1 00:00:00,810 --> 00:00:06,810 Good evening and welcome to the Lisa to the six iteration of our lecture series 2 00:00:07,140 --> 00:00:12,560 Understanding Analysing Iraq after the disastrous 2003 invasion occupation. 3 00:00:12,570 --> 00:00:17,080 I am absolutely delighted to be able to introduce my friends and former colleague 4 00:00:17,550 --> 00:00:23,460 will take over is a professor of political science at the University of Oslo. 5 00:00:23,760 --> 00:00:31,590 And it's not really here. The first slice of a really exciting project which is finished the first time, is going to be hopefully coming out soon, 6 00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:38,159 looking at the lead up to the invasion of Iraq and in particular looking at a puzzle that suddenly I 7 00:00:38,160 --> 00:00:43,709 have a generation of people who was politicised by by the invasion I thought about for a long time, 8 00:00:43,710 --> 00:00:49,320 which is why doesn't Saddam come clean when the writing's on the wall, that the invasion is going to occur? 9 00:00:49,680 --> 00:00:53,460 So Wilfred is really the best placed person to speak to this issue. 10 00:00:53,860 --> 00:00:59,790 She's one of the leading experts on weapons of mass destruction, international security in the world, 11 00:01:00,030 --> 00:01:04,020 and she's previously the author of The Physics of Displacement of University Press. 12 00:01:04,290 --> 00:01:09,060 She's published in basically every major international Security and International relations journal. 13 00:01:09,240 --> 00:01:13,860 I think today we're going to get a paper that was just published in International Security. 14 00:01:13,860 --> 00:01:21,450 We need the premium outlet for this kind of work called The Cheetah's Dilemma Iraq, WMD and the 2003 War. 15 00:01:21,450 --> 00:01:26,880 I invited you to join me and welcoming Wilfred for what is, I'm sure, going to be a really exciting talk. 16 00:01:33,680 --> 00:01:40,950 Thank you very much for that very kind introduction. It's wonderful to see a former colleague and to meet so many new friends. 17 00:01:40,950 --> 00:01:49,669 So thank you so much for having me. So this project is part of really my my main project as an academic. 18 00:01:49,670 --> 00:01:55,910 I think when I was doing my master's thesis at The O.C. and Iraq Invasion was about to happen. 19 00:01:55,940 --> 00:02:03,889 And some of my feeling has stayed with me both as a theme that that merits research and 20 00:02:03,890 --> 00:02:10,010 also as a scenario where exciting new sources have kept emerging in the past two decades. 21 00:02:10,400 --> 00:02:16,310 So this is very, very much a moment where I'm excited to talk about some of my findings, 22 00:02:16,460 --> 00:02:21,320 some of my conclusions, and to discuss those with with all of you. 23 00:02:21,320 --> 00:02:31,649 So I'm very happy to be here this evening. So as those of you who were around in 2003 may recall the case for the invasion, 24 00:02:31,650 --> 00:02:41,510 this infamous slam dunk case was based on Iraq having no actively pursuing weapons of mass destruction, WMD for short. 25 00:02:41,990 --> 00:02:50,330 And that was taken as the the safe threats in making the case for a war after the invasion. 26 00:02:50,390 --> 00:03:00,380 However, there were no such weapons, and that actually generally shocked many of the soldiers and inspectors, and that went to Iraq after 2003. 27 00:03:00,770 --> 00:03:08,600 And it raised a big puzzle what had happened, in the words of one of their senior inspectors, David Kay. 28 00:03:08,780 --> 00:03:12,230 We were all wrong when he told the US Congress. 29 00:03:13,100 --> 00:03:19,880 It's important to stress that it wasn't just the states that wanted to go and go to war against Iraq, 30 00:03:20,330 --> 00:03:25,220 who believed there might be weapons or programs to produce weapons of mass destruction. 31 00:03:25,820 --> 00:03:30,800 This was a belief that was held by all the countries in Europe and also in the Middle East, 32 00:03:31,220 --> 00:03:39,680 and I think was the belief that had set in during the 1990s when there were U.N. weapons inspections taking 33 00:03:39,680 --> 00:03:47,749 place to ensure that Iraq disarmed of these weapons as it was ordered to do by the U.N. Resolution 687, 34 00:03:47,750 --> 00:03:50,780 which ended the 1991 Gulf War. 35 00:03:51,530 --> 00:04:01,189 Iraq's behaviour during the 1990s, its apparent resistance to these inspections, its reluctance dragging its feet, 36 00:04:01,190 --> 00:04:10,040 constantly reinforced a view very early on that Iraq's basic modus operandi was to cheat and retreats. 37 00:04:10,580 --> 00:04:15,320 And this year became entrenched as early as late 1991. 38 00:04:15,470 --> 00:04:21,440 I have found amongst the inspectors and the key countries on the U.N. Security Council, 39 00:04:21,950 --> 00:04:27,920 and there wasn't really anything Iraq could do that could convince countries otherwise. 40 00:04:29,650 --> 00:04:40,660 So the story really begins in April 1991 with Resolution 687, a cease fire resolution ending the 1951 Gulf War. 41 00:04:41,650 --> 00:04:46,400 This resolution is sometimes called the mother of all resolutions. 42 00:04:46,420 --> 00:04:50,620 It's large. It contains many, many different aspects. 43 00:04:50,890 --> 00:04:56,080 But at the core of the resolution is the demands that Iraq verifiably and 44 00:04:56,080 --> 00:05:01,690 completely disarms those weapons of mass destruction completely and verifiably. 45 00:05:01,900 --> 00:05:07,570 He comes here completely is difficult to define in practice. 46 00:05:08,080 --> 00:05:17,590 In many ways, this cease fire resolution can be compared to the missile treaty of Germany to disarm after the First World War. 47 00:05:18,040 --> 00:05:25,570 And it has it treats Iraq effectively as a defeated state, even though it's a cease fire resolution. 48 00:05:26,260 --> 00:05:35,200 According to Ambassador Tom Pickering, who was the U.S. ambassador at the Security Council overseeing the drafting of this resolution. 49 00:05:35,680 --> 00:05:40,900 It treated Iraq as a defeated state with no sovereign rights of resistance, 50 00:05:41,050 --> 00:05:47,050 meaning that the inspectors had the right to go everywhere and look at everything. 51 00:05:47,950 --> 00:05:51,790 Naturally, the Iraqi authorities did not like this. 52 00:05:51,850 --> 00:05:57,759 They were concerned that amongst the inspectors there might be others or there might be opportunities 53 00:05:57,760 --> 00:06:03,670 for intelligence services to wiretap and piggyback systems that were established in Iraq. 54 00:06:04,120 --> 00:06:10,210 So they were constantly pushing back against this expansive rights of of access. 55 00:06:11,080 --> 00:06:17,980 At the same time, in 1991, Iraq was in a terrible shape after the war. 56 00:06:19,300 --> 00:06:25,690 It was clear to senior Iraqi officials that the extensive sanctions that were 57 00:06:25,690 --> 00:06:32,200 imposed when Iraq had invaded Kuwait in 1990 and posed a threat to regime survival, 58 00:06:32,860 --> 00:06:37,149 as senior officials such as Tariq Aziz, often foreign minister, 59 00:06:37,150 --> 00:06:44,740 sometimes deputy prime minister, told his senior colleagues in late 1991, Iraq is collapsing. 60 00:06:45,310 --> 00:06:48,450 The legal institutions, the police, everything is eroding. 61 00:06:48,820 --> 00:06:53,290 If you have any ideas how we can get rid of these sanctions, please let me know. 62 00:06:53,300 --> 00:06:57,320 Because in reality, Iraq is is failing, as you suggest. 63 00:06:58,000 --> 00:07:00,610 So getting rid of the sanctions was essential. 64 00:07:01,030 --> 00:07:11,590 And this resolution provided an avenue for this by set by setting out a path whereby if Iraq completely and verifiably disarmed of these weapons, 65 00:07:11,920 --> 00:07:18,040 the Security Council could lift the sanctions. That sounds like a straightforward arrangement. 66 00:07:18,310 --> 00:07:27,610 Of course it wasn't. The resolution was designed in such a way that there was no automatic way but with Iraq's compliance, 67 00:07:27,610 --> 00:07:34,720 its disarmament, along with other areas that the resolution identified and lifting the sanctions. 68 00:07:34,960 --> 00:07:37,960 And so it meant that the Security Council, 69 00:07:38,320 --> 00:07:49,150 where many of the states that had gone to war against Iraq in 1991 would decide whether Iraq had sufficiently complied and sanctions could be lifted. 