ABSTRACT
The political justification given for the Iraq war was above all the contention that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in violation of resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. As everyone knows, the evidence was faulty, and reports of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were ignored by the states launching the war. The president George W. Bush administration’s own post invasion inspections, conducted under the auspices of the United States (US) funded Iraq Survey Group, concluded that Iraq did not possess nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. An important way to avoid future wars of counterproliferation like the Iraq conflict is to institute more robust systems of inspection, monitoring, and verification regarding the potential development of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. In addition, the five recognized nuclear powers namely the US, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China must take steps toward universal and verifiable nuclear disarmament.
