"It was a reaction to 9/11 that we have to strike some theoretical, hypothetical links between Saddam Hussein and the terrorists. That was wrong. There wasn't anything," he said in an interview with NBC's "Today" show.
Has Blix ever heard of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? Has he heard about the Al Qaida videotapes found just north of Baghdad? The terrorist training at Salman Pak? The undisputed intelligence in the Feith memo?
And he disagreed that the war had made the world a safer place.
"Sorry to say it doesn't look that way. If the message was to terrorists that we are willing to take you on, then that has not succeeded. In Iraq, it has bred a lot of terrorism and a lot of hatred to the Western world," he told an audience of 1,200 at NYU.
"Disarmament by war and democracy by occupation are difficult prospects."
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Blix said he had been convinced for years that the Iraqis were hiding weapons of mass destruction but began having doubts when intelligence provided by the United States and other countries wasn't producing results. He blamed an over-reliance on defectors and a refusal on the part of the White House to consider the possibility that the intelligence was wrong.