Ex-U.S. Arms Hunter Kay Says No Stockpiles in Iraq

Kay Q&A with Reuters...

Thus ends the Right-wing fantasy...
______________
Q: You came away from the hunt that you have done believing that they did not have any large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the country?

A: "That is correct."

Q. Is that from the interviews and documentation?

A. "Well the interviews, the documentation, and the physical evidence of looking at, as hard as it was because they were dealing with looted sites, but you just could not find any physical evidence that supported a larger program."

Q: Do you think they destroyed it?

A: "No, I don't think they existed."

 

So much for the getting those WMD out of Saddam's hands.

Well you know we really went there to bring democracy to the Iraqis.

So how's that going?

 

So you think a that a chaotic Iraq or one that is split up into Shia, Sunni and Kurdish states is going to bring more stability?

Remember the Turks and Iranians are incredibly uneasy about a Kurdish state that would rile up their own Kurdish minorities. The Arabs are incredibly uneasy about a new Shia state that could be a natural ally of Iran. The Sunnis in Iraq are incredibly uneasy about the Kurds and the Shi'ites and are already showing that they're not going to stand for domination by either. In the meantime we're backing off of bringing democracy to the Iraqis by stalling Shi'ite demands for direct elections, knowing full well that that will lead to Shi'ite domination. We've got soldiers committed there and getting killed until who knows when knowing the place will go to hell as soon as we leave.

Yep this is stability.

Lets face it Iraq was an artificial construct of fractious ethnic groups and religious sects with a tyrannical dictator keeping the lid on things. Once that lid is removed there is no telling what will happen. While there is no doubt Saddam was an evil man we had him contained and Iraq stable. With no fly zones and his army severely weakened there was no way Saddam could make any offensive moves even against the Kurds and Shi'ites let alone another country. Containment was working and as opposed to occupation cost us less in money and lives. As for those who say we couldn't contain indefinately look at how long we've fought the cold war and embargoed Cuba.

Unfortunately now we've got to maintain an occupation indefinately and there is no guarentee that once we leave we won't see Iraq be taken over by another Saddam or Ayatollah Khomeini.

 

Treeman's mantra was always "It's only a matter of time." Well, looks like even that non specific timetable is blown out of the water.

Containment and sanctions worked in this instance. Pre-emption? The jury's still out.

 

Here's what Kay wrote almost one year ago (pre-war)

It Was Never About A Smoking Gun

By David Kay

(David Kay is a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. In 1991, he served as chief nuclear weapons inspector of UNSCOM, the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq.)

When it comes to the U.N. weapons inspection in Iraq, looking for a smoking gun is a fool's mission. That was true 11 years ago when I led the inspections there. It is no less true today -- even after the seemingly important discovery on Thursday of a dozen empty short-range missile warheads left over from the 1980s.

The only job the inspectors can expect to accomplish is confirming whether Iraq has voluntarily disarmed. That is not a task that need take months more. And last week's cache is irrelevant in answering that question, regardless of the U.N.'s final determination. That's because the answer is already clear: Iraqi is in breach of U.N. demands that it dismantle its weapons of mass destruction.

I am no apologist for the Iraqis, but not only are those warheads irrelevant to the larger argument, they could well be remnants that were overlooked, found as they were in a 25 square mile site that has a huge number of conventional warheads and rockets on it, rockets used principally in the Iran/Iraq war. The discovery was small -- the kind of thing inspectors often find -- and there's not much to be made of the warheads unless the testing shows they were once filled with VX gas.

The real problem lies with the way the searches are being conducted, period. The fact that day after day, the inspectors go to sites, most of which were inspected in the 1990s and put under long-term monitoring, has served Iraq's claims that it is complying with the inspections. It also ensures that these non-threatening inspections will continue for some time. Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, said last week that his required Jan. 27 report (stating whether Baghdad is fully complying with U.N. demands to disclose and dismantle any weapons of mass destruction program) will simply be an interim one. It will mark, Blix said, "the beginning of the inspection and monitoring process, not the end of it." That statement no doubt came as a surprise in Washington: Many members of the Bush administration have told me they were expecting the report to provide the basis for Security Council endorsement of military action to compel Baghdad to disarm. Blix appears to be drawing a very different conclusion: In the face of Iraq's denials that it has weapons, the inspections must continue.

What Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), are not doing is even more damning. Recall that Iraq was required to submit a "full and complete declaration" of all its weapons programs to the U.N. Security Council early last December. But that 12,000-page declaration was hardly complete, and its omissions (as well as gaps identified in 1998 -- more about that in a moment) should have become the focus of the inspections process.

UNMOVIC, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, should use its limited resources to examine the seven gaps in the United Nations' knowledge and understanding of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which were identified in 1998 by UNSCOM (the now defunct U.N. Special Commission) and an independent technical evaluation group. The gaps were alarming. They had to do with such things as anthrax, artillery shells filled with mustard gas, mobile biological weapons agent facilities and efforts to procure uranium.

By failing to address these concerns, Iraq mocked the United Nations with its declaration. It rejected what the Security Council, in Resolution 1441, insisted it must do -- that is, answer all outstanding questions about the program. And it had the gall to contend that it hasn't had a prohibited weapons program since the end of the Gulf War.

