Posted on 01/27/2004 5:24:28 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest
If one reasonably fair-and-balanced Today Show interview is a fluke, could two be a trend?
Back on January 15th, I reported on Katie Couric's interview with Ted Kennedy in which she had been remarkably tough on the senior splasher from Massachusetts regarding his speech on Iraq.
This morning, it was Matt Lauer's turn to offer, dare I say it, a thoroughly fair performance in his interview of former chief US weapons inspector in Iraq David Kay.
From a national security and political perspective, what was much more important than the tone of Lauer's questions was the substance of Kay's remarks. Democrats looking to exploit Kay's earlier remarks to accuse the Bush administration of misleading the American people will come away from this interview bitterly disappointed, their arguments in tatters.
For on every issue down the line, Kay forcefully made the case that the Bush administration acted in good faith, that Saddam was indeed a threat, and that war against him was absolutely justified.
Began Lauer: "Some people have relied on your earlier statement to say that the US misled the American people into war on the basis of a claim that Saddam had WMDs. Do you think the US misled the American people?"
Kay: "It wasn't only the US who came to that conclusion. The French, Germans, and UN all thought Saddam had WMDs."
Lauer: "If you didn't find WMDs, does that mean they never existed, or could they have been moved prior to war?"
Kay: "We looked at that possiblity but we didn't find evidence that there were large stockpiles prior to the war."
Lauer than ran a clip from Pres. Bush's State of the Union Address from one year ago, in which he stated that Saddam had been employing huge resources to develop WMDs and had built up a large stockpile.
Lauer: "Was that inaccurate?"
Kay: "It was inaccurate in terms of the reality we found on the ground now, but it was accurate in terms of the intelligence at the time.
"It was also accurate in the sense that Saddam did spend large sums of money trying to get WMDs but he simply didn't get what he paid for.
"There was lots of corruption in the Iraq WMD development program."
Lauer: "So scientists lied to Saddam, they told him they could develop WMDs, took huge sums of money and didn't deliver?"
Kay: "Right. There was widespread corruption, lots of money wasted. People were concerned about the money, not about working."
Lauer: "But the intent to develop WMDs was there?"
Kay: "Absolutely, Saddam surely wanted to get WMDs and spent a lot of money trying to do so."
Lauer then showed a clip from Colin Powell at the UN saying Saddam had at least 500 tons of WMDs. Again, Kay explained that Powell was not being intentionally misleading and that his statement was based on the best intelligence available at the time.
Added Kay, responding to what some of the Dems are alleging: "To say there must have been pressure from the White House on the intelligence community is wrong. We've also been wrong about Iran and Libya. We clearly need better intelligence."
Lauer then quoted from Kay's earlier interview with Tom Brokaw in which Kay had said that "if anyone was abused (by faulty intelligence) it was the President of the US rather than the other way around."
Kay confirmed the accuracy of that remark.
Lauer: "Is it true that in 2000 and 2001 Saddam was pushing his nuclear progarm?"
Kay: "Yes, he was pushing hard for nuclear and long range missiles. Look, it's clear the man had the intent. He simply wasn't successful."
"He clearly lied to UN and was in material brach."
In a key moment in the interview, Lauer asked: "Based on everything you now know, was it prudent to go to war against Saddam?"
Kay: "It was absolutely prudent to go to war. The system was collapsing, Iraq was a country with desire to develop WMDs, and it was attracting terrorists like flies to honey."
Lauer: "Are your earlier comments being exploited for political reasons?"
"Inevitably yes, but what we have is a national security issue that shouldn't be exploited as a political issue."
Lauer: "Should we continue to search for WMDs as VP Cheney has suggested?
Kay: "Absolutely."
January 27, 2004 -- Don't be taken in by all the hot air following David Kay's statement Friday that he didn't think any weapons of mass destruction currently exist in Iraq.
After all, Kay's last report confirmed that Iraq had WMD programs, if not weapons. And he now says some weapons may have been moved to Syria.
