Iraq Disarmed: The Story Behind the Story of the Fall of Saddam

This is an important and salutary memoir by Ekeus, the Swedish diplomat in charge of the UN special commission tasked with ensuring that Iraqi chemical, biological, and missile programs were completely shut down in line with a 1991 UN Security Council resolution. Ekeus provides a blow-by-blow account of how he organized and led his team, dealing not only with the obstruction and obfuscation by the Iraqis but also the interference of the UN bureaucracy and the Security Council. This included some tense moments with then U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright, who did not want sanctions to be lifted as long as the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was in power. But Ekeus saw the promise of an end to sanctions as his main source of leverage in gaining access to Iraqi weapons sites. He ended his term, in April 1997, believing that the Iraqi programs had been shut down, while the parallel International Atomic Energy Agency effort had effectively eliminated the nuclear program. He was right, but he was then forced to watch with dismay as the U.S. and British governments invaded Iraq in 2003 on the claim that chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction still abounded in Iraq.