Could Hans Blix have done anything to stop the war? An interview with The Guardian:

His office, on the 31st floor of the United Nations, with a striking view of the Chrysler building, is decorated with aerial pictures of Baghdad. “A lot of these buildings have probably been bombed now,” says his press spokesman, dashing his pen across vast swathes of the city, pointing out the government ministries.

Blix believes there was nothing he could have said that would have convinced the Americans not to go to war at this time. “They would have wanted a clear-cut guarantee that [the Iraqis] did not have weapons of mass destruction,” he says. “I could not have given them a guarantee that if they had waited a few months more there would have been results.”

Could anyone have given them a guarantee?

“Not at this stage. Now we’ll see if occupation does it. If we had come out and said on the basis of what we had and said, ‘We can solve this in three months,’ they would have said, ‘You’re not credible.’ “