If Bush Finds WMDs? Have the Democrats read David Kay's report -- or their own words? [Re-post]

If the administration finds weapons of mass destruction, said a pundit on one of last Sunday's political chat shows, then expect a President Bush lift-up in the polls. If the administration finds weapons of mass destruction?

Apparently, few paid attention to the interim report of David Kay, the man Bush put in charge of preparing the report on Iraq's weapons program. Kay recently briefed congressional intelligence committees about his -- so far -- three-month-long search and examination. What he disclosed clearly demonstrates the validity of the war and confirms the president's arguments.

David Kay also explains the difficulty in determining the existence or removal of Iraq's WMDs: "All of Iraq's WMD activities were highly compartmentalized . . . with deception and denial built into each program. Deliberate dispersal and destruction of material and documentation . . . began pre-conflict and ran trans- to post-conflict. Post-war looting destroyed or dispersed important and easily collectible material and evidence. . . . Significant elements of this looting were carried out in a systematic and deliberate manner, with the clear aim of concealing pre-war activities of Saddam's regime. Some WMD personnel crossed borders in the pre/trans-conflict period, and may have taken evidence and even weapons-related materials with them. Any actual WMD weapons or material is likely to be small . . . and difficult to identify with normal search procedures. Even the bulkiest materials we are searching for . . . can be concealed in spaces not much larger than a two-car garage."

Some Democratic presidential candidates, meanwhile, especially former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, grow ever more shrill and skeptical about Bush's war rationale. Suggestion: Read Mr. Kay's briefing. Not only does this confirm Bush's suspicions about the intention of Saddam Hussein, but let us recall that the previous administration shared the same fears and concerns about Saddam.

David Kay, Oct. 2, 2003: "Iraq's WMD programs spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars and were elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom."

Sandy Berger, Clinton national security adviser, Feb. 18, 1998: "He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has 10 times since 1983."

David Kay: "We have found people, technical information and illicit-procurement networks that, if allowed to flow to other countries and regions, could accelerate global proliferation."

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Dec. 16, 1998: "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."

David Kay: "We have discovered . . . a clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to U.N. monitoring and suitable for continuing chemical and biological weapons research. . . . A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of biological weapons agents, that Iraqi officials . . . were explicitly ordered not to declare to the United Nations. . . . Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons. . . . New research on B(iological) W(eapon)-applicable agents . . . and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the United Nations."

Madeline Albright, Feb. 18, 1998: "Iraq is a long way from (here), but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."

David Kay: "We have discovered . . . documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation."

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Oct. 10, 2002: "There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years."

David Kay: "We have discovered . . . continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the United Nations. . . . Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1,000 km -- well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the United Nations. Missiles of 1,000 km would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets throughout the Middle East. . . . Clandestine attempts between late 1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles -- probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited equipment."

Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., and others, in a letter to President Bush, Dec. 5, 2001: "There is no doubt that . . . Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. . . . In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."

Some light reading for you to back up the David Kay "just in time" theory:

