Rating: 
Summary: Useful study of how UN disarmed Iraq
Review: Hans Blix was the Executive Chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC). In this absorbing book, he describes the key events before the 2003 attack on Iraq.He records how containment and inspections disarmed Iraq. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in 1997 and 1998 that it had eliminated Iraq's entire nuclear weapons programme and removed all fissionable material from Iraq. Nor could Iraq produce weapons-usable nuclear material. As Blix sums up, "seven years of IAEA inspection had left no significant nuclear options open." Iraq had destroyed any remaining chemical and biological weapons in 1991. In early 1999 a report for the Security Council concluded, "the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes have been eliminated." US Secretary of State Colin Powell agreed: on 24 February 2001, he said that Iraq had no 'significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction'. The UN had done what Bush and Blair wanted - disarmed Iraq so that they could then attack it for its oil. As Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld's deputy, said in January 2003, "Economically we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil." However, few at the UN wanted war. Blair panicked when his desperate efforts to win support for war failed: he criminally bugged UN offices, including those of Kofi Annan and Mexico, and he cynically blamed France for the war he wanted. As Robin Cook reported, Gordon Brown said on 13 March, "The message that must go out from this Cabinet is that we pin the blame on France for its isolated refusal to agree in the Security Council." But Blair, not France, was isolated. The UN opposed the war, making it illegal. Now the war against Iraq is escalating: US forces killed 600 people in Fallujah; Bush is sending 10,000 more troops; British troops are hostage to US fortunes - and all for what? The war is not for disarmament, nor against terrorism, nor for humanitarianism; it is a war for US control of Iraq's oil. For the Iraqi people, it is a war against the foreign occupier.
Rating: 
Summary: I don't care what this moron writes
Review: He didn't stop invasion on my country so he should be also eliminated.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring, Bland and Blix
Review: I visited Stockholm once and found it a wonderful city. There was so much to explore, a rich historical display with any number of museums and historic places. The city was interesting in its architecture and the people were very accommodating and nice. I mention this because I incorrectly assumed that this book would be similar given the Hanz Blix is, at the moment, the most well know Swede about. Unfortunately for me and most any other reader, Hanz is not Stockholm. This book was earth shatteringly dull, being exposed to WMD's would have been preferable then sitting through another chapter of this book. Plainly stated the man is not a good author. I was looking for three things from the book. A description on how the UN inspectors went about there business in Iraqi, a detailed account of the meetings Blix was in with all the world leaders that he had contact with in the run up to the war, and a scathing rebuttal for all the grief the guy took in the press and by the Bush Administration about the inspection process. I can only describe my attitude of the book as a shock; none of the three areas I wanted to read about were covered in much depth at all. I almost started to wonder if it really was Blix that wrote the book. All descriptions of the inspection process were vague and superficial. It became clear to me that he really did not manage the process very closely or he chose to completely remove it from his memory. On the point about his meetings with government officials I can only say this author is the exact opposite of Woodward. He could barely be bothered to mention the meetings let alone any detail. This is the stuff historians will be reading for in the years to come and this book offers up less then a newspaper account. I wanted a full he said / she said and all I got was some mumbled three word comment here and there. And on the third point, I thought that during the run up to the war Hanz was being very diplomatic by not answering all the down right nasty charges being tossed around about him. It turns out he is either the most forgiving man this side of the Pope or he is in desperate need of a spine. The only person he marginally disagreed with was David Kay who was basically just filling the roll of a TV pundit at the time. I assume that the reason Kay got some much mention is that Hanz has some long running feud with the man or Kay beat Bliz up in grade school. So did I like anything about the book? It pains me to say this, but there were some interesting insights to the man and the process. Taken in context and as part of gathering a full picture in the run up to the war, this book is probably required reading for no other reason then of who the author is. My only consolation is knowing that historians across the world will have to muster the strength to drudge through this tome just as I did. The only bright point is that, because the author had so little to say, the publisher had to make the type large and the margins small to get a page count that could muster the full hardback book price. Given this publishing slight of hand, the pages only have about ten words each so you get the illusion of making progress through the book. The reason I am giving the book an average rating is only for the historical significance of the book even though the meat you will get out of it would fill a magazine article.
