This policy brief grew out of discussions with a team of former national security and foreign policy officials held at the Washington office of the Fourth Freedom Forum in the summer of 2003. The brief was written by the staff of the Fourth Freedom Forum and the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
“The Oil Spoils” by David Cortright, The Nation, 16 June 2003.
As officials investigate the controversies surrounding missing evidence in Iraq, it may be useful to analyze the assertions that were made about weapons of mass destruction and terrorist connections in Iraq, and the information that was available to refute those claims. In this report we present the publicly available data that U.S. and UK leaders chose to ignore in the pre-war debate. It provides a clear picture of what could have–and should have–been known and what should have been balanced against other more secretly obtained data on Iraq.
“Dual-Use Material and the Weapons Search in Iraq,” by Alistair Millar in Middle East Report, 2 May 2003.
This paper provides a brief overview of some of the issues associated with the lifting of UN sanctions in Iraq.
This report devotes special attention to the compliance mandates of Security Council Resolution 1441, passed in November 2002. The authors argue that significant steps toward Iraqi compliance with Security Council demands have occurred, especially with the work of UNMOVIC inspectors since 2002. A chart published in this report showing Iraqi compliance with inspections was reprinted in the New York Times just before the outbreak of the war.
This report examines the key questions being asked by the international community regarding the justification provided for the invasion of Iraq and engaging in regime transition via war in Iraq. The report employs data from a series of earlier reports as it classifies the arguments made by the U.S. and UK governments.
This report provides an assessment of the intensive inspection activity of UN weapons monitors in Iraq, which was mandated in Security Council Resolution 1441 in 2002. Issued just after the January 27 update to the Security Council on UN inspections provided by chief of operations, Hans Blix, the report concurs with Blix’s assessment that “Iraq has on the whole cooperated rather well so far” with UN inspectors.
“Sanctions, Inspections and Containment: Viable Policy Options in Iraq” by David Cortright, Alistair Millar, and George A. Lopez in Iraq: Threat and Response, edited by Gerhard Beestermöller and David Little (LitVerlag, 2003) pp. 127-147.
“A Case for Concern, Not a Case for War,” by Glen Rangwala, Nathanial Hurd, and Alistair Millar in The Iraq War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions, ed. Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003).
