 Koizumi cannot show evidence to justify his support of Iraq War Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro was unable to prove the correctness of his decision to support the Iraq War based on the allegation that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, revealing that he lied to the public in deploying the Self-Defense Forces to Iraq. This became clear from his reply to questions by Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo in the House of Representatives plenary session on October 14. Quoting the report of the U.S. weapons research team as saying that Iraq had not possessed WMDs or even any plans to develop such weapons, Shii stressed that the U.S. Bush administration has lost all its justification for invading Iraq. The prime minister insisted that his decision was correct because Iraq "possessed and used WMDs, and rejected U.S. inspections." Citing the U.S. report stating that Iraq's capability of producing WMDs was destroyed in 1991, Shii urged Koizumi to identify when Iraq possessed and used WMDs. Koizumi only referred to Iraq's reaction to the WMD issue that took place in the 1980s. He only mentioned UN inspection team chair Hans Blix's statement in March 2003 that Iraq was not cooperative with inspections as after 1998. Koizumi could not show any evidence that the UNSC confirmed Iraq's rejection of inspections. Shii pointed out that Iraq, which for a short period of time rejected WMD inspections, accepted them again in September 2002. After the questioning in the House of Representatives plenary session, Shii commented on the prime minister's remarks, saying, "We've pointed out that Koizumi attempted to deceive the public by telling two lies; first, he expressed support for the U.S. war on Iraq by trying to convince the public that Iraq had WMDs, then, dispatched the SDF by expressing his belief that WMDs will be discovered in Iraq. However, his responses prove that what he said was a lie. He lost the grounds he used in supporting the Iraq War and dispatching the SDF to Iraq." (end) |