"US Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill, former Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf, UN Humanitarian Chief Stephen O'Brien, Former Israeli Ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, former Chief UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq Richard Butler, former US Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration, Former President of Georgia and Governor of Odessa Oblast Mikheil Saakashvili, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, former UN Special Envoy to Afghanistan Kai Eide, former Irish President Mary Robinson, former IAEA Chief Hans Blix, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, Former Iraq Prime Minister and Vice President Ayad Allawi, Tibetan PM"
"located and destroyed large quantities of Iraqi chemical weapons and related equipment and materials, and Iraq ceased both its chemical, biological and nuclear programs. In the early 2000s, the administrations of George W. Bush and Tony Blair asserted that Saddam Hussein's weapons programs were still actively building weapons, and that large stockpiles of WMDs were hidden in Iraq. Inspections by the UN to resolve the status of unresolved disarmament questions restarted between November 2002 and March 2003, under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441, which demanded Saddam give ""immediate, unconditional and active cooperation"" with UN and IAEA inspections, shortly before"
"UN weapons inspections. A new round of weapons inspections was performed in early 2003 by United Nations weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix, which searched Iraqi sites again, but found no new weapons or weapons programs. However, the Bush Administration decided that Saddam Hussein's regime must be removed, and it gave an ultimatum to that effect. Saddam's government did not respond to the ultimatum in the way that the Bush Administration wanted them to, and therefore, on March 19, 2003, the Coalition Forces of the United Kingdom and United States, with Australian, and Polish assistance began to invade Iraq. In"
"Scott Ritter William Scott Ritter Jr. (born July 15, 1961) was a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, and later a critic of United States foreign policy in the Middle East. Prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Ritter stated that Iraq possessed no significant weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities, becoming ""the loudest and most credible skeptic of the Bush administration’s contention that Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction."" He received harsh criticism from the political establishment but became a popular antiwar figure and occasional talk show commentator as a result of"
"to locate and destroy WMD stockpiles. The team was replaced in 1999 with the United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission, UNMOVIC. In 2002, Scott Ritter, a former UNSCOM weapons inspector, heavily criticized the Bush administration and the news media for relying on the testimony of alleged Iraqi nuclear scientist and defector Khidir Hamza as a rationale for invading Iraq. No militarily significant WMDs have been found in Iraq since the invasion, although several degraded chemical munitions dating to before 1991 have been. On June 21, 2006 a report was released through the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,"
"located and destroyed large quantities of Iraqi chemical weapons and related equipment and materials with varying degrees of Iraqi cooperation and obstruction, but the Iraqi cooperation later diminished in 1998. The disarmament issue remained tense throughout the 1990s with U.S. at the UN, repeatedly demanding Iraq to allow inspections teams to its facilities. Finally, this disarmament crises reached to its climax in 2002-2003, when U.S. President George W. Bush demanded a complete end to what he alleged was Iraqi production of weapons of mass destruction, and reasoned with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to comply with UN Resolutions requiring UN weapons"
"rejected the resolution. UNMOVIC could not send inspections to Iraq well into November 2002 after Resolution 1441 was passed. In 2000, the Secretary-General of the United Nations appointed Dr. Hans Blix of Sweden to be the Commission's Executive Chairman. He served from 1 March 2000 until the end of June 2003, roughly 3 months after Iraq had been invaded. With no ongoing inspections on the ground in Iraq, political tension escalated in the period 2000-2002 and, in the aftermath of September 11 attacks in 2001 Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq became the spotlight of the ongoing War on Terror policies"
"2003 invasion of Iraq, Blix was called back from retirement by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to lead the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in charge of monitoring Iraq. Kofi Annan originally recommended Rolf Ekéus, who worked with UNSCOM in the past, but both Russia and France vetoed his appointment. Blix personally admonished Saddam for ""cat and mouse"" games and warned Iraq of ""serious consequences"" if it attempted to hinder or delay his mission. In his report to the UN Security Council on 14 February 2003, Blix claimed that ""so far, UNMOVIC has not found any such weapons"
"Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror."" After the passing of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441, which demanded that Iraq give ""immediate, unconditional and active cooperation"" with UN and IAEA inspections, Saddam allowed U.N. weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix to return to Iraq. During the renewed inspections beginning in November 2002, Blix found no stockpiles of WMD and noted the ""proactive"" but not always ""immediate"" Iraqi cooperation as called for by UN Security Council Resolution 1441. With war still looming on 24 February 2003, Saddam Hussein took part in an interview with CBS"
"United Nations"" from 1991 to 1998 as a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq in the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), which was charged with finding and destroying all weapons of mass destruction and WMD-related manufacturing capabilities in Iraq. He was chief inspector in fourteen of the more than thirty inspection missions in which he participated. Ritter was amongst a group of UNSCOM weapons inspectors that regularly took Lockheed U-2 imagery to Israel for analysis, as UNSCOM was not getting sufficient analysis assistance from the U.S. and UK. This was authorised by UNSCOM, the U.S. U-2 having been loaned to"
"protection of their nuclear and radioactive material and installations, the Nuclear Security Fund. One of the major issues during ElBaradei’s second term as the director general of the IAEA was the agency’s inspections in Iraq. ElBaradei disputed the U.S. rationale for the 2003 invasion of Iraq from the time of the 2002 Iraq disarmament crisis, when he, along with Hans Blix, led a team of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq. ElBaradei told the UN Security Council in March 2003 that documents purporting to show that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Niger were not authentic. In an October 2003"
"groups to remove Saddam Hussein from office. The Act was signed by President Clinton on 31 October 1998. On the same day, Iraq announced it would no longer cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors. The UN, under Kofi Annan, brokered a deal wherein Iraq would allow weapons inspectors back into the country. Iraq ceased cooperating with inspectors only days later. The inspectors left the country in December. Inspectors returned the following year as part of The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC). Paul Wolfowitz, the military analyst for the United States Department of Defense under Ronald Reagan, had"
"Commission returned to Iraq for the first time since being withdrawn by the United Nations. Whether Iraq actually had weapons of mass destruction or not was being investigated by Hans Blix, head of the Commission, and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Inspectors remained in the country until they withdrew after being notified of the imminent invasion by the United States, Britain, and two other countries. In early December 2002, Iraq filed a 12,000-page weapons declaration with the UN. After reviewing the document, UN weapons inspectors, the US, France, United Kingdom and other countries thought that this"
"out weapons inspections in Iraq, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was to verify the destruction of Iraq's nuclear program. The United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) was set up after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait to inspect Iraqi weapons facilities. It was headed first by Rolf Ekéus and later by Richard Butler. During several visits to Iraq by UNSCOM, weapons inspectors interviewed British-educated Iraqi biologist Rihab Rashid Taha. According to a 1999 report from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, the normally mild-mannered Taha exploded into violent rages whenever UNSCOM questioned her about al-Hakam, shouting, screaming and, on"
"inspectors unfettered access to areas those inspectors thought might have weapons production facilities. Since the Gulf War in 1991, Iraq had been restricted by the United Nations (UN) from developing or possessing such weapons. It was also required to permit inspections to confirm Iraqi compliance. Bush repeatedly backed demands for unfettered inspection and disarmament with threats of invasion. On 20 March 2003, a multinational alliance containing the armed forces of the United States and United Kingdom launched an invasion of Iraq in 2003. After the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011, a number of failed Iraqi peace initiatives"
"Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Saddam accepted the resolution on 13 November and inspectors returned to Iraq under the direction of UNMOVIC chairman Hans Blix and IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. As of February 2003, the IAEA ""found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq""; the IAEA concluded that certain items which could have been used in nuclear enrichment centrifuges, such as aluminum tubes, were in fact intended for other uses. In March 2003, Blix said progress had been made in inspections, and no evidence"
