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"I watched Bill O'Reilly at this hour for years, and I always marveled at how well prepared he was, how tough he was and how crisply and directly he expressed his views. What O'Reilly did was not easy. He set a high bar, and I'm gonna do my best to meet it. Thanks for sticking with us." |
O'Reilly was fired after allegations of sexual harassment, abuse and racial discrimination from former female co-workers, following the revelation that he and the network had paid more than $13 million in settlements to five women. |
• Blix said it was ironic that Jack Straw was so surprised by his report to the security council in March 2003, since it presented nothing new and that in a verbal summary of the report Blix had been positive about progress. He said of Straw: "I don't think anyone else took it as sensational. It was reporting on concea... |
• He said it was odd that he UK and the US declared that Saddam was refusing to cooperate with the inspectors when his team was saying the opposite. "I thought it was, both then and in retrospect, a bit curious that precisely at the time when we were going upward in evidencing cooperation, at that very time the conclus... |
• He said he was in favour of a second UN resolution. |
• He accused the UK of becoming the "prisoner" of the American train after Lord Goldsmith "wriggled". |
• He described the war as "illegal". |
• Did we learn anything new? We learned a bit more about his discussions with Tony Blair in the runup to the invasion. His strongest criticisms were definitely reserved for the US – ie saying that it suited the Americans to claim there were WMDs, and the implication of nuclear weapons being in Saddam's arsenal. Blix ve... |
4.58pm: Blix is asked for final reflections. He says the value of inspections must be part of a multilateral system. Independent inspections on sites must not be the long arm of intelligence. Blix recounts the government's route to the invasion. He said that the UK were wedded to a UN route but then Goldsmith wriggled ... |
4.48pm: The session is coming to a close, so time for lessons learned. Blix said weapons of mass destruction was never a very good term because it bundled together nuclear biological and chemical, and the British more or less accepted there was no nuclear threat. It was a convenient term. On the positive, he said inspe... |
Another element is the cooperation between intelligence and inspection, and it's a factor he sees as "desirable". It helped them get tips on where to look and where to go – even though the dossiers weren't very helpful, he adds. But he said there should be quality control. If the inspections findings don't tally with t... |
4.40pm: Blix said that Saddam took a strategic decision to get rid of weapons of mass destruction in 1991, but it suited him to continue to look dangerous to the Iranians. Asked to interpret Saddam's motives, Blix said he never met him. |
He thinks Saddam misjudged things at the end. Blix is asked about criticisms of the inspection programme, which fuelled frustrations at the way the inspections process was working. Was Blix aware of these concerns about performance of his team in the field. Blix said no, he was never told about it at the time. He was a... |
Lynes asks if UNMOVIC had everything they needed for the job, Blix said the funding could have been better, but then again the source of funding maintained their independence from respective governments. He said his people were good, they all had more than one month of training. "I think we had the tools, yes." |
4.27pm: Asked what more Iraq could have done, Blix said they could have done more in their declaration. They improved after that, but they could have been more proactive. They merely opened the door. |
4.26pm: Asked what would have happened if there had not been an invasion in March 2003, Blix said he would have completed the work and introduced proper monitoring. Sir Lawrence Freedman asks him for alternative scenarios. He said the diplomatic route could have been backed up by force, but not 250,000 men. Such pressu... |
4.22pm: Blix is asked about a proposal by the French to double inspections. He said he didn't think that would have helped. Better tips would have been more helpful. |
4.15pm: Lyne goes back to Blix's reports to the security council between January to March 2003. He says he regrets the harsh tones he adopted in a report in January, which was used as a warning to Iraq to improve its approach. Other than that, there are not many words he would have changed. When the British government ... |
4.07pm: Chilcot is asked about the array of views on the security council regarding the inspections timetable. There was no fixed deadline, he said. Chilcot cites Straw's evidence, in which he said that had there been a deadline, you would have also needed an ultimatum. So was that the problem with the concept of more ... |
4.02pm: Asked why Jack Straw got the document that he found "sensational" a little earlier than the rest of the security council, who got it on 7 March, Blix said this was simply because it hadn't been finished. It was a working document. |
3.59pm: Blix says he never questioned the good faith of Blair or George Bush about their belief that WMD existed. What he questioned was their judgment - both their judgments. |
3.56pm: Lyne presses Blix on the changed attitude from the British. Did he feel that they were keen at the start of the inspection process, then changed their minds? |
Yes, says Blix, pinpointing Straw's change of attitude to 10 March 2003. He speculates that it was the US that wasn't keen on the benchmarking process, since the next progress report wouldn't have been until April - after the date of the invasion. |
