Blix.

Vanity Fair's oral history of the Bush Administration is uniformly fascinating. I particularly like this:

Hans Blix: In March 2003, when the invasion took place, we could not have stood up and said, There is nothing, because to prove the negative is really not possible. What you can do is to say that we have performed 700 inspections in some 500 different sites, and we have found nothing, and we are ready to continue.

If we had been allowed to continue a couple of months, we would have been able to go to all of the some hundred sites suggested to us, and since there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction, that’s what we would have reported. And then I think that, at that stage, certainly the intelligence ought to have drawn the conclusion that their evidence was poor.

Mr. Blix, long-derided by the wankersphere, has been vindicated by history. What, I wonder, was Putz saying about Mr. Blix back in the day?

THE DAMNING OF SADDAM: This article from The Telegraph has a nice summary of Saddam’s misdeeds, and says that Blix’s report has greatly strengthened the case for war. [1/27/03]

HANS BLIX, ON THE JOB. [2/14/03]*

If someone were trying to demonstrate the bogus nature of the inspection process they could hardly have done better than Blix himself has done. [3/9/03]

HANS BLIX THINKS GLOBAL WARMING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WAR, which perhaps explains his lackadaisical approach to his job. [3/14/03]

It's safe to say that if history recognizes Putz at all, he will not be treated so kindly.

*Click the link. It still works!