Did anyone hear any interviews with Ex-Lead Inspector Kay over the weekend? I found it very interesting that most media article's headlines quote him as saying that he didn't believe there is any wmd stockpiles, but failed to mention, or downplayed, his other statements. Please read the excerpts below:
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,109457,00.html
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 but had not decided whether to begin producing such weapons at the time of the January invasion.
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 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.
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.
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Audio:
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1615880Hear the interview for yourself. VERY interesting interview with NPR (streaming audio), which shows his entire view, not just the media snipet that, "I don't think there was ever huge stockpiles of WMD."
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http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/01/25/sprj.nirq.kay/index.html"I actually think the intelligence community owes the president rather than the president owing the American people," he said.
"We have to remember that this view of Iraq was held during the Clinton administration and didn't change in the Bush administration," Kay said.
"It is not a political 'gotcha' issue. It is a serious issue of 'How you can come to a conclusion that is not matched in the future?'"
Other countries' intelligence agencies shared the U.S. conclusion that Iraq had stockpiled such weapons, though most disagreed with the United States about how best to respond.
Asked if Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States at the time of the invasion, Kay said, "Based on the intelligence that existed, I think it was reasonable to reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat."
Although his team concluded that Iraq did not possess large amounts of weapons of mass destruction ready for use, that does not necessarily mean it posed no imminent threat, he said. "That is a political judgment, not a technical judgment."
Despite not finding any WMD, Kay said his team found that the Iraqi senior leadership "had an intention to continue to pursue their WMD activities. That they, in fact, had a large number of WMD-related activities."
Kay predicted investigators would find that Iraqi scientists were "working on developing weapons or weapons concepts that they had not moved into actual production."
"There is ample evidence of movement to Syria before the war -- satellite photographs, reports on the ground of a constant stream of trucks, cars, rail traffic across the border. We simply don't know what was moved," Kay said.
But, he said, "the Syrian government there has shown absolutely no interest in helping us resolve this issue."