He says the 7 March cluster document, presented to the security council, seemed to be the catalyst for the British government to lose heart in the inspection process. (One assumes his reference to benchmarking refers to Blix's reporting back on whether Iraq was in compliance). |
Blix is asked about media reports that Blair tried to force him to change his mind on the absence of WMD, to placate the US. No, says Blix. He says the report, in the Mail, isn't correct. I don't think that Blair tried to persuade me, he says. |
3.50pm: Lyne asks Blix whether Iraq's approach led him to think it really had nothing to hide. Blix reiterates that he felt more cheered by the approach from February onwards. Yet he says at the time that iraq was becoming increasingly cooperative, the US and the UK seemed to be less and less confident about the inspec... |
He referred to a a report he presented to the UN security council on 7 March 2003. Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, had read it on the plane over and had said its contents were sensational. Blix, said Straw's conclusions were ironic, given that he, Blix, gave a verbal assessment to the council on the back of the rep... |
3.32pm: There's a 15-minute break. So what have we learned? |
• Blix said that when the Downing Street dossier was first published in September 2002 he believed that its contents were "plausible". He kept his thoughts private because of his role, but later said he told Blair in a private meeting in early 2003 he thought Iraq might be concealing weapons of mass destruction. |
• Blix said his views changed after January 2003 because of a greater openness by Iraq after he issued critical comments following their January 2003 declaration, which ran to 12,000 pages. |
• Blix reiterated that though some materials were found, including missile and warhead fragments, there were no WMD, despite all the sites they visited following more than a hundred tip-offs. |
• He said it the reliance on reports that Iraq was importing uranium from Niger was "scandalous" because it took the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) one day to discount the claims. |
3.15pm: Blix says that when the team was reporting back after visiting the sites that they were not finding WMD, the US and UK should have started to reconsider their sources, and realise that these were poor. That should be the lesson drawn. |
3.13pm: Blix says that while they didn't get "proactive cooperation" regarding the declaration in Jan 2003, they were never denied access to sites. |
He did warn Iraq that if his team didn't get good cooperation, they would get a critical report. After the 12,000-page declaration, Blix was indeed critical, and then he says he saw a marked change in Iraq's approach. |
3.08pm: Blix says it's true they were looking for smoking guns, and near the end, when the US was trying to discredit his team, they told him they knew he had found some equipment and held it back. But the materials in question did not add up to much. They did have time to destroy 70 missiles, which was quite significa... |
3.05pm: Blix cites the increasing level of cooperation by Iraq. In February 2003, for example, they offered to excavate materials from the 1991 war. They found fragments of bombs, says Blix. Under pressure from the US, Blix asked if some people involved with armament in 1991 could come abroad for interview. He never ex... |
2.59pm: Blix refers to the sites they had to inspect. In no case did they find WMD. But they found a stash of documents that should have been declared, for example. They also identified a violation regarding missiles. |
Chilcot asks whether it was up to Iraq to prove Saddam's regime was innocent or was it up to the international community, through his team, to prove otherwise. |
Blix says the legal rule is that unless you are proved guilty you must remain innocent. He said his view was that there was no assumption either way. "We simply looked for evidence". |
Blix admits that proving a negative was a dilemma for Iraq, but Blix said he stressed to them that they had the documentation, so it was in their gift to prove they had nothing to hide. |
Gilbert asks about Iraq's need to declare current WMD holdings and programmes, which was enshrined in resolution 1441. Blix said he was quite hopeful at the time that this would come. |
When it came, he was landed with 12,000 pages of documentation. A lot of repetition was in there. It didn't really resolve any major points. Blix said unless they had come up with a report that said 'here are the weapons' it would have been hard to satisfy anyone, not least the US. |
The reality is that they didn't have much to declare, he says, insisting that it couldn't be seen as a material breach of the resolution, because it was never maintained they had weapons. |
2.51pm: Blix says it wasn't stated that the weapons had been reconstituted at that point, just that they existed. He first became suspicious about the claims when he saw reports about uranium being imported from Niger. It took the IAEA one day in March 2003 to work out they were forgeries. He said it was the most scand... |
2.47pm: Blix is asked to comment on the now discredited dossier issued by the British government in 2002. He says at that time the inspections had not been restarted. The dossier drew on Unscom's accounts but they had never said the weapons existed. |
Blix said at the time he suspected that Iraq has WMD, but did not say so publicly because of his role. "The security council did not assume it so I did not say it publicly." |
The one area he was suspicious about was anthrax because it relied on evidence that was not being presented. |
At the time, he says of the British claim, "I thought it was plausible". On other dossiers published at the time, he says they were not directly useful because they did not provide evidence for their claims, but merely asserted the view that there were WMD. |