70 00:07:49,840 --> 00:07:58,300 So this was a difficult situation, of course, for Iraq in deciding how much to cooperate and how much to comply. 71 00:07:58,870 --> 00:08:08,920 To what extent would it hand over weapons and capabilities that, according to the experiences and perspectives of senior Iraqi officials, 72 00:08:09,250 --> 00:08:13,570 had played a crucial role in getting the war between Iran and Iraq? 73 00:08:13,750 --> 00:08:22,150 Chemical weapons were used on a large scale, and, according to the Iraqi officials, have been essential for their survival. 74 00:08:23,170 --> 00:08:35,350 So to hand over these weapons and completely and verifiably would submit to monitoring of this was was a real security challenge for Iraq. 75 00:08:35,890 --> 00:08:41,290 And if there was no guarantee of sanctions being lifted in return, you have a real dilemma. 76 00:08:41,770 --> 00:08:45,360 And this frames the dilemma that I call the chief of staff, 77 00:08:45,360 --> 00:08:53,380 that which resulted from Iraq's initial stumbling want to say and in tackling this this situation. 78 00:08:57,240 --> 00:09:07,110 So hopefully you can see here, I'm reminded read what Saddam Hussein himself said after he was captured in late 2003 79 00:09:07,110 --> 00:09:13,799 when he was repeatedly debriefed as a as the Americans quoted about a number of things, 80 00:09:13,800 --> 00:09:18,450 but most notably his weapons of mass destruction and why there weren't any to be found. 81 00:09:19,440 --> 00:09:28,979 So Saddam Hussein insisted to his increasingly frustrated American counterparts debrief were that there 82 00:09:28,980 --> 00:09:36,990 were no such weapons and that Iraq had already sent this in the 1990s and provided documentation, 83 00:09:36,990 --> 00:09:43,680 but that no one had believed them. But here Saddam is for once acknowledging a mistake. 84 00:09:43,680 --> 00:09:46,709 That didn't happen very often. Here. 85 00:09:46,710 --> 00:09:51,270 He acknowledges that Iraq made a mistake by destroying some weapons. 86 00:09:51,270 --> 00:09:57,960 And here he's talking about chemical weapons and biological weapons without U.N. supervision. 87 00:09:58,680 --> 00:10:05,579 And when questioned as to whether Iraq also made a mistake regarding failure to 88 00:10:05,580 --> 00:10:10,440 provide complete disclosure initially and throughout the inspection process, 89 00:10:11,100 --> 00:10:17,820 Hussein responded, That's a very good question. I also think that's a very, very good question. 90 00:10:17,910 --> 00:10:22,620 And Saddam Hussein never answered it. He only said it was a good question. 91 00:10:22,630 --> 00:10:33,330 So it is been my task to try and provide some answers based on the sources that have become available since the 2003 invasion. 92 00:10:33,930 --> 00:10:37,980 And the good news, I suppose, is that there is a lot to work with. 93 00:10:38,220 --> 00:10:45,630 There is really an enormous amount of source material coming from different sources. 94 00:10:46,020 --> 00:10:55,170 One is the captured records, and that's got them now somewhere in limbo in the United States system, but hopefully will emerge. 95 00:10:55,500 --> 00:11:00,300 And that I have was able to consult before the after holding them shut down. 96 00:11:00,900 --> 00:11:10,559 But the other sources that I have collected include the personal archives of many senior Iraqi scientists and 97 00:11:10,560 --> 00:11:18,750 officials who were involved in the U.N. disarmament inspection process and also their U.N. counterparts. 98 00:11:19,140 --> 00:11:27,330 So through these sources, I have been able to to really look behind the scenes at the discussions between senior 99 00:11:27,330 --> 00:11:33,120 Iraqi officials regarding how much to disclose in terms of information about their weapons, 100 00:11:33,420 --> 00:11:40,470 how much to cooperate with U.N. inspectors when they were really not sure whether cooperation would be rewarded or not. 101 00:11:41,400 --> 00:11:52,110 And to get a sense of how this played out in doing the implementation process at various levels of this of this vast state apparatus. 102 00:11:53,040 --> 00:11:58,260 And what has emerged quite clearly from from these sources is that they were really 103 00:11:58,470 --> 00:12:04,800 two important dynamics going on that I think we're not sufficiently understood, 104 00:12:04,950 --> 00:12:10,800 certainly not prior to 2003. The first is what I call a change of government, 105 00:12:11,700 --> 00:12:19,620 which is how much to reveal in terms of possibly information itself, incriminating information in this case, 106 00:12:19,980 --> 00:12:30,780 such as development testing and use of chemical and biological weapons on political prisoners, acts of genocide and so on and so forth. 107 00:12:31,230 --> 00:12:40,050 When the reward continues to be elusive, when the sanctions are lifted, and even though you keep scaling up the disclosures. 108 00:12:40,590 --> 00:12:48,420 On the other hand, if you don't cooperate, you're likely to experience severe punishments, possibly even more. 109 00:12:49,170 --> 00:12:58,260 So this dilemma, I find, is central in the discussions between Iraqi regime officials throughout this process, 110 00:12:58,260 --> 00:13:04,200 and especially at key turning points in 2002 and 2003. 111 00:13:05,250 --> 00:13:13,350 The other dynamics that I think surprised me at least and was likely a surprise to many observers 112 00:13:13,800 --> 00:13:22,140 who were looking at Iraq prior to 2003 was how severe the implementation problems were. 113 00:13:22,920 --> 00:13:32,969 So when Saddam Hussein and his senior officials decided to scale up cooperation to give the U.N. inspectors everything they asked for, 114 00:13:32,970 --> 00:13:38,520 which ultimately they did and their staff wouldn't do it. 115 00:13:38,970 --> 00:13:46,290 And so there are examples in the sources of Saddam's senior ministers spending hours in their bureaucracies, 116 00:13:46,290 --> 00:13:50,280 pleading with people, saying, yes, we actually want you to cooperate. 117 00:13:50,550 --> 00:13:55,140 This is a genuine order. These do it. If not, there will be war. 118 00:13:56,440 --> 00:14:05,559 Regardless of such pleading with, we find numerous examples of orders not being followed and even worse perhaps, 119 00:14:05,560 --> 00:14:10,160 of individuals hiding valuable documents, 120 00:14:11,200 --> 00:14:16,239 designs of centrifuges and things like that that were precisely what the inspectors 121 00:14:16,240 --> 00:14:20,469 were looking for and that they were hiding them even in their own gardens, 122 00:14:20,470 --> 00:14:29,590 in some cases for personal profit motives, in some cases waiting for the regime change they thought was increasingly likely. 123 00:14:30,040 --> 00:14:36,339 So there are all kinds of problems that really sort of cuts against this this 124 00:14:36,340 --> 00:14:43,510 narrative of Iraq as a of an authoritarian state that was ruled by Saddam personally. 125 00:14:44,080 --> 00:14:48,950 And so what I find is there was a lot that didn't work the way that I wanted to. 126 00:14:48,980 --> 00:14:55,630 And in fact, one of his key problems was not only that his subordinates didn't do what they were told, 127 00:14:55,810 --> 00:15:01,140 but that his senior officials didn't even believe him when he said, we have no weapons. 128 00:15:02,950 --> 00:15:11,139 So there's a lot going on in these sources, and I'm happy to talk about some of these things in my remarks today, 129 00:15:11,140 --> 00:15:14,440 and I'll share some examples of these sources as well. 130 00:15:14,800 --> 00:15:18,340 Hopefully you'll be as excited about them as I am. 131 00:15:19,390 --> 00:15:23,530 So starting in the beginning, after the 1991 Gulf War, 132 00:15:23,980 --> 00:15:32,049 it's it's perhaps difficult to imagine just how extensive the damage was and how 133 00:15:32,050 --> 00:15:39,370 difficult it was for Iraqi officials to begin to respond to this cease fire resolution, 134 00:15:39,370 --> 00:15:46,150 which demanded that they admit inspectors within a few weeks. 135 00:15:46,600 --> 00:15:52,570 And for the inspectors, once they arrived, how difficult and dangerous the conditions were on the ground. 