"that we anticipated, which was the lack of food, water. We probably didn't quite appreciate, as I say, the ruthlessness of some of Saddam's [followers]."" Political preparation for war began in earnest during the period of weapons inspections in Iraq over the winter of 2002–2003, carried out by a team led by Hans Blix with the authority of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441. The U.S. and its principal allies, the United Kingdom, Spain and Portugal, maintained a skeptical position on the results of the inspections procedure. Under pressure from his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and his main ally,"
"Hossam Mohammed Amin Hassan Mohammed Amin was an Iraqi general under Saddam Hussein's government. He said in 2002 that Iraq would submit a list of chemical, biological and nuclear programs to UNMOVIC, but that the report would not disclose any banned weapons, ""because, really, we have no weapons of mass destruction."" He participated as an Iraqi member delegation in the discussions conducted between Iraq and the United Nations and the IAEA for the period 1991-2003. He was number 49 on the US list of 55 most wanted Iraqis during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was the 13th on the"
"David Kay David A. Kay (born c. 1940) is a weapons expert, political commentator, and senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. He is best known for his time as United Nations Chief Weapons Inspector following the first Gulf War and for leading of the Iraq Survey Group's search for weapons of mass destruction following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Upon presentation of the Group's finding that there had been significant errors in pre-war intelligence concerning Iraq's weapons programs, Kay resigned. The ensuing controversy served as impetus for the formation of the Iraq Intelligence Commission. Kay received a"
"powers including China, France, Germany, and Russia remained unconvinced that Iraq was a threat and refused to allow passage of a UN Security Council resolution to authorize the use of force. Iraq permitted UN weapon inspectors in November 2002, who were continuing their work to assess the WMD claim when the Bush administration decided to proceed with war without UN authorization and told the inspectors to leave the country. The United States invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, along with a ""coalition of the willing"" that consisted of additional troops from the United Kingdom, and to a lesser extent, from"
"1998, Ritter resigned his position as UN weapons inspector and sharply criticized the Clinton administration and the UN Security Council for not being vigorous enough about insisting that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction be destroyed. Ritter also accused UN Secretary General Kofi Annan of assisting Iraqi efforts at impeding UNSCOM's work. ""Iraq is not disarming"", Ritter said on August 27, 1998, and in a second statement, ""Iraq retains the capability to launch a chemical strike."" In 1998 the UNSCOM weapons inspectors left Iraq. There is considerable debate about whether they were ""withdrawn"", ""expelled"" from the country by Iraqi officials (as"
"Amir Hamudi Hasan al-Sadi Amir Hamudi Hasan al-Saadi or Amer al-Saadi (born April 5, 1938), ""the organizational genius behind the Iraqi superweapons program,"" was Saddam Hussein's liaison with the UN inspectors in the runup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Like the defector Hussein Kamel al-Majid, he insisted Iraq had destroyed its prohibited weapons. While he was dismissed by the US as a liar, he was vindicated by the subsequent failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction by the Iraqi Survey Group. He was #32 on the most-wanted list, and Seven of Diamonds in the card deck. He turned himself"
"to maintain a capability to return to WMD after sanctions were lifted..."" No senior Iraqi official interviewed by the ISG believed that Saddam had forsaken WMD forever. On October 6, 2004, the head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), Charles Duelfer, announced to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that the group found no evidence that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had produced and stockpiled any weapons of mass destruction since 1991, when UN sanctions were imposed. After he began cooperating with U.S. forces in Baghdad in 2003, Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, who ran Saddam's nuclear centrifuge program until 1997, handed over"
"manipulated or exaggerated the threat and evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities would eventually become a major point of criticism for the president. In late 2002 and early 2003, Bush urged the United Nations to enforce Iraqi disarmament mandates, precipitating a diplomatic crisis. In November 2002, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei led UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, but were advised by the U.S. to depart the country four days prior to the U.S. invasion, despite their requests for more time to complete their tasks. The U.S. initially sought a UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of military"
"WMD conjecture in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq WMD conjecture in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq concerns the immediate reactions and consequences to the failure by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group (ISG) to find the alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction during and after 2003 invasion of Iraq. The United States effectively terminated the search effort for unconventional weaponry in January 2005, and the Iraq Intelligence Commission concluded that the judgements of the U.S. intelligence community about the continued existence of weapons of"
