By the way, here is the transcript of that Blix interview we were talking about. The thing that I liked best about it was the way that Bill went from being his regular overbearing, extremely arrogant and self righteous self to only being arrogant by the end when Blix completely kept his cool and gave an honest answer to every trick question Bill tried to get to fall for.
edit....OOPS, I just noticed this transcript is not from the O'Reilly site. I have no idea if anything has been changed from what was really said. I have heard Fox changes transcripts before posting them but I don't know if it is true.
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Bill O'Reilly Interviews Hans Blix
THE O'REILLY FACTOR
March 15, 2004 Monday
Bill O'Reilly Interviews Hans Blix -
O'REILLY: Thanks for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly. In the "Unresolved Problem" Segment tonight, the threat Iraq posed under Saddam Hussein. That is still one of the most widely discussed and controversial topics the world over.
With us now is a man who knows all about it. Hans Blix is the former executive director of the U.N. Weapons Monitoring Commission and author of the brand-new book "Disarming Iraq."
I've got lots of questions for you, Mr. Blix, and I'm -- this is the no-spin zone, so you're going to give me the straight, all right? Why do you think Saddam Hussein did not cooperate more with you guys if he didn't have any WMDs?
HANS BLIX, AUTHOR, "DISARMING IRAQ": Well, one can speculate on a number of reasons.
And the first one, I think, would be that he was often told that it didn't help very much to come clean and to help -- cooperate with inspectors and that the only thing that would lift sanctions would be for himself to disappear. That did not give him any incentive to cooperate.
But there could have been other reasons like his own pride, that he wouldn't let people into his palaces, for instance.
O'REILLY: Right. Now do you understand the United States' point of view that we fight a Gulf War, we lose our soldiers, we liberate Iraq -- liberate Kuwait, all right, and then we have a treaty, and the treaty says U.N. weapons inspectors are allowed to do X, Y, and Z, and 17 times Saddam says -- violates those. Now you can understand why the United States government might be a little teed off about that.
BLIX: Yes. Why only the United States government? Don't you think others were?
O'REILLY: I don't think the United States was -- the United Nations was that upset. No, I don't. I didn't see any anger there.
BLIX: There are more countries than the United States in the United Nations, aren't there?
O'REILLY: I know, but we lost the bulk of our people in the Gulf War. You've got to understand that. We were the point man. We were angry. I didn't see the same level of anger at the United Nations.
BLIX: Well, you better look a little more carefully. The British were angry, many others were angry, and the inspectors were angry, and so I don't really see why you suggest that only the U.S. was angry.
O'REILLY: But do you understand that when you have 17 violations of a treaty, a war treaty, that you basically have to take action?
BLIX: Well, you're talking about a war treaty. It was a cease-fire. It was not a war treaty.
O'REILLY: Oh, come on. Now don't play semantics here, sir.
BLIX: Second -- all right. I'm trying to be precise. You are imprecise. I'm sorry.
O'REILLY: Well, it was a war treaty. They signed the treaty, stop the war. Yes, cease-fire bologna. We could have wiped them out in two days, and you know that. I was there. You were there. Highway to death. We could have wiped them in two days out.
So, anyway, look, we were angry. The Bush administration took it up a notch after 9/11. But I didn't see the sympatico from the United Nations. Why?
BLIX: Well, they were -- the foreign ministers of Europe said that they were not at all excluding using force, but they were not in favor of doing it in March 2003. They wanted to have a little bit more inspections. We had only three-and-a-half months of inspections. That was not in the resolution.
O'REILLY: Because -- but he wasn't cooperating along those lines. Now I want to read...
BLIX: Well, I beg your pardon. He was cooperating a fair amount on access. I did not think that in January he was cooperating sufficiently on...
O'REILLY: Right. And you said so.
BLIX: I said so.
O'REILLY: But 17 violations doesn't sound like cooperation to me.
BLIX: Those 17 violations were before 1998.
O'REILLY: OK, but it was a cumulative effect of this guy snubbing his nose at the world.
BLIX: Sure, sure.
O'REILLY: All right. Now you said in March 6, 2003, all right, that Baghdad may possess 10,000 liters of anthrax, which caught my attention, Scud missile warheads filled with deadly biological and chemical agents, and drones capable of flying beyond the 93-mile limit. Do you -- why did you say that?
BLIX: Because they were unaccounted for, and they might exist, and the difference between us and some of the countries on the Security Council was that they were pretty sure they did exist. I did not presume either that they exist or that they didn't exist.
O'REILLY: OK. So you said it's possible that they had the 10,000 liters of anthrax.
BLIX: It's possible. Precisely. Precisely.
O'REILLY: Because, as a journalist, I saw that, and that made me nervous, all right, but...