136 00:15:53,080 --> 00:16:03,610 So in the first few weeks, there were a lot of strategic deliberations going on at the senior levels of the Iraqi regime regarding 137 00:16:03,880 --> 00:16:09,820 how much information should they provide the U.N. inspectors with in their initial declarations, 138 00:16:09,820 --> 00:16:14,740 their written statements about what they had, what kinds of weapons, what kinds of facilities, 139 00:16:15,490 --> 00:16:21,760 and also how welcoming should they be in terms of granting the inspectors access on the ground. 140 00:16:23,290 --> 00:16:33,700 And one of the key architects of Iraq's initial response to this ceasefire resolution was Hussein Kamel, one of Saddam's son in law, 141 00:16:33,850 --> 00:16:43,060 who I think we can say was the son in law from [INAUDIBLE], because he really, really created a lot of problems throughout course of this entire saga. 142 00:16:43,780 --> 00:16:50,319 But this was very, very powerful. And he was seen as someone who was, of course, not equal to Saddam in the regime, 143 00:16:50,320 --> 00:16:56,290 but he was certainly above many of the other senior ministers and was able to largely do 144 00:16:56,290 --> 00:17:01,510 whatever he wanted because everyone assumed Saddam Hussein that whatever he said he would do. 145 00:17:02,260 --> 00:17:14,260 So the same cargo was sitting down with the senior WMD scientists crafting a response to the 687 resolution that scientists recommended, 146 00:17:14,260 --> 00:17:19,530 just coming clean immediately. They thought the U.N. inspectors will have unimpeded access. 147 00:17:19,540 --> 00:17:26,559 We can't hide these fast programs with thousands of employees and large infrastructure, 148 00:17:26,560 --> 00:17:32,320 and most of which was clearly identifiable, at least when it came to the nuclear weapons program. 149 00:17:32,710 --> 00:17:37,750 So why not just come clean and be done with it? Hussein Kamel disagrees. 150 00:17:38,350 --> 00:17:43,510 He considered a range of options from full cooperation to no cooperation, 151 00:17:43,960 --> 00:17:51,040 but landed on an approach whereby the Iraqis would only disclose what they thought the 152 00:17:51,040 --> 00:17:55,600 outside world already knew when it came to their weapons of mass destruction programs. 153 00:17:56,050 --> 00:18:04,300 And not being very forthcoming in response to questions just answered very narrowly and that the U.N. inspectors figure it out essentially. 154 00:18:05,140 --> 00:18:12,219 So this approach meant that there was a lot that the outside world did not know about Iraq's WMD programs, 155 00:18:12,220 --> 00:18:17,530 certainly when it came to the biological weapons program and the nuclear weapons program, 156 00:18:18,250 --> 00:18:23,560 because Iraq had used chemical weapons and missiles during the war against Iran. 157 00:18:23,650 --> 00:18:27,790 The outside world had a fairly updated view of those capabilities. 158 00:18:28,120 --> 00:18:31,330 It wasn't really feasible to hide too much of that. 159 00:18:31,870 --> 00:18:38,259 But Hussein Kamel ordered that all the traces of the programs that were lesser known 160 00:18:38,260 --> 00:18:43,240 should be hidden in the few weeks prior to the arrival of the U.N. inspectors. 161 00:18:43,930 --> 00:18:48,550 And this led to hectic activity on the ground. 162 00:18:48,910 --> 00:18:55,450 You can imagine the scale of this challenge within a very short timeframe to find these alternative and, 163 00:18:55,750 --> 00:19:01,900 you know, purposes for all these big facilities, find alternative explanations for all of these activities. 164 00:19:02,380 --> 00:19:07,270 And the Iraqi intelligence services were writing memos complaining about how difficult 165 00:19:07,270 --> 00:19:12,670 this was and how it wasn't really feasible to keep up this facade in the months ahead. 166 00:19:13,300 --> 00:19:17,740 At this point, they imagined that the inspections would last months and not years, 167 00:19:17,740 --> 00:19:27,190 but even months was a big headache for the Iraqi intelligence agencies to figure out way to alternative stories for these capabilities. 168 00:19:28,260 --> 00:19:41,380 And so even as the U.N. inspectors were arriving, Iraqi intelligence agencies were organising this cover up effectively and did the best they could. 169 00:19:41,390 --> 00:19:49,940 But in some cases, when the inspectors started arriving at the sites, they were trucking out documents through the back door. 170 00:19:49,960 --> 00:19:57,200 So it really was a last minute operation and unsurprisingly, the inspectors caught on to it very quickly. 171 00:19:58,550 --> 00:20:06,440 So I mentioned David's case, and here you can see him wearing a light blue cap and sunglasses. 172 00:20:06,920 --> 00:20:11,920 He was one of the first inspectors to arrive in Iraq in the late spring of 1991. 173 00:20:15,120 --> 00:20:23,610 And what he found was the most blatant cover up operation that you could possibly imagine. 174 00:20:23,760 --> 00:20:28,320 So in a series of inspections that he and his team uncovered, 175 00:20:28,650 --> 00:20:36,780 a convoy of 85 trucks loaded with large pieces of equipment that could only be used for a nuclear weapons program. 176 00:20:37,410 --> 00:20:47,250 And they even took pictures of this convoy as it was making its way away from that particular base where he was conducting his truck. 177 00:20:47,820 --> 00:20:52,160 So if there was ever a smoking gun in this, this is it. 178 00:20:52,170 --> 00:21:00,150 And there was absolutely no way that this could be explained away because the equipment photographed on these trucks, 179 00:21:00,270 --> 00:21:03,450 it had no other purpose than a nuclear weapons program. 180 00:21:04,290 --> 00:21:12,299 So this led to a lot of raised eyebrows, shall we say, 181 00:21:12,300 --> 00:21:22,050 in the Security Council immediately sent a delegation to Baghdad to ensure Iraq's cooperation in and in the future. 182 00:21:22,500 --> 00:21:29,910 And this is a memo, a handwritten memo from Hans Blix, who was at that point the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. 183 00:21:30,330 --> 00:21:39,060 And these are his notes from meetings with senior Iraqi officials where they are demanding immediate access and unimpeded access for the inspectors. 184 00:21:41,100 --> 00:21:52,649 And Hans Blix was trying really trying to give his Iraqi counterparts a way out by saying things like perhaps you misinterpreted this resolution, 185 00:21:52,650 --> 00:21:59,820 perhaps he interpreted the resolution differently from us. And so you didn't have to declare any nuclear equipment. 186 00:21:59,820 --> 00:22:03,450 But if you did, we can work this out. And here's the way forward. 187 00:22:03,930 --> 00:22:10,350 And, you know, the diplomatic suite thought that this would be a great way out of this very dicey situation with 188 00:22:10,680 --> 00:22:16,440 a lot of angry members on the Security Council calling for calling for action to punish Iraq. 189 00:22:17,610 --> 00:22:24,749 He was disappointed to learn that the Iraqis weren't really interested in this kind of solution and that they just 190 00:22:24,750 --> 00:22:31,830 insisted that there was absolutely no nuclear weapons program in Iraq and they had no idea what he was talking about. 191 00:22:32,460 --> 00:22:42,330 So he left a few days later very, very pessimistic and curious, as you reported back to the IAEA, 192 00:22:42,330 --> 00:22:53,610 that he couldn't understand why why Iraq would not just come clean, given this obvious evidence and why they continued with this stonewalling. 193 00:22:55,110 --> 00:23:01,560 So here is an example of some of the items that the Iraqis were trucking away and hiding in the desert. 194 00:23:01,950 --> 00:23:05,640 That's the U.N. inspectors found shortly after. 195 00:23:06,150 --> 00:23:15,210 And this was a real coup for for the inspectors because it was intractable evidence of a nuclear weapons program. 196 00:23:15,720 --> 00:23:21,720 And there was no, as I mentioned earlier, no other purpose for for any of this equipment. 197 00:23:27,090 --> 00:23:30,410 The Iraqi response was still denial. 198 00:23:30,420 --> 00:23:35,639 And here's an example of one of the numerous statements that the Iraqi embassy 199 00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:41,280 in Vienna made where they're starting to sort of starting to acknowledge, 200 00:23:41,280 --> 00:23:45,239 but not really saying that, well, maybe there were some activities going on. 201 00:23:45,240 --> 00:23:50,580 Scientists do their own thing and but we have no idea it wasn't our fault anyway. 