Posted on 01/25/2004 7:13:03 PM PST by BigSkyFreeper
WASHINGTON - 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."
Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. inspector whose work was heavily criticized by Kay and ended when the United States went to war with Iraq, said Sunday the United States should have known the intelligence was flawed last year when leads followed up by U.N. inspectors didn't produce any results.
"I was beginning to wonder what was going on," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "Weren't they wondering too? If you find yourself on a train that's going in the wrong direction, its best to get off at the next stop."
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.
Kay hopes to draw on his experiences to write a book on weapons intelligence.
Of course it should be noted the Grand Forks Herald isn't a Conservative leaning newsrag, so their article headline suggests we aren't going to find Iraqi WMD anywhere.
Because you can hide enough smallpox to kill millions in a regular thermos bottle or put enough anthrax in a shoe box to kill millions. Saddam played like he had these things and threatened to use them, we believed him, even Clinton believed him. How many times did we hear about destroying us from Aziz and others, enough that I'm glad our government finally decided to put an end to the threats. If someone threatens you with a gun you don't ask if it's loaded.
Well, how nice.
Saddam is scared shi***ess about getting caught and so he was waiting for sanctions to lift.
We know this.
But, what happened to the stuff he had that the fist batch of inspectors found evidence of, yet never found and that is what the darn question is that has always been there.
I have had enough of these idiots. This guy has turned out as bad as the rest, never addressing the issue.
Did the U.N. inspector lie? Was there never stockpiles of sarin and anthrax?
It was never turned over to them prior to the U.N. getting booted the first time, so where did it go?
That is the question. These questions lack answers and was part of the reason why we did not believe Saddam when he said "I don't have them and never did." "Never used them either."
Someone knows!
The problem as I see it is that lying in a sport over there. It is a cultural trait.
Kay bought it.
Kick his BS'd butt down the road with the rest of them.
I do not know if he will stay for a second term.
I would not.
Typo
Abu Nidal, running a splinter faction of the Palestinian Liberation Front, died several months before we moved into Iraq and his followers were absorbed into other groups.
Abu Abbas, however, of the Palestinian Liberation Front of Abu Abbas (of the Achille Lauro fame), *was* taken in Iraq.
Members of the PLF were also caught in Israel, having tortured and killed an Israeli youth, in November of 2001.
These people are the lowest form of scum.
"MR. RITTER: Mr. Chairman, members of the committee; last week I resigned my position out of frustration that the United Nations Security Council, and the United States as its most significant supporter, was failing to enforce the post-Gulf War resolutions designed to disarm Iraq. I can speak to you today from firsthand experience about the effectiveness of American policy or lack thereof, with respect to the United Nations's effort to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. I sincerely hope that my actions might help to change things.
It was very sad to hear the secretary of State on Tuesday night giving an interview from Moscow challenging my credentials. She told the world through CNN that Scott Ritter doesn't have a clue about what our overall policy has been, that we are the foremost supporters of UNSCOM. I do have a clue, in fact several, all of which indicate that our government has clearly expressed its policy in one way and then acted in another. Such clues include various statements by the secretary of State, a report to Congress on 6 April by the president of the United States and several statements made to me and to other UNSCOM officials at a variety of inter-agency briefings held at the State Department, the Pentagon and the White House. If these were the only clues, the administration's record would be impressive. However, I can say without fear of contradiction and with the confidence that most of my former colleagues agree with me that those clues derive from the practical experience obtained on the ground in Iraq and behind the scenes at the United Nations tell another story: that the United States has undermined UNSCOM's efforts through interference and manipulation, usually coming from the highest levels of the administration's national security team, to include the secretary of State herself.
Iraq today is not disarmed, and remains an ugly threat to its neighbors and to world peace. Those American who think that this is important and that something should be done about it have to be deeply disappointed in our leadership.
I'm here today to provide you with specific details about the scope and nature of interference by this administration in UNSCOM, the debilitating effect that such interference has on the ability of UNSCOM to carry out its disarmament mission in Iraq and to appeal to the administration and to the Senate to work together to change America's Iraq policy back to what has been stated in the past: full compliance with the provisions of Security Council resolutions, to include enabling UNSCOM to carry out its mission of disarmament in an unrestricted, unhindered fashion. Only through the reestablishment of such a policy, clearly stated and resolutely acted upon, does the United States have a chance of resuming its leadership role in overseeing the effective and verifiable disarmament of Iraq so that neither we nor Iraq's neighbors in the Middle East will be threatened by Saddam Hussein's nuclear, chemical or biological weapons or long-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering such weapons. Within the confines of the need to protect the sources and methods used by the special commission to gather relevant information, I am prepared to give you whatever details I can so you will understand why I gave up such an interesting, challenging and meaningful position in which I had hoped to have the chance to contribution to making the world a little safer. Thank you."
