"Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon." — US President George Bush, Cincinnati, October 7, 2002.
"The facts and Iraq's behaviour show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction... Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries." — US Secretary of State Colin Powell at the UN, February 5, 2003.
"The Australian government knows that Iraq still has chemical and biological weapons and that Iraq wants to develop nuclear weapons"— Prime Minister John Howard addressing parliament, February 4, 2003.
"Well I would have to accept that if Iraq had genuinely disarmed, I couldn't justify on its own a military invasion of Iraq to change the regime. I've never advocated that." — Howard addressing the National Press Club, Canberra, March 14, 2003.
"I want to assure all of you that the action we are taking is fully legal under international law. Back in the early 1990s resolutions were passed by the Security Council authorising military action against Iraq. That action was only suspended on condition that Iraq gave up its weapons of mass destruction. Clearly we all know this has not happened. As a result the authority to take military action under those earlier resolutions has revived." — "address to the nation" by Howard, March 20.
We said:
"Baghdad points out that the UN could find no evidence of the continued existence of weapons of mass destruction — nuclear, biological or chemical — and the UN Security Council should have lifted the sanctions." — Norm Dixon, Green Left Weekly #475, December 12, 2001.
"[British PM Tony] Blair must also be aware of the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that it had eliminated Iraq's nuclear weapons program 'efficiently and effectively'." — John Pilger, GLW #507, September 4, 2002.
"The fact that the discovery of a tiny number of obsolete shells is the most damning 'evidence' that the UN inspectors have been able to scrape together highlights the dilemma facing the US ruling class and its allies: that despite examining more than 230 sites, inspectors have not been able to provide an excuse for war that will be seen as reasonable by the majority of people, both within and outside the US." — Rohan Pearce, GLW #522, January 22, 2003.
From Green Left Weekly, February 11, 2004.
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