BLIX: Yes, yes.
O'REILLY: ... you didn't say -- now if you couldn't interview the scientists without, you know, being sure they weren't intimidated and you only had a few guys, a huge country, we're still over there not finding anything, weren't the odds are that he was playing a cat-and-mouse game?
BLIX: No, they were not playing cat and mouse because they let us in everywhere, and we went on 700 inspections, and we went to a great number of sites that were given to us by the U.S. and the U.K. and others where they said these were the best sites, and we didn't find weapons of mass destruction in any one of them. So that's when i...
O'REILLY: So what do you think...
BLIX: That's when I became to doubt that their intelligence was so good.
O'REILLY: OK. And, subsequently, your doubts, I think, have been proven correct, and I said that on this broadcast. Where do you think the 10,000 liters of anthrax went?
BLIX: I think they might have destroyed them in the summer of 2001.
O'REILLY: 2001?
BLIX: Yes.
O'REILLY: And where would that be? Where would that destruction take place?
BLIX: Well, the UNSCOM went and we also went to a site where they said they had disposed them in the ground. There was no question but that they had destroyed a lot of anthrax, a lot of chemical evidence on this site.
O'REILLY: Did you find traces in the ground?
BLIX: Yes.
O'REILLY: You did?
BLIX: Yes, they did. But the problem was, you see, you couldn't verify the quantity of them. They had not allowed the inspectors to be there. So UNSCOM and we, too, suspected they might have spirited it away.
O'REILLY: All right. But nobody ever told you, Mr. Blix, this is what they did? No scientist...
BLIX: Yes.
O'REILLY: Did they tell you that?
BLIX: Yes, they said -- they said -- consistently said that they had destroyed it.
O'REILLY: Who's they? I mean did...
BLIX: The Iraqi scientists.
O'REILLY: The Iraqi scientists?
BLIX: Yes.
O'REILLY: OK. Why did...
BLIX: The Iraqi government. The scientists, too.
O'REILLY: ... they did they do that? Why did they do that?
BLIX: Why did they destroy it or why did they say?
O'REILLY: Yes. Why did they destroy it?
BLIX: Well, they were ordered to destroy it. They were ordered to destroy it under the supervision of the inspectors, and that was where they failed. If they had the inspectors present, they wouldn't have had this problem.
O'REILLY: Right. So I think it's safe to say that this guy Saddam -- he didn't cooperate with you, he didn't cooperate with the U.S., he was playing a game, and it led to his demise and a war. Now Saddam is out of power. Is the world a better place?
BLIX: Well, some -- it's better without him, yes. But whether the world is a better place in total, that's a different matter. I mean if the intention was to put a clear signal to terrorists that they should not commit terrorist deeds, well, then I think we've seen a breeding of terrorism, rather than anything else.
O'REILLY: But the terror was at a pretty high level. Before the Iraq invasion, we lost 3,000 people here.
BLIX: Yes.
O'REILLY: I mean do you think that the -- this caused more terrorism in Iraq?
BLIX: Well, in Iraq, I think we have seen a lot of terrorism being bred by this war. I'm not defending Saddam Hussein and the regime. I think that's the one blessing, that he's gone. He was a terrorist, a brutal regime. That is the gain. But if I draw a balance under the -- no, I think it was -- it's not...
O'REILLY: So if you -- if you were President Bush, you would not have invaded them?
BLIX: I would have waited. I would have allowed inspections for a few more months. We would have gone to all the sites that the U.S. and the U.K. would have seen and suggested us to go, and we would have found nothing, and we would have told them.
O'REILLY: But then he'd still be in power, Saddam.
BLIX: He would still be in power. That's very likely, yes.
O'REILLY: And the world a better place for that?
BLIX: No, but they -- the U.S. argument for going to war was not that Saddam should be taken out. It was that the weapons of mass destruction should be taken out.
O'REILLY: That's true. They didn't sell it the right way...
BLIX: No.
O'REILLY: ... but I think the Bush doctrine is...
BLIX: Well...
O'REILLY: ... remove terror regimes.
BLIX: Well -- but they didn't bring the right justification. I mean was this insincerity if they really felt there was something else than weapons of mass destruction?
O'REILLY: Well, I think they believe there were weapons of mass destruction.
BLIX: I think they did. I have never cast doubt about their good faith.
O'REILLY: Right. You've never accused the president of being...
BLIX: No, but they would not...
O'REILLY: ... a liar.
BLIX: They would not have been authorized, I think, either in London or in Washington to go to war if they had simply said we want to take out Saddam.
O'REILLY: Mr. Blix, thanks very much for coming in. We appreciate it.
BLIX: Thank you very much.
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