Now just for fun, here is the text of John Kerry questions for Ritter during that Senate Hearing in 1998
"SEN. KERRY: Fair enough. Now I began with that question just because I spent a considerable amount of time today on the telephone with Chairman Butler. And I just -- and I don't want to compromise anything that he said to me or our discussion had. But I want to say this to my colleagues: First of all, I think most of us adhere to the concept of fairness. And that's certainly an important concept in my politics. The reason there was an objection today by the leader on the Democratic side was the notion that we ought to be here with both sides' point of view. This is too important an issue to allow five days to go by without the administration formally here to answer questions. Secondly, I would simply say to my colleagues that this is much, much too important to allow it to become somehow politicized in any way possible. And I regret that even that process got a little clouded today by this process of having the hearing.
That said -- and I want to emphasize "that said" -- I'm very grateful to you, Mr. Ritter. I think you're a patriot. I know you're a soldier. And I think you've come to this with a very pure sense of duty, a sense of responsibility, and with deep frustration for what you've not been able to achieve. And I accept what you say. I believe what you're saying to us. There may be a nuance here or there of interpretation that people can differ with, but you cannot differ with the conclusion that the work of UNSCOM is compromised. And it has been compromised for a considerable period of time, in my judgement -- preceding even these intercessions that you've referred to, of the administration. And that's where I want to share with my colleagues the notion that we're all operating here, you know, off-kilter a little bit. You know, Saddam Hussein has got to be delighted with what he's hearing here today and what he's seen in the last days, because he's winning. His strategy is working.
Make no mistake about it, his strategy is not to lift the sanctions. His strategy is to build weapons of mass destruction. And his strategy has been able to nip away at UNSCOM over the course of months so that he's created sanctions fatigue among our allies, who also have a different set of international or national interpretation of interest here. And the fact is that our administration recognized some time ago that it had great difficulty building the coalition to support what was necessary to let Major Ritter and his team do what they do.
Now, I happen to disagree with Senator Biden. I don't think the issue was simply if Scott Ritter and his team can't get in, then we do something. The issue is much bigger than that. If Scott Ritter and his team can't get in, then the fundamental accepted policy of our country and of the Security Council, to be able to enforce the notion that Saddam Hussein will not have weapons of mass destruction, is ineffective. And I think that's exactly what Major Ritter is trying to tell us, and has put his job on the line in order to emphasize.
But there's really a larger issue than that. And that's where I say that the Congress has a shared responsibility, and the American people have a shared responsibility, and our allies have a shared responsibility, because the hard reality is that when it came time to consider really following through and dropping some bombs, the American people had doubts, and Congress voiced doubts. And many of us were in room 407 when a lot of those doubts were expressed. Now, I at the time suggested, as many did, that we ought to be prepared to use force to the point of guaranteeing we achieve our goals. I still believe that. But I know that America hasn't made that decision yet. And I know my good friend sitting to the left of me, both of them, Senator Robb and Senator Cleland, share with me a stark memory of what happens when the American people haven't made up their mind about sending people into harm's way and using force. So we've got a major set of choices to make here. And we'd better make them. We've been sliding into a fundamental policy of containment, which I share with Major Ritter the notion is disastrous to our overall proliferation interests and disastrous with respect to the Middle East and our interests with respect to Saddam Hussein and Iraq.
But we have to make a decision whether we're prepared to do what is necessary, and I mean to the point of a sustained targeting of the regime; not the Iraqi people, but the regime. And now, given what's happened in Kenya and Tanzania, we have to do that in a climate where the United States may have to even ask itself whether we're prepared to be a country that's perceived as just willing to drop some bombs on Muslim nations without the support of other people in the world. This is not a small issue, and we should not approach it in a way in the next days that's just working to find some scapegoats or find some guilty parties. We've got to find out what we're willing to do and commit to do it. And that's what's going to make real, I think, the efforts of Scott Ritter and the folks that he referred to. So I think we've got to stop playing around and get serious about the choices in front of the country. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thats about right
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