The Scum at the Top
Commentary on the Rats in Washington
Iraq had no banned weapons,
former chief weapons inspector says
By Katherine Pfleger, Associated Press
StarTribune
© January 25, 2004
U.S. intelligence agencies need to explain why their
research indicated Iraq possessed banned weapons before
the American-led invasion, says the outgoing top U.S.
inspector, who now believes Saddam Hussein had no such arms.
"I don't think they exist," David Kay said Sunday. "The
fact that we found so far the weapons do not exist - we've
got to deal with that difference and understand why."
Kay's remarks on National Public Radio reignited criticism
from Democrats, who ignored his cautions that the failure
to find weapons of mass destruction was "not a political
issue."
"It's an issue of the capabilities of one's intelligence
service to collect valid, truthful information," Kay said.
Asked whether President Bush owed the nation an explanation
for the gap between his warnings and Kay's findings, Kay
said: "I actually think the intelligence community owes
the president, rather than the president owing the American
people."
The CIA would not comment Sunday on Kay's remarks, although
one intelligence official pointed out that Kay himself had
predicted last year that his search would turn up banned
weapons.
Kay said his predictions were not "coming back to haunt
me in the sense that I am embarrassed. They are coming back
to haunt me in the sense of 'Why could we all be so wrong?'"
The White House stuck by its assertions that illicit
weapons will be found in Iraq but had no additional
response on Sunday to Kay's remarks.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said Kay's comments reinforced
his belief that the Bush administration had exaggerated the
threat Iraq posed.
"It confirms what I have said for a long period of time,
that we were misled - misled not only in the intelligence,
but misled in the way that the president took us to war,"
Kerry, a White House contender, said on "Fox News Sunday."
"I think there's been an enormous amount of exaggeration,
stretching, deception."
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, said he was surprised Kay "did not find some
semblance of WMD" in Iraq. Roberts said a report on Iraq
intelligence, to be delivered to his panel Wednesday, should
help clarify the CIA's prewar performance.
"It appears now that that intelligence - there's a lot of
questions about it," Roberts said on CNN's "Late Edition."
In October 2002, Bush said Iraq had "a massive stockpile
of biological weapons that has never been accounted for
and is capable of killing millions." In his television
address two days before launching the invasion, Bush said
U.S. troops would enter Iraq "to eliminate weapons of
mass destruction."
Kay returned permanently from Iraq last month, having
found no biological, nuclear or chemical weapons nor
missiles with longer range than Iraq's troublesome president,
Saddam Hussein, was allowed under international restrictions.
But on Sunday, Kay reiterated his conclusion that Saddam
had "a large number of WMD program-related activities."
And, he said, Iraq's leaders had intended to continue those
activities.
"There were scientists and engineers working on developing
weapons or weapons concepts that they had not moved into
actual production," Kay said. "But in some areas, for
example producing mustard gas, they knew all the answers,
they had done it in the past, and it was a relatively simple
thing to go from where they were to starting to produce it."
The Iraqis had not decided to begin producing such weapons
at the time of the invasion, he concluded.
Kay also said chaos in postwar Iraq made it impossible to
know with certainty whether Iraq had had banned weapons.
And, he said, there is ample evidence that Iraq was moving
a steady stream of goods shipments to Syria, but it is
difficult to determine whether the cargoes included weapons,
in part because Syria has refused to cooperate in this part
of the weapons investigation.
Administration officials have sent mixed signals in recent
days about the hunt in Iraq for illicit weapons.
While Bush's spokesmen have insisted weapons will yet be
found, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State
Powell held open the possibility that they will not.
Cheney warned in March 2003, three days before the invasion:
"We believe he (Saddam) has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear
weapons."
But in an interview Wednesday with NPR, he said of the
weapons search: "The jury is still out."
Kay's comments echoed those of dozens of Iraqi scientists
who, in recent interviews with The Associated Press, claimed
they had not seen or worked on weapons of mass destruction
in years.
Only a handful of Iraqi scientists who worked in former
bioweapons and missile programs remained in custody by
the time Kay left Iraq in December. Some of the detained
scientists have been held since April and Kay's conclusions
were likely to raise their hopes for release.
Kay said he resigned Friday because the Pentagon began
peeling away his staff of weapons-searchers as the military
struggled to put down the Iraqi insurgency last fall.
"I didn't think I had the capability to adequately direct
an organization that was working both for a four-star general
as well as working for me," Kay said. He said he understood
the urgency of quelling the rebellion for Gen. John Abizaid,
senior military man in the campaign, but "it is one of
those bureaucratic things that never work out."
Kay hopes to draw on his experiences to write a book on
weapons intelligence.
----------
Associated Press writers Katherine Pfleger in Washington
and Dafna Linzer in Davos, Switzerland, contributed to
this report.
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