How quickly the experience of the first attempt to disarm Iraq by international inspections has been forgotten. That attempt, starting in 1991, also began with weapons declarations filled with lies and misstatements. As a result, the UNSCOM team I led was also forced to search for a smoking gun. It is a nearly impossible task, which is why it should never be the standard of mission success. Only two smoking guns were found during all the UNSCOM inspections in Iraq in the 1990s. The first -- Iraq's nuclear weapons complex -- came quickly in the summer and autumn of 1991. We were going after very large physical complexes that had been designed to deceive spy satellites -- but whose purpose could be detected by inspectors armed with good intelligence and aided by key Iraqi defectors.

In the next six years of UNSCOM inspections only one other such discovery was made -- when the existence of an Iraqi biological weapons program was finally uncovered in 1995. But it is often forgotten that the weapons themselves were not found by the inspectors. Iraq told the inspectors that it had destroyed the biological munitions, which, it said, had been stored inside abandoned railroad tunnels and buried along the runways at two military airfields. Even the best inspectors have almost no chance of discovering hidden weapons sites such as these in a country the size of Iraq.

We UNSCOM inspectors simply did not have the resources to win a game of hide and seek. The same is true today. The number of inspectors was always terribly small -- seldom more than 300 in the country at any one time. And we were totally outclassed by Iraqi security, which had managed to infiltrate the United Nations in Vienna and New York, as well as the Bahrain office of UNSCOM. In late 1991, when we seized more than 100,000 pages of information on Iraq's nuclear weapons program, we found one particularly surprising document. In it, the head of Iraqi security warned the chief security official of the facility holding the documents that in 10 days I would be leading a team to search his building and he should remove all sensitive material from this facility. The document was dated less than 48 hours after the decision had been made that I would lead this team! At the time fewer than 10 people in the United Nations and IAEA knew about this mission.

Much has been made of the value of surprise inspections, but little has been said about how hard they are to conduct. Between 1991 and 1998, UNSCOM conducted almost 500 inspections. Of those, only about six truly surprised Iraq. Then as now, the inspectors operated in an environment that was thoroughly monitored by Iraq. Hotel rooms, restaurants, offices and cars were all bugged. We understood that only with the most extraordinary measures could any of our conversations or documents elude Iraqi security officials.

By 1996, UNSCOM and the IAEA had switched almost entirely from searching for specific weapons to trying to limit the ease with which Iraq could use its permitted dual-use facilities to produce them.

The former inspectors I know react with disbelief to the list of sites the current inspectors have visited in the past seven weeks -- Taji, Daura, Al Hakam, Fallujah, Tarmiya, Rashdiya, Al Furat, Al Muthanna. No one, they say, should have believed that Saddam would ever let inspectors back into the country without ensuring that these sites, well monitored by UNSCOM until it left in '98, were thoroughly sanitized. Let's not forget that UNSCOM was never denied entry to a site it was monitoring. Far from denial, Iraq wanted UNSCOM and the IAEA to concentrate on the monitored sites and stop searching for clandestine facilities.

How did the inspectors get back into a game of hide and seek with the Iraqis?

This time, the Bush administration was determined that, rather than a search and find mission, the inspections would verify Iraq's willingness to be disarmed. This would be completely unlike the long, frustrating game the Iraqis played and ultimately won with the first U.N. inspection regime. This was to be Iraq's last chance. Any "false statements or omissions" in its December declaration were, according to Resolution 1441, supposed to "constitute a further material breach of Iraq's obligations." And "material breach" is the Security Council's standard for measuring whether military force is required to compel disarmament.

Inspections were not supposed to begin until 15 days after the declaration was due, in other words on Dec. 21. Instead, and this has gone almost completely unremarked, Blix and ElBaradei began the inspections on Nov. 27, 11 days before Iraq was to submit its declaration. So much for President Bush's injunction that the inspectors were there to confirm Iraq's voluntary disarmament. Thus the hunt for the smoking gun was on. The United States did not object to this change of strategy. In fact, it urged Blix and ElBaradei to make their search more effective, use their full powers and find the smoking gun.

It is easy, if painful, to see how the United Nations slid back into the fool's game of trying to find a smoking gun inside a totalitarian country such as Iraq. What is much harder to understand is why the Bush administration, which so clearly seemed to have understood that this was not a game that they wanted to play or could win, let itself be trapped like this. But trapped it is.

Even such tantalizing discoveries as last week's should not be seen as a promise of more compelling evidence to come if we would only give the inspectors more time. The only evidence of Iraq's weapons program we need has been clear since early December, when it filed yet another weapons declaration that was anything but full, final and complete. Iraq continues to ignore its international obligations. Let's not give it more time to cheat and retreat.

 

What we need is someone to take outlaws interview, and re interview Kay again. That would be interesting to see - would he cough up a mea culpa or defend his mistake to the death.