2.41pm: Blix says his team was responsible for providing evidence, but it was up to the security council to make a judgment on whether there was a material breach and to decide what to do on the basis of that. |
The council also had to make a decision to authorise that. But this was absent from resolution 1441. Lyne presses Blix on whether a further decision was actually needed, in light of previous resolutions. Blix says yes. He quotes formwe US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice saying military action was merely upholding t... |
Blix makes the distinction between the threat of action, and actually taking it. He says with distaste that the US seemed to think, "why should we have a permission slip from the security council?" |
Blix goes on to say that the US seemed to think that if the security council did not agree with their position, the council was consigning itself to irrelevance. Highly presumptious, sniffs Blix. |
2.37pm: Lyne cites the French position when voting on resolution 1441. Were they aware that the US believed that no further resolution was required in case of a material breach? Blix confirmed the French were aware that some interpreted one way, and others in another - not an exceptional situation for the UN, he quips. |
2.33pm: Lyne asks Blix if it gave Iraq a realistic prospect of meeting the resolution. Blix points out that Iraq didn't have any weapons of mass destruction. The big discussion was whether a second resolution would be required. He said he felt it was necessary, contrasting that with the UK saying it was "desirable". |
2.31pm: Blix says the weapons inspectors had only three-and-a-half months to do weapons inspections under resolution 1441 and there was nothing in there that stopped the clock in March. The resolution required Iraqis to abide by what his team said, which Blix welcomed because it strengthened with their position. We wer... |
2.26pm: Sir Roderic Lyne moves things on to 2002, when Iraq allowed the inspectors to come into Iraq. Blix said this was because of the military build-up by the Americans. He cites some of the "sensational things" that were said at the time ie that the US would use force if they felt under threat. They didn't even refe... |
2.23pm: Blix tells the inquiry that when he came in as head of the weapons inspection team he believed that some of the Iraqi resistance to Unscom (UN special commission) was due to their approach. He didn't see the need to humiliate Iraq, he says. |
2.13pm: Blix says a "rebate" could be given for openness, for example. He admits that over the years that this tremendous search for a few items was perhaps not worthwhile, and that it would have been better to have something more flexible. |
"We knew after the war there were no nuclear weapons – there never were any – and the infrastructure was gone. So after 1998, they could not guarantee there were some weapons but they wanted by that time to write off the nuclear dossier." |
The UK were keen on that too, he says, but the US weren't keen. |
2.11pm: Blix says there was an attempt by the Iraqis to keep as much as they could of their resources – whether to keep them for peaceful purposes or to revive less positive aims. Because the missiles were not proscribed - other than those with long range - they could keep engineers and institutions and somehow bury th... |
2.07pm: Sir John Chilcot sets the scene and hands over to Sir Martin Gilbert to ask the first question. Following the first Gulf war in 1991, what were the obligations re WMD? Blix says Saddam had to declare WMD, and Unscom and the IEA would verify the weapons and oversee their destruction. Blix says that when everythi... |
1.51pm: Hans Blix, the UN's former chief weapons inspector, who headed the team searching for Saddam's weapons from November 2002 until the eve of the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, is this afternoon's witness at the Chilcot inquiry. |
Here's a quick recap of events. |
The central claim in the No 10 arms dossier that suggested Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes was reported in September 2002. |
UN resolution 1441, which required Saddam to cooperate with the UN weapons inspector, was unanimously agreed in Nov 2002. |
In January 2003 - two months before the invasion of Iraq, UN inspectors had been to a number of key sites named by British and US intelligence and did not find any WMD. At the time Blix urged for more time for UN inspectors to do their job, but the request went unheeded. |
Blix presented a report to the UN security council on 7 March 2003, and gave a verbal report to those present in which he said that Iraq was making progress, cooperating much more than it had been in early months, and destroying weapons. (Blix recently said that he personally expressed his scepticism to Blair that Sadd... |
The Swede, who was formally a diplomat and politician before being brought out of retirement to become 1st executive chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (2000 to 2003), has set out his stall on the events running up to the Iraq invasion on many occasions, so it will be inte... |
Twitter launched a new TV ad campaign last night in the USA. The first spot is focused on the World Series and is loud, garish and cartoony. |
Designed to promote the currently US-only Moments feature, it highlights some of the ways fans might get involved with baseball games through tweets. It’s ‘zany,’ ‘action-packed’ and very mass market. |
The Twitter ad was literally as loud, confusing and overly stimulating as Twitter is. Great job simplifying for onboarding, you guys. |
But of course the point is that it’s not an ad for us. It’s probably not an ad for your either. As a TNW reader you probably use Twitter, or at least understand it. As The Verge reports, this new campaign will target people who don’t use Twitter but could get value out of it, using Moments as a gateway drug. |
