David Kay: Let's Not Make the Same Mistakes in Iran

Washington Post ^ | February 7, 2005 | David Kay

[RWR8189]

One year ago I told the Senate Armed Services Committee that I had concluded "we were almost all wrong" at the time of the Iraq war about that country's activities with regard to weapons of mass destruction -- and never more wrong than in the assessment that Iraq had a resurgent program on the verge of producing nuclear weapons. I testified about what I saw as the major reasons we got it so wrong, and I urged the establishment of an independent commission to examine this failure and begin the long-overdue process of adjusting our intelligence capabilities to the new national security environment we face. It is an environment dominated by too-easy access to weapons of mass destruction capabilities and to the means of concealing such capabilities from international inspection and national intelligence agencies.

A year later we are still awaiting the independent commission's report. The discussion of intelligence reform has focused on reordering and adding structure on top of an eroded intelligence foundation. And now we hear the drumrolls again, this time announcing an accelerating nuclear weapons program in Iran.

There is an eerie similarity to the events preceding the Iraq war. The International Atomic Energy Agency has announced that while Iran now admits having concealed for 18 years nuclear activities that should have been reported to the IAEA, it is has found no evidence of a nuclear weapons program. Iran says it is now cooperating fully with international inspections, and it denies having anything but a peaceful nuclear energy program.

Vice President Cheney is giving interviews and speeches that paint a stark picture of a soon-to-be-nuclear-armed Iran and declaring that this is something the Bush administration will not tolerate. Iranian exiles are providing the press and governments with a steady stream of new "evidence" concerning Iran's nuclear weapons

[My2Cents]

Kay's suffering from Hans Blix Disease....Because he was unable to figure out what Saddam had done with his WMDs and WMD-making capabilities, he assumes none existed. Tell us, Mr. Kay...did you look in Syria?

[samadams2000]

Yes lets no even begin the charade of inspections. Lets just let their sabre rattling acts and their next verbal threat, act as the trigger for 1000 MOABs.

[My2Cents]

a soon-to-be-nuclear-armed Iran and declaring that this is something the Bush administration will not tolerate.

Israel won't tolerate it either. Who will be first to knock out Iran's nuke capability?

[LYSandra]

yes lets not liberate people from tyranny and allow them to have freedom and democracy! Everyone is an expert! I wish these pukes would go away and let the adults handle things!

[taxesareforever]

David Kay: Let's Not Make the Same Mistakes in Iran

Yes, let's not listen to David Kay. That way a lot of what he considers mistakes will be avoided.

[South40]

David Kay: Let's Not Make the Same Mistakes in Iran

Agreed. Let's bomb them into submission and save American lives.

[Dad2Angels]

IIRC this guy was one of the staunchest proclaimers that sadam had weapons and the means to make weapons and so on and so on but as soon as the initial battles were over and we didn't immediately find any caches of WMD he folded like a cheap card table.

[smonk]

can we start by leaving him on the sidelines this time?

[Cold Heat]

Mr.Kay, I am really getting sick of your distortions.

The one about Iraq reconstituting it's nuke program was only expressed by the admin as a potential threat assessment and not as a known reality. The fact that we had no inspectors on the ground at the time made the warning a necessary one.

Your replacement found evidence of exactly that, along with a chem/bio program that was only waiting for sanctions to lift completely which was definitely on the horizon.

You make me sick Mr.Kay!

Just retire and shut your pie hole before you dig a deeper trench with it. (kinda like the ones full of Saddam's goodies in Syria. Not to mention the suddenly reclaimed tons of soviet stuff that the Kremlin repossessed just prior to the invasion.

Just STFU! Mr.Kay.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Saddam Hussein WAS, himself, a weapon of mass destruction.

But not anymore.

[samadams2000]

You know what would be fun..give everyone a 72 hour heads up..that way the "American loving" students and "maderates" could flee to the deserts then we drop the MOABs and diamond tips on all government nuke sites, suspected sites, and gub sites, maybe known mullah hangouts(beehive mosques)...Then the "pro-American" iranians can scramble home and live in "peace".

Anyone else have a good idea?? Id like to get on with it!

[kesg]

If we made a mistake in Iraq, it was basing too much of our case too narrowly (albeit not exclusively) on WMDs instead of more broadly on the Bush Doctrine (note that the Taliban in Afghanistan were never accused of having or developing WMDs).

As for the mullahs in Iran in particular, as we say here in Texas (and as the Marine general put it so well the other day in so many words) some people just need killin'.

[AmericanChef]

If we were NOT to make the same mistakes, we would:

1. Go bomb their nuke stuff right now, no warning.
2. Go in and kill the egomaniacal treacherous ba$tards in charge, no warning.
3. Go drop a couple on Syria. Just for fun. Give 'em something to think about.

The big mistake we made in Iraq was giving them months to get their gear together and move it.

[The Electrician]

Third, acknowledge what inspections by the IAEA can do, and do not denigrate the agency for what it cannot do.

. . .

Rather than ridiculing him and the IAEA, we should acknowledge what they have accomplished in determining that Iran has not lived up to its obligations and concentrate how we can use international inspections to uncover -- more quickly, one hopes -- any future violations.

Kay is simultaneously acting as both apologist and cheerleader for the IAEA's failure.

He acknowledges that nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran would be a grave danger to the world, yet he fails to offer up a convincing plan commensurate with that danger that would prevent that eventuality from occurring, and instead offers up the weak and unsupported hope that somehow, some way, in some unknown future, the IAEA just... might... possibly... if we're all really lucky... be able to do the job that it has consistently failed to do in the past.

IMHO Kay's wishful thinking is a poor substitute for concerted action to save millions of souls whose lives would be placed in grave danger by Iranian posession of nuclear weapons.

[bushfamfan]

You are correct. David Kay was adament that Iraq had WMD. He's done a 180. Of course, they all offer up no satisfying answer to why Saddam wouldn't have followed UN sanctions, why he was so secretive and refused to give an accounting of what happened to the WMD. We are to believe it was all supposedly made up by the Bush administration. Kay has no credibility as he is attempting to rewrite his part in this. He knows as well as anyone Saddam Hussein remained a threat and there are serious questions as to what happened to the WMDs.

[TexanByBirth]

David Key is just a bad penny that won't go away!!!!

[TexanByBirth]

That's Kay - my typing is terrible today

[ravingnutter]

What is clear is that unless we take immediate steps to address the issue of removing the Saddam’s regime from power in Iraq, we will soon face a nuclear armed and embolden Saddam. With time, and we can never be sure of how long that will be, Saddam will be able to intimidate his neighbors with nuclear weapons and find the means to use them against the United States. Saddam’s own actions to obstruct the efforts of the international community to carry out the removal of his WMD capacity as mandated by the UN Security Council at the end of the Gulf War accounts for the uncertainty as to the exact status of that program today. These same actions of obstruction, however, remove all doubt about his aim to acquire and enlarge his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons stockpiles. Absence the forceful removal of Saddam, unambiguous certainty as to the status of his WMD programs is likely to come only after the first use of these weapons against the United States and its friends. This is a very high price to pay – potentially many times over the human toll one year ago in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania – for clarity as to the exact status of any nuclear program.

Sep 2002 - David Kay Testimony