Council on March 14 that Iraq has been “quantitatively” disarmed, removing any reason for war.

<snip>

Emphasis is mine. That last sentence nicely summarizes the rationale for the IWR. Blix had to be prevented from making that report.

on edit:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/may2000/iraq-m29.shtml

...Ritter went on to expose the claims of the Clinton administration that Iraq posed a military threat to neighboring states: “By 1998 Iraq's biological and missile plants were destroyed. In terms of the intent of the UN Security Council resolutions, Iraq had been disarmed. The world is blind to this reality. Even though Iraq has been disarmed, sanctions will remain until Hussein is gone.”

--Scott Ritter, 2000