Kay believes Saddam was trying to boost his WMD programs starting in 2000, but was deceived by his own scientists. In what Kay calls a "vortex of corruption," scientists seem to have stolen the regime's nuke money.
Contrary to the hysterical anti-Bush rants, Kay insists the failure to find WMD stocks suggests not a conspiracy to go to war but yet another huge intelligence failure. That the CIA is in need of massive overhaul has been clear since 1994, when it turned out Aldrich Ames, a top counterintelligence officer, had been working for the Russians for over a decade. Then came 9/11 - the most catastrophic U.S. intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor.
Amazingly, no heads have rolled - not even Director George Tenet's.
Yes, other intelligence services, including Great Britain's, were similarly wrong on Iraq. But in an age of terrorism and WMDs, America can't do with anything less than the best intelligence.
Still, even if Iraq's WMD program was much smaller and less threatening than thought, that hardly undermines the justification for war. The facts?
* Iraq was in violation of multiple U.N. resolutions concerning weapons programs: It failed, for instance, to declare WMD programs and to account for WMD stocks; it also maintained missiles with ranges in excess of U.N. limits.
* President Bush never said there was imminent danger of an Iraqi WMD strike, only that America must act before then.
* Saddam was a clear threat to America's interests even without WMDs: He gave sanctuary to terrorists like Abu Nidal and started two disastrous wars against his neighbors.
* Saddam wasn't just an ordinary Arab dictator, but a genocidal mass-murderer.
* He'd already used poison gas to murder Kurds and during the Iran-Iraq war.
As British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said yesterday, more evidence may yet emerge. If he had no weapons or active WMD programs, then "what on earth explains why Saddam Hussein, . . . months after he was given an ultimatum to come clean, refused to cooperate fully?"
Saddam must have had something to hide - besides mass graves
I heard NBC News on the radio report this afternoon that *President Bush STILL insists that Saddam was a threat IN SPITE of Kay report that there were no WMDs in Iraq*.
I heard this right after Rush read some of the excerpts from the Kay interview, and was disgusted at the clear anti-Bush bias in the NBC report.
Howard Doom and Hanoi John Skerry are still out in the backyard eating worms.
So I think that it's very difficult today to judge how it was when he had -- when he decided to continue this project of mass destruction weapons. But that was information of predecessor of Mr. Blix in Warsaw, that absolutely Iraq is ready to produce if it's necessary, to keep the power of -- and the dictatorship of Saddam and to play such important role in the region.
Interesting information about Blix .. Thanks for posting this TexKat
Yes that got my attention, and also the attention of President Bush when the President of Poland stated it.
Reminds me of that time Putin came to the US and made his comment to the press about information he had
Lauer: "So scientists lied to Saddam, they told him they could develop WMDs, took huge sums of money and didn't deliver?"
Kay: "Right. There was widespread corruption, lots of money wasted. People were concerned about the money, not about working."
I have a hard time believing this. Sadaam was "lied" too? What would happen if Sadaam found out he was being lied too? These people doing the lying would have been tortured and killed. Being somewhat a student of terror regimes- I know such terror leaders are lied too all the time by subordinates and henchman but it is usually badmouthing and gossip about their percieved peers in order to garner favor of the Leader. Stalin was never lied to about anything of import like his nuke program, how the WWII was going, the economy. In fact such a liar about WMD's under Sadaam would expose himself to denounciation as a liar by a rival- of which there are no shortages of in totalitarian governments.
This doesn't ring true to me.
Actually I am waiting for Kay to be denouned as a "Leftie scum", "Fifth columnist", or "Traitor" by you guys soon (if not already).
The French are cowards are they American blowhards? Nearly every family has a plaque or stone that remembers their loved ones in France who died in battle!
Does Richard Pearl have even a member of his familyt that has served this country? What about Wolfowitz? No? How about Michael Kelly's poor family? At least he died in Iraq in a motor vehichle accident? What about David Frum from National Review?
ping
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.