202 00:23:51,090 --> 00:23:56,850 So they were still trying to create a distance between the evidence of a nuclear weapons program and the 203 00:23:56,850 --> 00:24:04,079 political authorities because of their concern about what the consequences would be in terms of the sanctions, 204 00:24:04,080 --> 00:24:08,860 but also the prospect of. Military strikes against the regime. 205 00:24:09,490 --> 00:24:16,780 Eventually, though, within a few days they relented and admitted that there had in fact been a nuclear weapons program. 206 00:24:17,140 --> 00:24:22,390 And this was the first of many such and missions where the inspectors found hard evidence. 207 00:24:22,750 --> 00:24:29,890 The Iraqis admitted to capabilities and activities across these WMD programs. 208 00:24:30,640 --> 00:24:36,760 And this very much reinforced this early impression that there was always cheats and retreats. 209 00:24:39,720 --> 00:24:44,150 So this is what a smoking gun looks like when it's recorded by the IAEA. 210 00:24:44,160 --> 00:24:52,320 So this is a detailed accounting of of Iraq's many sins and failures of mission. 211 00:24:52,870 --> 00:25:01,740 And so it was something that pains the IAEA a great deal to acknowledge the scale of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program, 212 00:25:02,220 --> 00:25:09,690 that I'd actually come quite close to a breakthrough and producing nuclear weapons at the time of the invasion of Kuwait. 213 00:25:10,080 --> 00:25:19,860 The IAEA, of course, was conducting inspections in Iraq precisely to provide assurance to other countries that there was no nuclear weapons program. 214 00:25:20,220 --> 00:25:30,360 Well, hey presto, there clearly was. And this led to an overhaul of the IAEA inspection system leading to the additional protocol that 215 00:25:30,360 --> 00:25:38,340 is now applied in very many countries that provides much more access to inspectors on the ground. 216 00:25:38,640 --> 00:25:43,560 So that's one of the sort of direct consequences of what transpires in Iraq. 217 00:25:45,480 --> 00:25:53,010 But these this shocking discovery of a cover up in action where, you know, 218 00:25:53,010 --> 00:26:02,790 what was being covered up was a vast nuclear weapons program that had come much closer to success than most countries had suspected prior to this war, 219 00:26:03,630 --> 00:26:09,330 led to a number of conclusions in, amongst others, the CIA. 220 00:26:09,720 --> 00:26:14,580 And this is a part of a document from the CIA in October of 1991. 221 00:26:14,940 --> 00:26:22,650 I'd like you to have a look at it. And so this is based on the events of that summer and a cover up of the nuclear weapons program. 222 00:26:23,160 --> 00:26:32,850 And the CIA states here that this pattern of non-compliance to U.N. Security Council resolutions almost certainly 223 00:26:32,850 --> 00:26:40,680 is driven more by a desire to preserve future options than it is by a fear of revealing past indiscretions. 224 00:26:42,490 --> 00:26:49,300 This judgement is quite sensible, but it is a judgement that becomes entrenched. 225 00:26:49,330 --> 00:26:55,810 It is a view that becomes entrenched and is not seriously revisited at any point afterwards. 226 00:26:56,290 --> 00:27:05,379 So what happens in the years between now for 1991 and 1995 is that Iraq gradually 227 00:27:05,380 --> 00:27:11,290 eases off those efforts to conceal information about its capabilities and programs. 228 00:27:12,460 --> 00:27:19,540 But this judgement is not affected in any way by Iraq's increasing efforts to demonstrate compliance. 229 00:27:19,900 --> 00:27:27,550 And so this is I think it's quite essential to show how early this this use became entrenched. 230 00:27:28,630 --> 00:27:35,530 And the document continues to say that Iraq's continuing efforts to prevent the 231 00:27:35,530 --> 00:27:41,379 destruction or removal of its remaining nuclear infrastructure and our assessment 232 00:27:41,380 --> 00:27:46,840 of Saddam's tenacity and his desire for nuclear weapons lead us to conclude that 233 00:27:46,840 --> 00:27:52,150 Iraq intends to finish the weapons effort it started at least a decade ago. 234 00:27:52,900 --> 00:28:00,100 So continuing on the same theme, this this view becomes entrenched not only in intelligence agencies, 235 00:28:00,490 --> 00:28:05,350 but also in several governments, including those on the Security Council. 236 00:28:07,060 --> 00:28:18,370 Over the next few years, however, Iraq tries to scale up its compliance, leading to a judgement in 1992 by the U.N. inspectors, 237 00:28:18,700 --> 00:28:25,930 saying that at this point, Iraq no longer poses a threat to the region in terms of its weapons of mass destruction. 238 00:28:26,500 --> 00:28:28,840 What is left is essentially accounting, 239 00:28:29,500 --> 00:28:40,060 accounting for how many weapons Iraq had for all the materials that went into the past programs and making sure that there's nothing hidden. 240 00:28:40,630 --> 00:28:44,650 But this is an accounting. It's not a threat to international peace and security. 241 00:28:45,220 --> 00:28:56,470 So that view is communicated behind the scenes by the U.N. inspectors to to Washington and to London, along with a suggestion that perhaps Iraq's, 242 00:28:56,890 --> 00:29:06,310 you know, behaviour is driven by its concern to be seen as disarmed and weakened by its regional adversaries, notably Iran. 243 00:29:07,320 --> 00:29:17,020 I think it's it's worth underlining that this explanation of Iraq's behaviour came as early as 1992 when you know that 244 00:29:17,020 --> 00:29:26,410 this was absolutely also the conclusion of the post 2003 investigation into Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction. 245 00:29:27,070 --> 00:29:34,240 So in a way, it's quite striking that all of those discoveries after the war led to the same belief. 246 00:29:35,050 --> 00:29:39,670 But of course, the people who made those judgements were also present in 1992. 247 00:29:40,300 --> 00:29:44,530 So again, bias is a big, big part of the story here, 248 00:29:44,530 --> 00:29:53,079 especially when dealing with a state that has been caught repeatedly in lies and deception at this point. 249 00:29:53,080 --> 00:29:57,700 And we're still now in late 1991. Iraqi officials have a big problem. 250 00:29:58,210 --> 00:30:04,780 They have a big problem because they have a lot more hidden that the U.N. inspectors haven't found out about yet. 251 00:30:05,410 --> 00:30:06,190 Specifically, 252 00:30:06,190 --> 00:30:15,780 they have thousands of chemical weapons and they also have some biological weapons that the outside world has realised that Iraq can produce. 253 00:30:15,790 --> 00:30:23,529 Yes. So what happens is a unilateral destruction of secrets operation to destroy these 254 00:30:23,530 --> 00:30:29,380 weapons rather than hand them over to the U.N. inspectors for verification. 255 00:30:30,130 --> 00:30:41,410 As the cease fire resolution demanded. And this last part of Iraq's initial cover up is really what seals it straight over the next few years, 256 00:30:41,950 --> 00:30:46,330 because the U.N. inspectors have focussed on material accounting, 257 00:30:46,420 --> 00:30:54,129 on accounting for every last piece, every last rocket, every warheads, and by destroying them in secret, 258 00:30:54,130 --> 00:30:58,720 by burning them, by exploding them by something, the chemicals in the ground. 259 00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:05,140 It will never be possible to verify the quantity, quantity, what Iraq once had. 260 00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:10,419 So this in many ways is sort of the the original sin in this saga, 261 00:31:10,420 --> 00:31:19,270 where even as Iraq begins to admit what it has done, what it has destroyed, it will never be possible to fully. 262 00:31:21,730 --> 00:31:33,080 When Iraqi officials began to reveal that they had destroyed these weapons in secret in 1992 onwards, they had to explain why they had done this. 263 00:31:33,100 --> 00:31:36,880 It seemed like such a self-defeating thing to do. 264 00:31:37,630 --> 00:31:45,100 And the explanation was that they were concerned that if they, after all this, came clean about destroying even more weapons, 265 00:31:45,100 --> 00:31:48,610 including weapons other countries didn't know that they had, 266 00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:53,440 they thought that they would be attacked and that the regime's survival would be in danger. 