 

OK, heard Kay interviewed on NPR and he will defend his mistake to his death. I am speculating that since it is impossible to definitively prove something by the absence of something, he continues to claim we will never know if they had any WMD. He blames not himself but intelligence briefings which misled him and any failure was not his, but that of intelligence. He would make a great right wing talk show host since he is incapable of making a mistake.

 

This just in from the Bush Administration:

David Kay has disappeared and has not returned, he is presumed dead. However, he did leave a final note saying,

"There are WMDs in Iraq, I was just kidding the other day, but they are certainly there. I just needed to take a break to take care of my dog. I know there are WMDs because I saw them but they were too heavy for me to carry back and then I got lost, trust me they are there. There is also a connection between Saddam and Osama and 9/11, I have pictures of them talking together and holding model airplanes over some model towers. Its true, but i lost them. Oh yeah, vote for Mr. Bush, he is a nice guy, I saw him healing lepers, really. I love him the most for being the bestest president of all. Oh yeah, my family is great too. Signed, Daneil Cay"

 

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/25/wirq25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004

Saddam's WMD hidden in Syria, says Iraq survey chief
By Con Coughlin
(Filed: 25/01/2004)


David Kay, the former head of the coalition's hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, yesterday claimed that part of Saddam Hussein's secret weapons programme was hidden in Syria.

In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Kay, who last week resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year's war to overthrow Saddam.

"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."

 

from the npr interview, kay said the inability to find WMDs, "was not a political issue" but rather a question of whether our intelligence community "is able to gather reliable" intelligence.

 

Kay also said the inspections made him think Iraq was more dangerous than he did before the war.

?

He said the fact that no WMD were found was a technical issue, not a political issue.

He would make an awesome news host on Fox.

 

...and with some Administration spin there's your justification to move into Syria.

Fortunately, the warmongers will have to work overtime to get public support on this one considering our "success" in Iraq.

 

I don't thik that's a problem, we couldn't invade and hold a Syrian restaurant. Our miltary force is stretched so thin at this point between Afghanistan, Korea, and Iraq, it's just not feasible.

We can't invade everybody...one of the reasons for the failure of preemption as a viable approach.

 

I dunno...a draft could prop up the numbers if the Administration really wanted to expanding the war.

Besides, a large number of troops would probably be available after leaving Iraq once the UN gets more involved, right?

 

Further... when asked if President Bush owed the people of the US an apology for a war based on "bad" intel, Kay responded, ~"No, the Intelligence community owes President Bush an apology."

I know this will disappoint some of you.

 

Uh, in that kay was among the leading advocates of invading Iraq pre-war, voicing his position on several occassions on national television, and in that he only admitted what he absolutely could no longer deny, why would this be surprising?

The bad intel argument holds no water for many reasons:

A) It was bad, to a large degree, because it was selectively gathered and used. We know this.

B) It was used by the administration to support it's argument even after the administration knew it was bad.

C) Even if you skip A and B, the fact is that many within this country and almost everyone outside of it said that intel is a murky business, and war should be based on certainty, hence intel was not enough to go on. We laughed at them, called them cowards, etc. and said that they were wrong. That was Our Government's decision, no one else's, not the intel officers, whatever you think of them.

The blame rests where it should.

 

No. We're used to these guys ducking responsibility. I would be surprised if these cats ever took responsibility for a mistake. It's a powerful mechanism, by continually denying, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, and with the support of the leadership of both houses of congress, it's possible to fool most of the people in this country. Besides, the Bushies are responsible for pulling the trigger. They have not replaced anyone in intelligence, Justice or FBI since 9/11 IIRC so they are not dissatisfied with the intelligence work. Head would have rolled if they were upset. Apparently the buck doesn't stop in the White House anymore.

 

Originally posted by MacBeth

A) It was bad, to a large degree, because it was selectively gathered and used. We know this.

<b>But Kay's criticism is that the intel was bad not that it was selectively gathered-- that's your criticism.</b>

B) It was used by the administration to support it's argument even after the administration knew it was bad.

<b>There is no way to positively know that intel is good or bad until it is acted upon. It is supposition on spindly legs before that.</b>

C) Even if you skip A and B, the fact is that many within this country and almost everyone outside of it said that intel is a murky business, and war should be based on certainty, hence intel was not enough to go on. We laughed at them, called them cowards, etc. and said that they were wrong. That was Our Government's decision, no one else's, not the intel officers, whatever you think of them.

<b>There was a certainty that Saddam has gassed Kurds with one form of WMD. There was a certainty that Saddam had invaded Kuwait. There was a certainty that Saddam aggressively "removed" his political opponents. There was lots of certainty as to why Saddam deserved to be removed from power.

And poetically, there was a kind of certainty in pre-emptive action. How could the US afford to wait around and find out just what Saddam's intentions were after 9/11?

Post 9/11 I remember a certain refrain going around: Never again!</b>

 

Yeah, politicians duck responsibility because their political opponents are vampire opportunists. That is a problem with the system not with the character of the individuals involved.

Just because no one has been fired does not mean that they are satisfied with the intelligence. That only means that firing people may not be the solution. Lopping heads would have been a knee-jerk reaction that would attempt to deflect criticism away from themselves-- which is your first criticism!

 

Yeah, this war wasn't about oil, now was it?