"Like the witch hunters of the 17th Century..."

Former Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix, who was kicked out of Iraq when Bush decided to give up on diplomacy and launch the war, unloaded on the administration Friday, comparing them to "witch hunters" and, according to the Boston Globe, "like an impatient Mars quick to use its strong military force to solve problems, while Europe [was] like a patient Venus."

You see, I have never maintained that the administration deliberately misled. I think they misled themselves, that we can see, and then they misled the world.

They looked, as Mr. Bush did, at an extension on the roof or something that had been connected to the nuclear activities of the past... and said 'What more evidence do you need?' Well, this was a satellite picture and the Iraqis quickly invited journalists and there was nothing under the roof. So, he misled himself, clearly.

This was it. They took things they saw as conclusive. Satellite images are not so easy to judge. What defectors tell you may also not be so easy to tell. So, I think they misled themselves. They were not critically thinking. They wanted to come to these conclusions. They are like the witch hunters of the 17th Century.

...

David Kay said 'We were all wrong.' That was also wrong because we were not wrong. We did not say there aren't any weapons of mass destruction, partly because of being cautious, as I said a little while ago; you can never prove a negative -- that nothing exists. You cannot do it intellectually.

But you can say you've been all over. As I often say, we've been to over 700 sites in over 500 places. And we've been to several dozen sites given to us by intelligence... claimed by intelligence to be the best and we didn't find anything. We asked ourselves, 'If we that was the best, what was the rest?'

The Globe also has an mp3 of Blix's comments.

Update: Also on Friday, Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh discussed Iraq on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now.