267 00:31:54,250 --> 00:31:57,850 So make of it what you will of that explanation. 268 00:31:57,850 --> 00:32:03,090 But that was what several different Iraqi officials said, independent of each other. 269 00:32:03,100 --> 00:32:10,749 And I think it reinforces this disclosure to them that was driven by this this cover up in 1991 270 00:32:10,750 --> 00:32:18,610 and continues to affect Iraqi deliberations about how much to complain about in years to come. 271 00:32:21,300 --> 00:32:28,070 So this is an image of one of the key facilities in the Iraq, the biological weapons programs. 272 00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:36,480 And its importance was given away to the U.N. inspectors by this large portrait and also the large walls surrounding it. 273 00:32:36,510 --> 00:32:40,980 So those were two clues that get their attention immediately. 274 00:32:43,600 --> 00:32:50,980 So as I mentioned, biological weapons were weapons that Iraq had kept trying to keep secrets. 275 00:32:51,250 --> 00:32:59,120 They had tried to keep these weapons of secrets, in part because they were closely tied to their security services. 276 00:32:59,140 --> 00:33:03,430 And this was a red line for the Iraqi authorities. 277 00:33:03,730 --> 00:33:08,320 They did not want to implicate the security services in any of their declarations. 278 00:33:08,770 --> 00:33:14,620 That means that they couldn't give a convincing account of the unilateral destruction in 1991, 279 00:33:14,620 --> 00:33:22,569 either because they were conducted in large part by the security apparatus and also these weapons, 280 00:33:22,570 --> 00:33:28,120 when they were developed during the seventies and eighties, were tested on political prisoners, 281 00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:38,320 which was one of the many grave crimes that senior Iraqi officials were concerned that they would be held to account for. 282 00:33:38,500 --> 00:33:46,300 They were frequently, when they were discussing amongst themselves talking about the Nuremberg trials as examples of what they wanted to avoid. 283 00:33:46,810 --> 00:33:52,970 So this was very much something that they that they were concerned about. 284 00:33:52,990 --> 00:34:01,900 When the U.N. inspectors came with more and more evidence of a vibrant biological weapons program, and in early 1995, 285 00:34:02,080 --> 00:34:14,620 this came to a head when U.N. officials had, again, concrete evidence of a biological weapons program that they presented to Iraqi officials. 286 00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:19,719 And this led to an extensive debate amongst senior Iraqi officials, 287 00:34:19,720 --> 00:34:25,180 such as the same colonel on the one hand, and Tariq Aziz on the other hand about what to do. 288 00:34:26,030 --> 00:34:31,540 And Tariq Aziz had the view that, well, we have admitted to everything else. 289 00:34:31,540 --> 00:34:36,280 Why not just admit this as well? How would the sanctions be lifted and be done with it? 290 00:34:37,540 --> 00:34:45,010 Hussein Kamal said On the contrary, if we admit to this now, we will live with sanctions forever. 291 00:34:45,700 --> 00:34:54,190 And his reasoning was that and Iraq's disclosures and declarations to the United Nations over the past four years 292 00:34:54,730 --> 00:35:00,500 have been based on concealing the biological weapons and hiding them amongst the chemical weapons declarations. 293 00:35:00,530 --> 00:35:09,399 And so if they now confessed to having produced biological weapons, it will lead to a reopening of all the files across all areas. 294 00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:12,570 And this would never and it's the same problem, he said. 295 00:35:13,480 --> 00:35:24,879 So the conclusion of this extensive debate was a bureaucratic compromise in a way whereby Iraqi officials told U.N. inspectors that, 296 00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:33,880 yes, we had such a program, yes, we produced biological weapons agents in large, large quantities, but we didn't weaponize them. 297 00:35:34,870 --> 00:35:43,090 Of course, this was a ridiculous thing to say. Why would you produce vast amounts of weapons agents and not put it into any weapons? 298 00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:50,110 But this bureaucratic compromise was a way to avoid this reopening of the accounting. 299 00:35:50,770 --> 00:36:01,780 So it's one of many, many examples of how Iraq's concern about the accounting part of this verification came in the way of coming across as credible, 300 00:36:02,350 --> 00:36:07,989 because many of these bureaucratic compromises that came along the way when they were crafting their 301 00:36:07,990 --> 00:36:14,890 declarations to the U.N. inspectors were designed to avoid these kind of entanglement effects. 302 00:36:15,460 --> 00:36:20,950 So overall, when Iraq tried to come clean, it often undermined itself in the process. 303 00:36:21,070 --> 00:36:30,130 And I think that is one of the key dynamics that I believe is linked to this disclosure that Iraq was facing throughout this period. 304 00:36:32,810 --> 00:36:44,300 After this disclosure of his admission in July 1995 of Iraq having a biological weapons program and producing biological weapons agents. 305 00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:55,340 Things were looking pretty good for Iraq. There was talk of sanctions relief and even movement towards lifting sanctions in the Security Council. 306 00:36:56,180 --> 00:37:00,079 But then Hussein Kamal, this son in law from health defects, 307 00:37:00,080 --> 00:37:07,940 because he had been fighting with Saddam's brothers and various other regime members about corruption and things of that nature, 308 00:37:07,940 --> 00:37:11,630 which made him very unpopular. So he defected to Jordan, 309 00:37:11,720 --> 00:37:19,760 taking with him some of the hidden documents from the WMD programs and the Iraqi officials 310 00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:24,410 essentially in conflict because they don't know what he will disclose in Jordan. 311 00:37:25,010 --> 00:37:29,329 So what they do is to hand over everything that they have hidden in terms of 312 00:37:29,330 --> 00:37:34,190 documents from the programs dating back decades in an effort to come free. 313 00:37:35,120 --> 00:37:45,420 But even this effort backfires for the Iraqi officials because it is only cited as evidence by sceptical Security Council members to say that, 314 00:37:45,440 --> 00:37:49,040 look, they're all always hiding something, even now. 315 00:37:49,580 --> 00:37:54,890 So as Iraq was trying to come clean, their efforts to do so essentially backfired. 316 00:37:56,000 --> 00:37:56,840 Nonetheless, 317 00:37:57,140 --> 00:38:05,900 the Iraqis somehow continued to try and scale up their cooperation and convince the inspectors there's nothing left of the next couple of years, 318 00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:15,680 but nothing resolved so that eventually the Iraqis tire of this and decide to get rid of the inspectors, 319 00:38:16,730 --> 00:38:20,059 as senior Iraqi officials put it at the time, 320 00:38:20,060 --> 00:38:26,450 when you can have sanctions with inspections or sanctions without inspections, you can choose which one you would like. 321 00:38:27,890 --> 00:38:36,050 And after a series of confrontations in 97 and 98 and the U.N. inspectors leave Iraq 322 00:38:36,230 --> 00:38:43,280 just before a military campaign and they don't come back in from late 1998 onwards. 323 00:38:43,970 --> 00:38:53,750 So when the inspectors leave, access on the ground is lost and other countries don't have an eye on the ground, as they have for the past seven years, 324 00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:59,899 and there are a lot there are growing concerns about what Iraq is doing now that the 325 00:38:59,900 --> 00:39:06,740 inspectors have left Iraq and can no longer monitor their programs and their capabilities. 326 00:39:07,880 --> 00:39:11,960 But it turns out that nothing much happens, if anything. 327 00:39:12,530 --> 00:39:22,009 The rockets that exist from Iraqi sources show that some enterprising Iraqi scientists pitch WMD programs. 