Rating:
Summary: Anti-War, UN-subserving Liberal Traitors Are Also Illiterate
Review: Notoriously CONFIRMING what all sane-minded thinkers suspect about the anti-war, vengefully UN-defending liberal traitors, that dastard out of Seward is cursed with a hampering inability to SPELL PROPERLY! That swine misspells intelligence as I-N-T-E-L-L-E-G-E-N-C-E! Furthermore, that distasteful abomination in his literacy also infects his believability when it comes to his wicked defense and secret-crush on a weapons "inspector" who UNLAWFULLY subjected his trust to a dictator, to allow that dictator to screen and then decide which weapons sites to inspect, rather than taking charge, as a responsible-minded inspector would! Bottom Line: if the anti-war, psycho left-wing is so shabbily deteriorated in their literate intelligence, then they WILL ALSO BE unsatisfactorily abysmal when it comes to sanely analyzing that terrorism-supporting, dictator-loving Blix! Like that prototypically notorious, liberal, faceless coward's spelling disaster and ensuing believability damage, the facts that spew out of his TURD-WORLD-idolizing mouth pollute with the same ungodly dreadfulness in truth. That imbecile Bin-Laden-sympathizer blasphemes that "Blix has a 'lot' to offer our intel. community and our decision to go to war." That's BULL$HIT! Only a weak-minded apologist DOVE would sacrifice the practicality of war for hand-wringing diplomacy that accomplished stagnancy for 12 years, idiots! Also, Blix is USELESS to the intel. community because he's not a defector, an insider, OR capable of producing evidence. He's NOTHING BUT A BLIND LAPDOG of the Un and of tyrants like Hussein, who allows himself to be dictated to be mislead from site to site AFTER Hussein SCREENED them, obviously meaning to even the most hardened of liberal, impractical, anti-war idealists that those sites Blix was restrictively allowed to see were tampered with beforehand to CONCEAL. Any American who disagrees with this overwhelmingly unquestionable fact IS a traitor, anti-American, misappropriates the jealousy of the "international community" and the UN OVER American will, hates the military, wishes soldiers to die, aids and abets the enemy, sacrifices national security, AND, last but not least, sympathizes MORE with the governments of Old Europe who were exploiting their vetoes for monetary gains with Hussein's regime, all right, moron liberals??
Rating:
Summary: In order to not be revisionist
Review: One should keep this in mind:
From http://news.scotsman.com
Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix believed the Government's controversial Iraq weapons dossier actually understated the case against Saddam Hussein, according to documents released today (12 Oct 04) by the Foreign Office.
The papers released by the FO show that British officials at the United Nations in New York showed a draft of the dossier to Dr Blix in September 2002, two weeks before the final version was published.
A note from one official, Adam Bye, said that Dr Blix had liked the section on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons as he believed that it did not exaggerate the facts.
According to the note, Dr Blix said that the dossier even risked understating Iraq's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction - particularly the lethal anthrax virus.
Rating: 
Summary: compare the content of the 1 star and 5 star posts...
Review: The book is very good. First of all, this is not a little nobody writing some personal account. This is the man in charge of the UN inspections. Nobody better than him to offer real intelligence to the international community. He and El Baradei were in the ground. They were not sitting in D.C. or the CIA headquarters, thousands of miles away trusting in little bugs and informants. They were there, watching the ground with their eyes. They were willing to double check ALL what the US intelligence had gathered for years. Yet, they found that all that was crap. Take into account that this man started the inspection believing that Iraq HAD WMD. Yet, in the process he got convinced that he was wrong. And that is what apparently exasperated Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. I don't include Bush here because he is the main spokeperson of the administration, not the policy maker (and I am a Republican!). In summary, Blix could have offered the best possible intelligence available by all means. So, whatever the literary accomplishemnts are (I guess he wasn't interested in a Pulitzer), just pay attention to the facts. It will help you fill the gaps in your understanding of what was going on and what is going on now in Iraq. Compare the content of those who gave 1 star to this book and those who gave 4 or 5. And you will see that no matter what review you read, you will end up buying this book.