"the number of top Iraqis held by the Coalition to 15. Walid Hamid Tawfiq al-Tikriti Walid Hamid Tawfiq al-Tikriti () (or Walid Hamid Tawfiq al-Nasiri) (born 1954) was the Governor of Basra from September 2002 to April 2003 and the Director of the Iraqi Special Security Organization from June 2001 to September 2002. Tawfiq was born in 1954 in Baghdad In 2002, Tawfiq was serving as Governor of Basra. Tawfiq replaced Qusay Hussein as the commander of the Iraqi Special Security Organization in June 2001, and served in this capacity until September 2002. Unlike Qusay, Tawfiq was an experienced army"
"in 2002, Media Lens argued that it was fraudulent for the UK and US government to claim justification for a war on the basis that Iraq still possessed a credible Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) threat and had an active WMD programme. Media Lens cited the work of former chief UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, who had stated 4 years previously, after thorough investigation by UN inspectors, that Iraq had been found to have ""fundamentally disarmed"" with 90–95 percent of its WMD capability eliminated. The editors further cited Ritter's opinion that it would have been impossible for Iraq to rearm"
"8, 2002, calling on Iraq to make ""an accurate full, final, and complete disclosure"" of its WMD programs, and threatening ""serious consequences"" if it did not comply. In the wake of resolution 1441, Iraq allowed UN weapons inspectors to return to the country. While the inspections were taking place, the U.S. continued to lobby the members of the UN Security Council to pass a resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force against Iraq. As part of that effort U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a presentation to the UN on February 5, 2003, in which he detailed false intelligence"
"to find WMD. This was shortly followed by the conclusion of a similar inquiry in the United Kingdom, the Butler Review, which was boycotted by the two main opposition parties due to disagreements on its scope and independence.([4]) In 2003, the US-sponsored search for WMD had been budgeted for $400 million, with an additional $600 million added in 2004. Kay's successor, named by CIA Director George Tenet, was former UN weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who stated at the time that the chances of finding any WMD stockpiles in Iraq were ""close to nil."" David Kay David A. Kay (born c."
"of China, and fellow NATO members Germany and Belgium. The Bush administration began a military buildup in the region, and after pushing hard gained passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1441. Led by Hans Blix, Head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and Mohamed ElBaradei Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Resolution brought weapons inspectors back to Iraq in November 2002. Inspectors began visiting sites where WMD production was suspected, but found no evidence of such activities, except for 18 undeclared empty 122 mm chemical rockets that were destroyed under UNMOVIC supervision."
"UN weapons inspectors, President Bush launched the invasion of Iraq, in conjunction with coalition partners, most notably, the United Kingdom. The invasion was described by Bush as being part of the general 'War on Terrorism'. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was captured and executed, but his supporters and other opposing forces staged an insurgency that dragged on for years. It was a major election issue in 2004 (when Bush was reelected) and in 2006 and 2008 (when President Obama was first elected to the Presidency, and Democrats increased their numbers in both Houses of Congress). Significant public support for the war"
"million to other international organizations. Further conflict between the U.S. and some UN members arose in 2002 and 2003 over the issue of Iraq. George W. Bush maintained that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had not fulfilled the obligations he had entered into at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, namely to rid Iraq of all weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and to renounce their further use. A series of inspections by the IAEA failed to find conclusive evidence that proved allegations that Iraq was continuing to develop or harbour such weapons. The findings were conveyed by the leading"
"a UN mandate for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In February 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations General Assembly, continuing US efforts to gain UN authorization for an invasion. Powell presented evidence alleging that Iraq was actively producing chemical and biological weapons and had ties to al-Qaeda. As a follow-up to Powell’s presentation, the United States, United Kingdom, Poland, Italy, Australia, Denmark, Japan, and Spain proposed a resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq, but NATO members like Canada, France, and Germany, together with Russia, strongly urged continued diplomacy. Facing a losing vote as"