“THERE THEY GO AGAIN”: IA.E.A. MISSTATES ITS RECORD ON DISMANTLING SADDAM’S NUCLEAR-BOMB PROGRAM
Washington---The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) continues to misstate the degree of success it achieved on dismantling Saddam Hussein’s covert nuclear-bomb program during nuclear inspections in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, according to an analysis by the Nuclear Control Institute (NCI), a non-proliferation research and advocacy center.
“IAEA’s recent claims that they have ‘neutralized [Iraq’s] nuclear-weapon program’ and ‘destroyed all their key buildings and equipment’ related to weaponization are patently false, and the Agency’s own inspection reports prove it,” said Steven Dolley, NCI research director.
On September 26, IAEA challenged a statement by President Bush that the IAEA had concluded Iraq was six months away from acquiring nuclear weapons in 1998. An IAEA spokesman stated that no such IAEA report existed.[1] The Agency also took issue with the conclusion of a report by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), released earlier this month. The IISS report posited that if Iraq “were to obtain fissile material from abroad --- steal it or buy it in some way --- we certainly believe [Saddam] has the ability to put together a nuclear weapon very quickly, in a matter of months.”[2]
In response, IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky declared
I don’t know where they [IISS] have determined that Iraq has retained this much weaponization capability because when we left in December ’98 we had concluded that we had neutralized their nuclear-weapons program. We had confiscated their fissile material. We had destroyed all their key buildings and equipment.[3]
Additionally, on September 30 IAEA spokesperson Melissa Fleming claimed that, prior to the inspectors’ withdrawal in late 1998, IAEA had “uncovered Iraq’s secret nuclear program, and we dismantled it. We were successful last time. If we get unfettered access, we will be successful again.”[4]
“For IAEA to claim that they ‘neutralized’ Saddam’s nuclear weaponization capability is dangerously inaccurate, and muddies the waters of the Iraq debate,” said Dolley. “Since 1997, the Agency has operated under the assumption that Iraq could successfully fabricate a working nuclear bomb if they managed to acquire a sufficient amount of fissile material. The Agency’s latest statement correctly points out that no one outside Iraq knows the current status of Iraq’s nuclear-bomb program, in large part because there have been no inspections in nearly four years. But for IAEA to suggest that it completely eliminated Iraq’s weaponization capability prior to 1998 is irresponsible in the extreme. The Agency should recant this statement.”
Several Iraqi nuclear weapons facilities and much equipment were indeed dismantled or destroyed by U.N. inspectors between 1991 and 1998. However, substantial and significant issues about Iraq’s ability to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program remained unresolved when the inspectors left the country.
Dolley, citing IAEA’s own inspection reports as documentation, said: “Iraq has never surrendered to inspectors its two completed designs for a nuclear bomb, nuclear-bomb components such as explosive lenses and neutron initiators that it is known to have possessed, or almost any documentation of its efforts to enrich uranium to bomb-grade using gas centrifuges, devices which are small and readily concealed from reconnaissance.”[5]
Moreover, IAEA has previously conceded that Iraq’s weaponization R&D---small-scale technical research devoted to the design of a nuclear bomb’s components---is not readily detected by means of inspections. IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei stated in 1998 that “no matter how comprehensive the inspection, any country-wide verification process, in Iraq or anywhere else, has a degree of uncertainty that aims to verify the absence of readily concealable objects such as small amounts of nuclear material or weapons components.”[6]
The IAEA’s own guidelines for the safeguarding of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium gives the conversion time for transforming these materials into weapons components as on the order of seven to ten days or one to three weeks, depending on the form the materials are in (metal, oxide or nitrate) when the materials are acquired by means of diversion or theft.[7] Thus, Iraq could be capable of producing a nuclear weapon in less than a month with sufficient diverted or stolen fissile material if it has managed to fabricate and conceal all of the non-nuclear components of a weapon.
IAEA’s recent statement that the Agency had “neutralized [Iraq’s] nuclear-weapons program” suggests that by 1998, IAEA had effectively eliminated Iraq’s ability to weaponize---that is, to manufacture and assemble the components needed for a working nuclear bomb, lacking only fissile material (plutonium or highly enriched uranium) to fuel it. This is simply not the case, and IAEA’s own previous findings directly contradict this claim. IAEA’s plans for ongoing monitoring in Iraq (discontinued in December 1998 when the inspectors left the country and were not allowed to return) were, as Director-General ElBaradei noted in June 1998, “predicated on the assumption that Iraq has the technical ability to design and construct a nuclear weapon and takes into account the large intellectual resource in Iraq in the corps of scientists and engineers who worked in Iraq's clandestine nuclear program.”[8]
The Agency’s own October 1997 review of its inspections in Iraq concluded that "Iraqi programme documentation records substantial progress in many important areas of nuclear weapon development, making it prudent to assume that Iraq has developed the capability to design and fabricate a basic fission weapon, based on implosion technology and fueled by highly enriched uranium."[9]
Nuclear Control Institute

And Saddam already had the uranium according to the CIA (and don't forget about the centrifuge found in the rosegarden):

An unsigned CIA memo on Oct. 5 advised that "the CIA had reservations about the British reporting" on Iraq's alleged attempts in Niger, Hadley [Bush's #2 National Security guy] said. A second memo, sent on Oct. 6, elaborated on the CIA's doubts, describing "some weakness in the evidence," such as the fact that Iraq already had a large stock of uranium and probably wouldn't need more, Hadley said.
White House Defense of Uranium Claim Produces Maze of Contradictions

As far as where the weapons are...