Rating:
Summary: Disarming Iraq
Review: The war against Iraq divided opinion throughout the world and generated a maelstrom of spin and counterspin. The man at the eye of the storm, and arguably the only key player to emerge from it with his integrity intact, was Hans Blix, head of the UN weapons inspection team. This is Dr. Blix's account of what really happened during the months leading up to the declaration of war in March 2003. In riveting descriptions of his meetings with Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Kofi Annan, he conveys the frustrations, the tensions, the pressure and the drama as the clock ticked toward the fateful hour. In the process, he asks the vital questions about the war: Was it inevitable? Why couldn't the U.S. and UK get the backing of the other member states of the UN Security Council? Did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction? What does the situation in Iraq teach us about the propriety and efficacy of policies of preemptive attack and unilateral action? Free of the agendas of politicians and ideologues, Blix is the plainspoken, measured voice of reason in the cacophony of debate about Iraq. His assessment of what happened is invaluable in trying to understand both what brought us to the present state of affairs and what we can learn as we try to move toward peace and security in the world after Iraq.
Rating:
Summary: A sobering assessment
Review: This is a remarkably even-handed discussion of the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the ensuing Iraq War of 2003. With the patience of a professor outlining an argument on the board, Blix presents all sides of the issues dispassionately and, so far as I can tell, unpartisanly. Blix originally believed that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, and so he eagerly accepted his assignment to head the UN inspection team. He and his searchers targeted the areas that international intelligence agencies assured President Bush and Prime Minister Blair were repositories of weapons. Finding nothing in any of them, Blix began to suspect that both he and the intelligence agencies were mistaken. Failure to find weapons of mass destruction after the fall of Saddam Hussein further convinced Blix that any such weapons that survived the 1991 Iraq War had been destroyed by 1994. Saddam had even offered (finally) documentary evident to that effect in February 2003, but it was too late to prevent the war the following month. Why, then, did Saddam refuse for the most part to cooperate with UN inspectors? Blix surmises that any number of reasons might've contributed to his stubbornness: pride, a sense of invulnerability, a fear that weapons inspectors were also spies, an unwillingness to accept foreign supervision. Regardless of the possible reasons, however, Blix is convinced that one of them was NOT that Saddam had anything to hide when it came to weapons of mass destruction. Blix is also convinced that President Bush wouldn't have gone to war had he not been persuaded that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. The war was no vendetta, says Blix, and so wasn't inevitable. Had he been allowed a few more months to inspect, he's certain he could've marshalled sufficient evidence to have prevented the war. Blix argues that the fall of Saddam is a good thing, but he also concludes that the balance sheet of the war is still in the negative. Getting rid of Saddam is a bonus, but it's outweighed so far by the increase in terrorism, the deaths of both civilians and military personnel in Iraq, and the social turmoil that continues in Iraq. Blix believes that neither the UK nor the US showed sufficient critical judgment in going to war. His final estimation is that there just weren't reasonable grounds for doing so. A well-documented, excellently-argued book. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: WMD improbable of escaping discovery?
Review: UN Security Council 687 mandated Iraq disclose a report of all weapons of mass destruction; also, it restricted states from importing Iraq oil until inspectors had determined all prohibitive materials had been eradicated; it gave inspectors unlimited access to all sites; and it helped inspectors find sites through links from the national intelligence agencies.
1991, Tarmiya focused on aluminum tubes. The conclusion of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was the aluminum tubes were not possible for use in building a nuclear reactor. The team determined centrifuge of Uranium had been used for enrichment of Uranium through a process know as electromagnetic isotope separation. Iraq had spent a total cost in the billions to create three centers with a possible aim of creating a nuclear weapon.