328 00:39:22,010 --> 00:39:31,400 They're told not to proceed because that would violate U.N. resolutions and really risk punishment, etc. 329 00:39:32,030 --> 00:39:39,230 So they're left in this situation where they've stopped cooperating because there was no way forward, no way to get sanctions lifted. 330 00:39:39,740 --> 00:39:46,790 And they're in this situation where they're struggling to control their own scientists and their own bureaucrats. 331 00:39:47,210 --> 00:39:52,730 And there are several documents where even Saddam and other senior officials keep asking. 332 00:39:53,300 --> 00:40:00,230 We don't have any active programs. Right. So all of these questions can be interpreted as, oh, 333 00:40:00,230 --> 00:40:09,230 they're interested or they could be interpreted as they really have a problem because they can't oversee the scientists. 334 00:40:09,590 --> 00:40:18,410 And I very much think it is that they couldn't oversee and control their scientists, but they certainly tried as best they could. 335 00:40:18,590 --> 00:40:25,129 And I think the rationale and reasons that they gave to those pitching these biological weapons programs, 336 00:40:25,130 --> 00:40:32,070 for example, in the early 2000, was that you can't because the violence U.N. resolutions. 337 00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:41,340 In 2002, attention turns again to Iraq and its WMD programs. 338 00:40:41,940 --> 00:40:53,540 And this is a time when this feature set becomes a much sharper because the UN passes a resolution, Resolution 1441, in November 2002, 339 00:40:54,000 --> 00:41:02,940 where Iraq is found in non-compliance and now once again has to turn over a declaration of not only its past programs, 340 00:41:02,940 --> 00:41:06,150 but also everything that it has done since 1998. 341 00:41:06,990 --> 00:41:12,270 In a matter of a few weeks, once that has been submitted, 342 00:41:12,750 --> 00:41:20,850 there will be a renewed round of U.N. inspections conducted by these to make it familiar to many of you covered every day. 343 00:41:21,060 --> 00:41:27,870 Now, the WHO is then the director of the IAEA, and Hans Blix, former director of the IAEA, 344 00:41:28,230 --> 00:41:36,780 and then the director of the UN inspectors charged with all of the WMD areas going back into Iraq. 345 00:41:38,440 --> 00:41:46,509 So one of the many puzzles about Iraq's behaviour during this period, 2000 to 2003 is, well, 346 00:41:46,510 --> 00:41:54,610 why weren't they more proactive in demonstrating that they didn't have these weapons, that they didn't have these capabilities? 347 00:41:55,300 --> 00:42:03,820 And one of the interesting pieces of information from the sources that I've access is that, in fact, in early 2002, 348 00:42:04,150 --> 00:42:13,570 the Iraqi regime was considering such a proactive measure to actually publish their declarations from their past WMD programs in 349 00:42:13,570 --> 00:42:22,660 newspapers as a response to some of these emerging allegations from the U.S. and the U.K. that they had resumed their weapons programs. 350 00:42:23,020 --> 00:42:28,389 And so going through all this correspondence between Iraqi scientists, 351 00:42:28,390 --> 00:42:35,860 intelligence agencies and various officials, you can see all the reasons why they couldn't come clean about this. 352 00:42:36,430 --> 00:42:39,250 And those reasons are in themselves Very interesting. 353 00:42:39,370 --> 00:42:46,120 One of the main themes in in all these weapons areas was that we can't provide this information because 354 00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:52,120 it violates our obligations under various non-proliferation Treaty so that they would be good citizens. 355 00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:57,550 Also, they can't publish this because they would blow the cover of their former suppliers. 356 00:42:58,060 --> 00:43:07,030 They can't provide this information because that would reveal operational details of their military capabilities when it came to ballistic missiles. 357 00:43:07,510 --> 00:43:12,490 So you can actually go through and see all of the reasons why they can't publish this. 358 00:43:13,120 --> 00:43:21,610 Nowhere do you see we can't publish this because it would in the way that we have any programs, because there were no active programs. 359 00:43:22,360 --> 00:43:31,210 But again, to those who are curious as to why Iraq was more proactive in rebutting these claims before the inspections resumed. 360 00:43:31,690 --> 00:43:39,040 Well, good news there on thousands of pages of sources for you to look at where you can go in and see exactly that. 361 00:43:39,670 --> 00:43:44,590 And in my mind, the reasons overall point to two main themes. 362 00:43:44,650 --> 00:43:51,760 One is, again, that disclosing this information report has all kinds of global contracts with your 363 00:43:51,760 --> 00:43:57,580 former suppliers with being a good citizen of these WMD non-proliferation treaties. 364 00:43:57,910 --> 00:44:06,790 And also, there's an element of security when it comes to the ballistic missiles only, but that this is not a core theme in the rationales given. 365 00:44:06,910 --> 00:44:10,810 So I think it does tell us something about the logic at that time. 366 00:44:11,470 --> 00:44:16,450 But Iraq has to compile these accounts, as I said, of of their past programs. 367 00:44:16,750 --> 00:44:24,940 So they set out to do that. And it's compiled declarations of thousands of pages where they essentially try to 368 00:44:24,940 --> 00:44:29,950 account for everything and try to prove a negative that there were no new programs. 369 00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:35,740 So as you can imagine, they were caught between a rock and a hard place. 370 00:44:36,070 --> 00:44:40,280 They were founded on compliance. They were trying to fight that judgements. 371 00:44:40,300 --> 00:44:43,690 But how do you find that judgement? How do you prove a negative? 372 00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:52,600 On the other hand, they were very concerned with giving any information that could be interpreted as potentially a violation. 373 00:44:53,170 --> 00:44:56,200 Now, with many of these programs, WMD programs, 374 00:44:56,200 --> 00:45:03,370 you have the dual use problem where the same activity can be used for civilian purposes or military purposes. 375 00:45:03,730 --> 00:45:11,530 So you can see certain places in these 2002 declarations where the Iraqis are removing information, 376 00:45:11,680 --> 00:45:15,819 historical information that they had previously declared because they were so 377 00:45:15,820 --> 00:45:21,580 concerned to do anything that would justify those who wanted to go for an invasion. 378 00:45:22,420 --> 00:45:28,209 So predictably, perhaps they are then accused of of not coming fully clean, 379 00:45:28,210 --> 00:45:35,320 of not being proactive and not doing enough to convince others that they don't have these weapons or capabilities. 380 00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:40,750 But frankly, I think it is difficult to see precisely what else they could have done, 381 00:45:41,140 --> 00:45:46,540 apart from being perhaps less cautious when it came to this sort of grey zone information. 382 00:45:47,560 --> 00:45:57,510 Inspectors arrived in late 2002 and orders go out to Iraqi officials at the top there, as you may see, 383 00:45:57,520 --> 00:46:03,310 to just allow the inspectors to go in, even if they don't have Iraqi minders with them. 384 00:46:03,340 --> 00:46:11,410 So this was an increasing kind of ultimately the access compared to what had been the case previously after some initial hiccups. 385 00:46:11,980 --> 00:46:20,950 And then below, perhaps you can see that they're also instructed to not mention the term nerve gas in any communication whatsoever. 386 00:46:21,640 --> 00:46:28,900 So this is an example, and there are many others of ways in which Iraqi officials tried to ensure that there would be 387 00:46:28,900 --> 00:46:35,710 no traces of any language equipment or anything on the site that could be cited as a violation. 388 00:46:36,100 --> 00:46:42,450 They didn't have nerve gas. They. They just didn't want their officials or guards to talk about it never got in anyway. 389 00:46:42,840 --> 00:46:49,230 And for those who recall the Powell presentation in the Security Council, I'm sure you can imagine why. 390 00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:55,770 So these measures were done by Iraqi officials with the goal of avoiding any kind of trouble. 