“On 7 March [2003], [chief UN weapons inspector] Dr [Hans] Blix reported to the [UN] Security Council ‘a substantial measure of disarmament by Iraq with the destruction of large numbers of al-Samoud ballistic missiles.’ It was of this that Dr Blix said to the Security Council: ‘We are not watching the breaking of toothpicks. Lethal weapons are being destroyed…The destruction undertaken constitutes a substantial measure of disarmament–indeed, the first since the middle of the 1990s.’ ”
– Clare Short, An Honourable Deception?, Page 250