U.S. intelligence suspects Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have finally been located. Unfortunately, getting to them will be nearly impossible for the United States and its allies, because the containers with the strategic materials are not in Iraq.
Instead they are located in Lebanon's heavily-fortified Bekaa Valley, swarming with Iranian and Syrian forces, and Hizbullah and ex-Iraqi agents, Geostrategy-Direct.com will report in tomorrow's new weekly edition.
U.S. intelligence first identified a stream of tractor-trailer trucks moving from Iraq to Syria to Lebaon in January 2003. The significance of this sighting did not register on the CIA at the time.
Report: U.S suspects Iraqi WMD in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley

This was also reported months previously by DEBKA and World Net Daily who cited US and Israeli intelligence as sources. To add fuel to the fire, so to speak...

The powerful blast that reverberated across eastern and central Lebanon Sunday, December 29, was caused by the explosion of a big surface missile in Hizballah hands and of Iraqi origin. Reporting this, DEBKAfile’s exclusive military and Lebanese sources reveal that the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group has recently taken delivery of a shipment of surface missiles, presumed to be medium-range, from the Iraqi army. The blast occurred at a Hizballah training camp near a village called Janta in the northeastern section of the Beqaa Valley close to the Syrian frontier. This camp is also used by the group as a testing ground for new weapons, short range missiles and explosive devices. The blast was heard at a distance of 20 km indicating a warhead of one ton at least. According to our sources, the missile exploded suddenly, catching the Hizballah team handling it unawares and causing a large number of casualties, as indicated by the long line of ambulances and rescue teams reported by witnesses to be racing to the blast scene from northern and central Lebanon. Among them were Syrian military rescue vehicles. The Hizballah quickly sealed off the ravaged area, allowing no one through but the rescue teams, their own operatives and Syrian officers.
Hizballah misfires first missile of Iraqi shipment

I have a question for you - Are the items and programs Dr. Kay found in violation of the UN 1441 resolution?

Short answer...yes...long answer...

The interim findings of David Kay and the Iraq Survey Group make two things abundantly clear: Saddam Hussein's Iraq was in material breach of its United Nations obligations before the Security Council passed Resolution 1441 last November, and Iraq went further into breach after the resolution was passed.

Kay and his team have "discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery . . . has come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that the Iraq Survey Group has discovered that should have been declared to the U.N."

The Kay Report confirms that our intelligence was correct to suspect the al-Kindi Co. of being involved in prohibited activity. Missile designers at al-Kindi told Kay and his team that Iraq had resumed work on converting SA-2 surface-to-air missiles into ballistic missiles with a range of about 250 kilometers, and that this work continued even while UNMOVIC inspectors were in Iraq. The U.N.-mandated limit for Iraq was a range of 150 kilometers.

The Kay Report also confirmed our prewar intelligence that indicated Iraq was developing missiles with ranges up to 1,000 kilometers. Similarly, Kay substantiated our reports that Iraq had tested an unmanned aerial vehicle to 500 kilometers, also in violation of U.N. resolutions.

What's more, he and his team found that elaborate efforts to shield illicit programs from inspection persisted even after the collapse of Hussein's regime. Key evidence was deliberately eliminated or dispersed during the postwar period. In a wide range of offices, laboratories and companies suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction, computer hard drives were destroyed, files were burned and equipment was carefully cleansed of all traces of use -- and done so in a pattern that was clearly deliberate and selective, rather than random.

What Kay Found

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