I just saw Blix in an interview here on Swedish television. Although I don’t know what he said in the BBC interview, in Sweden his assessment was considerably kinder.
He did say that Bush and Blair were “salesmen,” or were “selling something,” but he qualified that by continuing, “Of course, that shouldn’t be seen as a particularly strong criticism. All politicians are salesmen.” He went on to insist that he believed that Bush had acted in good faith, but was simply mistaken.
Of the Bush administration he said, “Well, they believed in witches. And if you believe in witches, then every time you see a broom in the corner you think you’ve found more evidence of witches.”
He was also asked why it was that UNMOVIC’s assessments were so much more accurate than those of US intelligence. He claimed that the UN inspectors had more freedom to “think critically,” while American analysts were under pressure to provide a particular version to their supervisors. In other words, US intelligence was politicized.
All quotes are translations from Swedish of stuff I remember Blix saying, and may not be 100% accurate.
Oh, by the way, Blix was particularly hard on David Kay. He said that of all the inspectors, Kay was the one most certain that Iraq possessed “WMDs.” Since that turned out to be so completely wrong, Blix suggests that one should take even Kay’s assertions regarding Iraq’s “WMD” programs, or “programs-related-activity,” with a grain of salt, until one actually sees the evidence.