AS inquiries are launched into the reasons for Gulf War II, The Sun’s Political Editor issues a reminder that ALL the major powers believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. And he asks: Does anyone really believe the world would be a better place with the tyrant still in power?TONY Blair and George Bush were not alone in believing Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons — and was ready to use them.
So did France. So did Russia. So did Germany.
SO DID the United Nations, which passed Resolution 1441, threatening military action if Saddam continued to lie about his hideous arsenal.
SO DID Saddam, who supplied his troops with NBC suits to protect them against their own horrific weapons.
SO DID his loyal Republican Guard, who went to war on the clear assumption that WMD shells and missiles would defend them.
SO DID Bill Clinton, who would have been forced into military action if he had still been President.
SO DID Robin Cook — crusader for truth and principle — until he lost his job as Foreign Secretary.
SO DID Clare Short.
Our intelligence agencies did not make it up.
French President Jacques Chirac, who later betrayed the West, admitted: “There is a problem — the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq.”
And that from one of Saddam’s closest pals, the man who wanted to sell him nukes!
Germany predicted Iraq could be a nuclear power within three years.
The only question before the coalition went into action was whether UN weapons inspectors should have more time to find the WMDs first.
Hopeless Hans Blix could not do so when ruthless Saddam was in power and playing cat and mouse with the UN.
Nor could Dr David Kay’s Iraqi Survey Group, even after Saddam had been ousted.
Dr Kay, cited by anti-war campaigners as the last word on Saddam’s innocence, has no doubt they existed.
He said: “The best evidence I had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction. In my judgment, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of UN resolution 1441.
“We have discovered hundreds of cases — based on documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis — of activities prohibited under 1441.”
His initial report last September contained evidence of a deliberate campaign by Saddam to acquire or build nuclear weapons.
It revealed a systematic cover-up by Iraqi scientists in pursuit of chemical and biological weapons.
And none of this even begins to consider the other big argument for ousting Saddam Hussein — his vicious treatment of his own people.
Understandably, British resistance to war changed last year when we learned how sadist Saddam personally supervised the horrific torture of Iraqis.
Public opinion swung behind Tony Blair as voters learned how Saddam fed dissidents feet first into industrial shredders and had wives raped in front of their husbands.
AND used lethal gas bombs to wipe out a village of women and children.
AND — imagine this — sealed suspects in metal coffins and left them to a slow death in the heat of the Iraqi desert.
It was Saddam who bankrolled Palestinian suicide bombers to the tune of £20,000 a time.
Who supported terrorist groups who preyed on Western targets — including al-Qa’ida.
AND who was responsible for a war with neighbouring Iran which cost a million lives.
Saddam was warned a dozen times by the UN to mend his ways. Yet America is somehow to blame for ridding the world of this horrific tyrant.
Whatever the Americans do seems to be wrong.
It is blamed for supporting Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, against tyrants who will not rest until this embattled nation is driven into the sea.
It is blasted by the Left for muscling in on Kosovo, yet condemned by the same critics for failing to act sooner on Bosnia.
It is criticised over Iraq, but attacked for tip-toeing on North Korea.
But the toothless 191-strong UN itself is the real failure.
It was the UN which bewilderingly handed Libya and Iraq the chairmanship of key UN committees on disarmament and human rights.
The UN was given plenty of opportunity to support its own resolutions and failed the test.
Before war became inevitable, George Bush spelled out the challenge to the UN Security Council.
He said: “Iraq has answered a decade of UN demands with a decade of defiance. The world now faces a test and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment.
“Are Security Council resolutions to be honoured and enforced or cast aside without consequences?
“Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding or will it be irrelevant? The purpose of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced.
“The just demands of peace and security will be met — or action will be unavoidable.”
In the fog of war, mistakes are inevitable.
The Americans could and should have acted more swiftly to establish order and a form of government in Baghdad.
But for the Iraqi people, now and in the future, their life is better than it could ever have been under Saddam.
The big problem for the West is that the hand-wringing anti-American Left could now “win” the peace.
The USA is not perfect. But we will bitterly regret it if America retreats behind its own frontiers and leaves us to stew in our own juice.
