Global Policy Forum

It's a question then, undoubtedly, of the biggest State Lie of recent years. Of a campaign of manipulation probably waged in full knowledge of the facts, in any case, in spite of all the contrary indications, to make world public opinion believe that Iraq held and constructed weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein, Number One Dictator on the Axis of Evil, threatened the security of his neighbors, the United States, and the whole world, thanks to this terrible arsenal that he could either use himself, or, in an even worse hypothesis, supply to Al-Qaeda. Destroying these weapons that he had succeeded in hiding from the UN inspectors for ten years justified the initiation of a preventative war against him.

Donald Rumsfeld, American Defense Secretary, declared Tuesday that it was possible that the Iraqis had "decided to destroy (them) before the conflict". This is a confession. More precisely, the beginning of a confession that the American and British authorities started a war in Iraq in March to "destroy" these weapons, while they enjoyed the quasi-certitude that those same weapons no longer existed at that date.

Iraq had such weapons in 1991. But a long campaign of inspection and destruction carried out under the aegis of the UN considerably reduced its arsenal. Did Saddam Hussein hold more of them hidden somewhere? Undoubtedly. But the most likely scenario, that we can now reconstruct, is that Iraq destroyed whatever weapons were left by November 2002, when the UN voted for Resolution 1441 which authorized the return of international inspection teams to Baghdad. Whence the inspectors' inability to discover the weapons.

Against those like Paris, Berlin and Moscow, who said that inspections should be continued because they were effective, Washington and London brandished "documents" in the guise of proofs that Iraq was playing with the UN inspection teams and that war was inevitable. America mobilized all its espionage apparatus, but, unable to find irrefutable proof, it published partial, truncated, suspect intelligence. In short, they bluffed.

During the war, Iraq used no weapons of mass destruction. Seven weeks after the end of the conflict, the American teams charged with searching-one should have said finding- a "smoking gun" remain empty-handed. George W. Bush and Tony Blair are finding it harder and harder to maintain that they are "persuaded" of the existence of these weapons. The truth, which they knew, becomes apparent today: the war was not started to destroy these weapons, but to change the Baghdad regime and to begin the remodeling of the Middle East. The weapons served only as a pretext.

Robin Cook, former British Cabinet Minister, who resigned over the war, demands a Parliamentary inquiry. Faced with this State Lie, democracy demands that world opinion know the whole truth.