391 00:46:56,400 --> 00:47:04,350 Ultimately, they were interpreted as aggressive attempts by the U.N. inspectors to sanitise the signs and maybe hide evidence. 392 00:47:04,770 --> 00:47:06,780 So, again, it backfired. 393 00:47:06,780 --> 00:47:16,650 And this effort to to ensure no trouble actually backfired is for some a man who was the director of the Iraqi Monitoring Directorate. 394 00:47:17,010 --> 00:47:22,410 He was in the unhappy position of the board of Iraq's response to the inspectors, 395 00:47:22,830 --> 00:47:33,300 and he was one who spent hours and hours pleading with his staff to just do what they were told and increase their cooperation in early 2003, 396 00:47:33,810 --> 00:47:42,870 which some of them did and some of them did not. Big You also recall some of the allegations that were made by the U.S. and the U.K., 397 00:47:42,870 --> 00:47:49,560 including aluminium tubes, uranium imports, magnets and various other items. 398 00:47:50,280 --> 00:48:00,870 Well, I accessed through my Iraqi friends, perhaps sources, some of their own internal investigations that they started in early 2003. 399 00:48:01,470 --> 00:48:09,870 Initially, they didn't want to respond to these claims because they found them ridiculous and outlandish and plainly based on falsified documents. 400 00:48:10,380 --> 00:48:18,300 But when the International Atomic Energy Agency began to raise these points with Iraq in early 2003, they felt compelled to respond. 401 00:48:18,690 --> 00:48:25,340 So they conducted all these inspections, investigations themselves, the Iraqis, to find out what had happened. 402 00:48:25,350 --> 00:48:30,400 And we at each and every single one. To the Iraqis, great frustration. 403 00:48:30,420 --> 00:48:36,210 However, the International Atomic Energy Agency didn't report that for weeks and weeks and weeks. 404 00:48:36,660 --> 00:48:40,800 And when they eventually did, it was effectively too late. 405 00:48:41,340 --> 00:48:46,079 So, again, to add to the accusation that the Iraqis were not proactive, 406 00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:53,340 I think you have to take into consideration that they did probably as much as they possibly could at the time, 407 00:48:53,790 --> 00:49:01,630 but that there were delays in their processing in the U.N. agencies that also created this impression that they were doing too little, too late. 408 00:49:01,680 --> 00:49:08,430 As Hans Blix puts it, and this is another example for those who want to indulge in the original Arabic, 409 00:49:09,810 --> 00:49:16,080 Amer al-Saadi was in charge of getting some he was a senior official involved in 410 00:49:16,350 --> 00:49:22,860 overseeing the Iraqi WMD programs and then later on in dealing with the U.N. inspections. 411 00:49:23,310 --> 00:49:30,719 And he became sort of the public face of Iraq's effort to prove its case or at least make its case in public. 412 00:49:30,720 --> 00:49:32,460 In the spring of 2003, 413 00:49:33,030 --> 00:49:43,770 in a series of efforts to make suggestions of how to resolve the remaining questions about Iraq's WMD and the disarmament back in 1991. 414 00:49:44,340 --> 00:49:48,960 And there were a number of suggestions that he, he and his colleagues made that were feasible. 415 00:49:49,410 --> 00:49:53,790 According to Hans Blix, they would have been feasible in a matter of months, maybe weeks. 416 00:49:54,300 --> 00:50:00,810 So these questions could have been resolved, perhaps not completely, because that's not technically possible. 417 00:50:01,230 --> 00:50:10,800 But substantively, they could have been. But as Saadi said in one of his last press conferences, that we're not trying to escape a war here. 418 00:50:11,040 --> 00:50:18,150 War is coming. We're doing what we can to not to make the case for war, at least by making all these suggestions. 419 00:50:18,780 --> 00:50:24,899 And I think that this is this is ultimately what and what the Iraqi officials 420 00:50:24,900 --> 00:50:30,900 thought they could achieve with their efforts in February and March 2003. 421 00:50:31,800 --> 00:50:37,710 So what's left of all of this? What's what is the judgement of Iraq's behaviour and what, if anything, 422 00:50:37,830 --> 00:50:45,960 does all this new evidence suggests in terms of how we can rethink things differently about Iraq's behaviour? 423 00:50:46,800 --> 00:50:54,750 This is an example of one of the CIA's own retrospective assessments after of course, the unknown finding of of WMD, 424 00:50:54,750 --> 00:51:02,190 where Iraq's own behaviour is cited as a cause of misperception and Iraq's behaviour 425 00:51:02,190 --> 00:51:07,559 is puzzling because it doesn't make sense that they would secretly destroy weapons, 426 00:51:07,560 --> 00:51:13,830 that they would hide documents when they handed over their capabilities and destroyed their weapons. 427 00:51:14,490 --> 00:51:18,960 But I think that's the fundamental dilemma that they face. 428 00:51:19,350 --> 00:51:27,660 That overall, the changes that I know does go some way to explaining some of the more puzzling aspects of Iraq's behaviour, 429 00:51:27,750 --> 00:51:32,360 and specifically this hiding of their the history of their program. 430 00:51:32,370 --> 00:51:37,140 Several documents and supporting documents these bureaucratic. 431 00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:42,510 That I've talked about as opposed to just coming clean in the first instance. 432 00:51:43,230 --> 00:51:50,430 So Iraq's the logic behind Iraq's behaviour continues to be debated as as it should be. 433 00:51:50,940 --> 00:51:56,759 And I do think that new sources give us much more fine grained evidence to suggest different 434 00:51:56,760 --> 00:52:02,850 arguments and different different theories that are brought to bear on Iraq's behaviour. 435 00:52:03,390 --> 00:52:11,969 And in my mind, there is certainly a lot in the Iraqi correspondence pointing to this concern about being asked to 436 00:52:11,970 --> 00:52:19,160 hand over these self-incriminating pieces of evidence and how that kept blowing up in their faces. 437 00:52:19,170 --> 00:52:27,630 And that's for this reason. They wanted to avoid this kind of entanglement of the facts in the accounting of their WMD disarmament, 438 00:52:28,320 --> 00:52:31,890 other parts of their behaviour is not really puzzling. 439 00:52:32,610 --> 00:52:42,260 It's not puzzling that they would be wary of handing over information about their security services, for example, or Saddam's residences. 440 00:52:42,290 --> 00:52:45,659 So that's much less puzzling. But still, 441 00:52:45,660 --> 00:52:52,979 I think that there is plenty of evidence to engage with for having a better sense 442 00:52:52,980 --> 00:52:57,990 of some of the puzzles surrounding Iraq's behaviour during those four years. 443 00:52:58,440 --> 00:53:08,560 I should stop here. Thanks very. It was an empty seat. 444 00:53:09,850 --> 00:53:17,410 So it is a slightly awkward tradition that I have to ask you some questions beforehand to kick us off, and then we'll go to the audience. 445 00:53:17,880 --> 00:53:24,880 So thank you. Thank you so much. I've heard versions of this paper develop over the last several years, and I would really, 446 00:53:24,880 --> 00:53:31,030 really recommend that everybody, if this is an interesting topic to you, go and find the paper version that came out in international security, 447 00:53:31,030 --> 00:53:34,960 I think last year or maybe last year on the cheap Islamic is a really wonderful read. 448 00:53:35,560 --> 00:53:38,470 So I read that and I've read the parts of the broader manuscript. 449 00:53:38,620 --> 00:53:43,150 So for the benefit of the audience, some bits that didn't come up in the talk that I want to just a preview on, 450 00:53:43,540 --> 00:53:45,500 just to begin with some clarifying questions. Yeah. 451 00:53:45,760 --> 00:53:53,649 Can you provide a description of Iraq's nuclear and biological programs at their peak prior to 1991? 452 00:53:53,650 --> 00:54:00,550 I know you said that it's difficult to quantify it, but can you just describe and give us a sense of what this involved? 453 00:54:02,230 --> 00:54:08,230 Can you also this is maybe a provocation. I'm deeply conscious of the enormous human costs of the sanctions program. 454 00:54:09,460 --> 00:54:16,060 Can we, though, say, putting that aside, if we can suffer that, can we see that actually the sanctions program and the inspections worked? 