One possible scenario explaining what happened to the weapons of mass destruction came from an Iraqi general named Saadam Kammel. Saadam Kammel defected to Jordon telling his WMD story. Kammel was responsible for the Iraq weapons program. In 1990, Kammel ordered a cash program for a nuclear program using fission material from a research nuclear reactor but the program failed. Kammel took an offensive posture putting biological weapons placed for ready use. 1995, Kammel claims to have ordered the destruction of all Weapons of Mass destruction. However, no documents or evidence suggests that Kammel destroyed all the weapons of mass destruction. Kammel was assassinated by the Iraq regime.
By 1997, IAEA was reporting no discrepancy between the inspectors and the Iraqi declaration. In 1997, the UN Security Committee (UNSCOM) saw a breakdown such that Iraq would no longer deal with inspectors of U.S nationality. Operation Desert Fox forced 100 cruise missiles attacking 100 targets in Iraq. Sanctions significantly affected standards for living. The UN started its Oil for food programming agreeing to sell oil for food and other programs allowed by the United Nations; it allowed the import of military items for elite and supporters. By 2001, Secretary of Defense William Cohen said Iraq had rebuilt its infrastructure and Iraq was capable of producing biological and chemical weapons. An invasion was inevitable.
The UN monitoring, verification and inspection commission (UNMOVIAC) went onsite to determine weapons of mass destruction. The U.S strategy makers were suggesting a preemptive string not relying on a reactive posture; Cheney advocated a preemptive strike; Bush claimed time was running out and the threat of WMD destruction was a no win scenario that could not happen; a return of the UN inspectors could not guarantee Saadam's conformance to UN resolutions
Secretary Collin Powel explained the U.S wanted a solution without armed forces yet at the height of inspectors numbers there were 100,000 troops mass near Iraq. Powel said it was important to beef up inspections and it was necessary for the media to believe that inspections could avert a war. Bush said if no results were produced then disarmament over inspection would be used, so, in essence putting UNMOVIAC on notice.
Resolution 1441 allowed members of the security council power too recommend sites for inspection; allowed members of the security council to be part of the inspection team; allowed UNMOVIAC and IAEA to setup regional bases throughout Iraq; and allowed UNMOVIAC and IAEA to define no fly zones and exclusion zones.
The inspection path become known and considered hopeless. Deadline pressure mounted on Iraq: inspectors reported no prohibitive material, no sites harboring weapons of mass destruction; the US was demanding full, final, and complete declaration; 30 days was not enough time to provide an accurate list; the 12,000 pages declared by the Iraqis consisted in large part of reprints of the 1998 declaration. Military build up suggested inspections were over and containment failed.
UNMOVI AC was vilified for not declaring a smoking gun for the drone and cluster bombers both discovered but not report and illegal by UN resolution. UNMOVIAC lost credibility in reporting 1. Accounts on anthrax, chemical agents VX, SCUD missiles remotely piloted vehicle, and mobile facilities for the production of chemical and biological agents.
Aftermath showed no evidence of weapons taken to Syria; no documents of WMD of weapons destroyed; Iraq showed little resistance without employing chemical and biological weapons during the war. Were the documents hidden with the nuclear parts? UN inspectors claimed the likely hood of WMD escaping discovery as improbable.
Rating:
Summary: Critical Thinking and Clear Analysis
Review: What struck me most about Hans Blix was that he saw all perspectives and gave them their due. He treats each with courtesy, candor and an unbiased perspective. The review by reader David J. Gannon below is very accurate and fairly describes Blix's story. Having read the book it seems to me that fault may be placed upon many, not just the U.S., not just Saddam, not just faulty intelligence (although I think this shoulders the heaviest burden). And while my opinion per the timetable of the invasion has changed, and despite the unfortunate deaths of civilians and armed forces, the action was clearly a message or shot heard 'round the world since a number of countrie like Libia have come clean and the threat from North Korea seems to have disapated at least for the moment. We cannot allow rogue states to operate and conduct matters of warfare, brutality, and persecution at will. There must be a police force that protects all of humanity. The U.N. needs a backbone, but it also needs cooperation. I hope the cost and mistakes of this campaign will lead to greater global communication and cooperation.
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