The Twitter I know is smart, witty and has very little sports chatter. The ad is dumb, loud and all about sports. This ad doesn’t reflect ‘my Twitter’ and it probably doesn’t reflect ‘your Twitter’ either. The great thing about the service is that every one of its 320 million active monthly users makes it their own thr... |
User growth continues to crawl, and Twitter needs to do something. Targeting a new audience with in-your-face ads seems like a good strategy, although hopefully Moments can live up to the loud, garish promise of this spot. |
The international break arrived at the right time for struggling West Ham United and their focussed training in the past fortnight can kickstart their Premier League campaign, winger Michail Antonio said on Tuesday. |
REUTERS: The international break arrived at the right time for struggling West Ham United and their focussed training in the past fortnight can kickstart their Premier League campaign, winger Michail Antonio said on Tuesday. |
West Ham have lost their first four league games, including a 1-0 home defeat by promoted Wolverhampton Wanderers before the break, to heap pressure on new manager Manuel Pellegrini and his expensively assembled squad. |
"International breaks can sometimes be a blessing and sometimes be a curse and right now, I'd say it's a blessing because it's given ourselves a chance to clear our minds after the first part of the season," Antonio told the club's website https://www.whufc.com/news/articles/2018/september/12-september/antonio-i-am-det... |
"It's given us an opportunity to do some good work and get ready to make a fresh start... we've been working on shape and tactical stuff and tying things down." |
West Ham brought in a number of new players in the close season but are yet to extract the best out of them, scoring just two goals in the league so far. |
"We've signed nine new players and it takes time to gel as you can see in the games, where we're passing balls where we think people should be and getting things a bit muddled up," Antonio added. |
"We need to learn more about each other and I do see it coming good." |
West Ham return to Premier League action with Sunday's trip to Everton. |
A person rooting for public interest was arrested, ostensibly on charges of “extortion” on Thursday. The extraordinary circumstances surrounding the case against Mozammel Hoque, the road safety campaigner and general secretary of a passenger welfare organisation, raise lots of questions. |
Firstly, it is highly unusual for police to arrest a person at 3am regarding a case of extortion. According to Hoque's colleagues, police officers who arrested him admitted to acting upon instructions of the high-ups. Secondly, and most astonishingly, reports in this newspaper and a few others revealed that the “accuse... |
The Jatri Kalyan Samity, Hoque's organisation, may have earned the wrath of powerful quarters by releasing periodical basic data on road accidents, that too based on media reports. Given the public mood about the ever-deteriorating road safety in the country, the Samity's accident compilation report may have embarrasse... |
After testifying Tuesday at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon about Syria’s hegemony over Lebanon and revealed some the factors that led to the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, MP Marwan Hamadeh resumed on Wednesday his testimony before STL , focusing on the pressure that Syrian president Bas... |
Hamadeh testified that he met in August 2004 with Hariri at the residence of Progressive Socialist Party chief Walid Jumblatt in Beirut’s Clemenceau immediately after the former PM returned to Lebanon from talks with Assad in Damascus. |
Hamadeh testified that Jumblatt advised Hariri to avoid confrontation and respond positively to Assad’s threat and vote for the extension of Lahoud’s term, and then quit from the cabinet and leave Lebanon to preserve his dignity. |
Hamadeh testified that Hariri believed relations with Syria should be corrected and that required the election of a new president and not a head of state who is completely submissive to the Syrian will. |
“Everyone in the cabinet knew that Hariri had come under pressure by Assad. During the 10-minute cabinet session there was total silence by all the supporters of the Syrian regime who wanted the constitutional amendment in order to renew Lahoud’s term. |
He then addressed the issue of UN resolution 1559 and its implications on the Syrian regime and Hezbollah. |
“The international community sensed that Syria was pressuring Lebanese state institutions, instead of easing its grip on the country, in the buildup to the adoption of resolution 1559. |
Hamadeh stressed that 1559 was basically the same as the Taef accord and was in fact meant to implement what the Taef didn’t . |
“Resolution 1559, regardless of its interpretation by various forces in Lebanon, is identical to the Taef Accord and National Pact.” he said and stressed that Lebanese officials sought to implement the resolution through negotiations, mainly over Hezbollah’s disarmament, but the Pro-Syria media and officials in Lebanon... |
He told the court that Hariri and Jumblatt sought to persuade international powers that Hezbollah can be disarmed through dialogue. They pressed for this stance in order to thwart foreign meddling in Lebanon. |
“I believe that Hariri voted for the extension of Lahoud’s term in order to avoid disputes and tensions in Lebanon. He was probably secretly counting on creating a change in the upcoming parliamentary polls.” He said , on the other hand Jumblatt voted against the amendment and extending Lahoud’s term and spoke during t... |
Hamadeh said that vote on the extension helped Hariri and his allies determine the number of MPs that actually opposed the extension.. He said after that some of these MPS were assassinated . |
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