455 00:54:16,240 --> 00:54:24,430 Were these successful thirds? I want to I want to push you on the cheapest element, because it seems to me, you know, the way this is set up, 456 00:54:24,850 --> 00:54:29,530 you're talking about, the puzzles are rooted in the kind of logics and behaviour of the Iraqi regime. 457 00:54:29,950 --> 00:54:33,879 And I want to hear the other side of that, which is the logics and reasoning of the US, 458 00:54:33,880 --> 00:54:39,220 because this seems to be US led in a lot of the key kind of turning points of the narrative. 459 00:54:39,910 --> 00:54:47,980 When Iraq does come clean, it's often met with scepticism and I wonder whether I think this is maybe you can speak to this, 460 00:54:48,310 --> 00:54:51,730 whether this scepticism is actually motivated reasoning, 461 00:54:52,630 --> 00:54:57,520 where the reception of this information is deliberately being miscast or whether there are 462 00:54:57,520 --> 00:55:01,750 actually other interests at stake in which the outcome would have been inevitable anyway, 463 00:55:02,050 --> 00:55:07,390 and why this might be specific to this Jesus dilemma as it applies to Iraq, the US, 464 00:55:07,720 --> 00:55:16,180 and how Iraq sits in the broader constellation of regional politics and some of the other interests that the US may have had as it applied to Iraq. 465 00:55:16,780 --> 00:55:24,549 And finally, and I think you get a flavour of this, how do Iraq regime elites respond to 911 on the need to invasion of Afghanistan? 466 00:55:24,550 --> 00:55:29,350 And how does that pattern some of its kind of compliance responses? 467 00:55:29,980 --> 00:55:34,960 Thanks. Thank you very much for a few substantive and great questions. 468 00:55:35,410 --> 00:55:44,799 So starting with the state of Iraq's WMD programs circa 19 9091, the chemical weapons program was, I suppose, thriving. 469 00:55:44,800 --> 00:55:56,709 It had really delivered during the Iran-Iraq war with horrific consequences and was in a state where they could deliver on demands, so to speak. 470 00:55:56,710 --> 00:56:00,670 They didn't have to store the weapons, they could produce them and use them very, very quickly. 471 00:56:00,940 --> 00:56:09,010 So that had become a very well honed machine and included fairly rudimentary, but also quite advanced weapons capabilities. 472 00:56:09,430 --> 00:56:18,159 Iraq's biological weapons program was struggling because they were under great pressure to deliver weapons and deliver some weapons. 473 00:56:18,160 --> 00:56:21,399 But those weapons could only kill you if they hit you on your head, 474 00:56:21,400 --> 00:56:28,110 essentially because producing biological weapons is from an engineering point of view, very, very complex. 475 00:56:28,120 --> 00:56:34,120 You get the right particles. You don't want to kill the poison upon landing and so upon impact and so on. 476 00:56:34,540 --> 00:56:40,630 So they were making efforts, but largely failing to produce very powerful weapons. 477 00:56:41,020 --> 00:56:49,450 Iraq's nuclear weapons program was, as I indicated, on the verge of a major breakthrough in 19 9091. 478 00:56:49,450 --> 00:56:58,480 And Saddam's nuclear scientists were really puzzled as to why he invaded Kuwait at what was such a fateful time for their nuclear weapons program. 479 00:56:58,930 --> 00:57:09,100 And according to both some national assessments and the IAEA assessments, within a few years, Iraq would likely have had nuclear weapons. 480 00:57:09,100 --> 00:57:13,690 They were preparing to test test to do test explosions and so on. 481 00:57:13,690 --> 00:57:15,790 So it's a very odd picture, 482 00:57:16,060 --> 00:57:24,040 but they were certainly serious in all their efforts to develop these weapons and in the case of the chemical weapons to use them. 483 00:57:24,340 --> 00:57:28,239 And I think that the same ambition applied to the biological weapons program, 484 00:57:28,240 --> 00:57:36,460 but less successfully so in terms of the sanctions and inspections package, I think in a way, again, 485 00:57:36,910 --> 00:57:43,090 I agree with you, setting aside the enormous humanitarian costs of of those of the sanctions, 486 00:57:43,540 --> 00:57:48,610 they certainly had an impact in shaping the Iraqi regime's choices on their behaviour. 487 00:57:49,660 --> 00:57:57,610 Frankly, I've been surprised, looking at the records, how long the Iraqis kept hoping that by complying just a little more, 488 00:57:57,610 --> 00:58:01,060 a little more, the sanctions might be eased or lifted. 489 00:58:01,420 --> 00:58:06,160 And the final blow came in 1997, when Madeleine Albright, then foreign minister. 490 00:58:06,600 --> 00:58:12,810 The US said that it doesn't matter what the Iraqis do, we will not lift sanctions regardless. 491 00:58:13,110 --> 00:58:19,890 So it really took up until then for them to stop trying, which I think is quite astounding in a way. 492 00:58:20,250 --> 00:58:25,060 But once that clarification came, of course, then the incentive disappeared. 493 00:58:25,080 --> 00:58:30,720 But I would say that the sanctions and inspections as a whole was very effective 494 00:58:31,020 --> 00:58:35,370 and the inspections really were far more effective than anyone had imagined. 495 00:58:35,780 --> 00:58:45,599 And there had not been ever an effort by the UN itself to disarm or oversee disarmament of these weapons in any country before and since. 496 00:58:45,600 --> 00:58:53,610 Frankly, you haven't really seen it because of the way the processes in Syria and elsewhere were not really conducted in the same manner. 497 00:58:53,970 --> 00:58:57,500 But this was this was a laboratory, in a way. 498 00:58:57,510 --> 00:59:07,110 Iraq became a laboratory for the various regimes to to prevent chemical weapons that emerged during the 1990s. 499 00:59:07,620 --> 00:59:13,890 So surprisingly effective, I think one one could say the logics and reasoning of the US. 500 00:59:14,550 --> 00:59:23,370 Great, great question. There is, as I indicated in some of the documents that I that I showed very early on, 501 00:59:23,370 --> 00:59:33,840 an impression set in of Iraq's motives and Iraq's mode of modus operandi, and that held firm across different US administrations. 502 00:59:34,200 --> 00:59:40,110 So the motivated reasoning would perhaps vary to some extent between those administrations. 503 00:59:40,120 --> 00:59:45,090 But the fundamental view of Iraq's M.O. persisted. 504 00:59:45,510 --> 00:59:53,040 So, yes, they were surprised and shocked by these early discoveries of Iraqi cheating and and 505 00:59:53,040 --> 00:59:58,290 cover ups and were more and more reluctant to to give them the benefit of the doubt. 506 00:59:58,680 --> 01:00:06,089 And, of course, there was an element of not wanting to take the risk by giving Iraq the benefit of the doubt, 507 01:00:06,090 --> 01:00:11,860 lifting sanctions and then possibly seeing Iraq resume its its capabilities. 508 01:00:11,880 --> 01:00:18,030 But it does seem to me that this this bias or this belief sets in very, very early on. 509 01:00:18,450 --> 01:00:26,969 And it's one that Bob Jervis described as a surprising lack of curiosity when the US in this instance, 510 01:00:26,970 --> 01:00:36,810 intelligence community looked at Iraq's behaviour and immediately jumped to the conclusion that they're hiding this to preserve capabilities and 511 01:00:36,810 --> 01:00:46,020 discounting that they are hiding embarrassing facts about their own past behaviour or even incriminating information about their own past behaviour. 512 01:00:47,460 --> 01:00:57,120 How did Iraqi officials respond to 911? Well, some wanted to provide a message to the US the message of support Saddam. 513 01:00:57,570 --> 01:01:02,879 So would was not interested in in doing that. And in in some ways, 514 01:01:02,880 --> 01:01:08,280 certainly there is evidence suggesting that Saddam Hussein thought that the US would be so 515 01:01:08,280 --> 01:01:13,740 preoccupied in Afghanistan that a war in Iraq would be or an invasion would be less likely. 516 01:01:13,770 --> 01:01:20,360 That, of course, was wrong. Other senior Iraqi officials took the opposite view and thought we are likely next. 517 01:01:20,370 --> 01:01:29,040 And when these accusations started coming in 2002, they became increasingly concerned that war could be on the horizon. 518 01:01:30,060 --> 01:01:33,090 Great. Thank you so much. Can we thank our speaker?