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"Two quotes, hopefully not out of context: "..that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search."
If that's the case, why didn't Saddam cooperate with inspectors when they were on the ground in Iraq?
After reviewing Hans Blix’s book, Disarming Iraq, Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek International described the lack of cooperation Saddam provided prior to the invasion:
"More revealing are Blix’s difficulties with the Iraqis. Time and again he and his colleague Mohamed ElBaradei tried to explain to the Iraqis that they needed to cooperate for the inspections to confirm what they claimed—that they had no weapons of mass destruction. After repeated requests to talk to Saddam Hussein, which were turned down, Blix and ElBaradei met with the Iraqi vice president (a powerless Hussein stooge). At that meeting, ElBaradei sternly explained that it was "incomprehensible" that Iraq had not taken the steps the United Nations had demanded. There was no response….It was be-havior like this that led Blix and many others to assume that the Iraqis were not coming clean because they had something to hide."
