KAY Report to Congress on C-SPAN - LIVE THREAD

Now | Me

[Frank_Discussion]

I don't have C-SPAN, but I know somebody in FReeperland does. Keep us informed. Thanks!

[GraniteStateConservative]

Bush should declare that we DO need to improve our intelligence gathering capabilities that were watered down by the liberals but not concede any ground on this.

Bush should have declared that before all the nine Dwarves did. If he wanted a HSD, he should have declared that before Lieberman and other Dems did. I have no patience for how it seems this White House is sometimes just reactive and not proactive.

[Robert DeLong]

Ding ding ding ding, we have a winner folks

You are absolutely correct!!! Congratuations!!!!

Bush was going with the best intelligence available. If it was bad intelligence, which I personally do not believe it was, it doesn't really matter. Why, some may ask? Because Saddam was a constant threat and as soon as sanctions had been lifted he would have once again continued to acquire and amass WMD. Then he would have become an imminent threat, if indeed he was not already. So bad intelligence or not, taking out Saddam was absolutely the correct move to make. The benefits far outweigh the casualties endured so far, for the casualties would have been far greater when he did have unfettered control over WMD. A world with one less tyrant in control is a far better world. If you don't believe me, ask the Iraqi's in 5 years when they have fully tasted freedom and shaken the yoke of Saddam that many still wear if even now only mentally.

[WOSG]

"And I still dismiss them. Sacks of beans have many purposes and I see no massive production facilities. BTW, neither did Kay:"

Well, the Kay report indicated progress on Ricin, anthrax, and other bioweapons, including production facilities and strains that were available:

"A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN."
http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/2003/david_kay_10022003.html


Here is some more info on bioweapons findings.

Iraq regime made two generations of progress on stable, dry forms of botulinum toxin which could be applied to anthrax.

The notes underline the importance to Saddam of Iraq's biological weapons program: "Situation is complicated by shift of bio program from Al Hakim to Tuwaitha in 96 [ie after Hussein Kamil defected], which fooled the UN because Tuwaitha was seen as a nuclear site at [sic] looked at by IAEA and not UNSCOM."
http://www.csis.org/features/031114current.pdf

" Two top Iraqi scientists, codenamed Charlie and Alpha, are helping the coalition to learn more about Iraq's anthrax programme, Kay said. The Iraqis had made shocking innovations in the milling and drying processes needed to weaponise anthrax. 'Almost every week there is a new discovery that boggles your mind,' Kay said."
http://www.mail-archive.com/sam11@erols.com/msg00185.html">http://www.mail-archive.com/sam11@erols.com/msg00185.html

[WOSG]

"We had no real information on Iraq's WMD stockpiles post 1998. That is a fact. We had conjecture, we had unreliable information. We didn't have real evidence. Saddam is a liar. Do you take the word of a liar? Should our intelligence community take the word of a liar? "

Well said. Since we didnt have info after 1998, we assumed a straight line of progress that didnt exist, and extrapolated from tiny shreds of evidence that may have not beenextrapolatable. And yet the programs and desires and even claims in Saddam's regime on capabilities was there ....

MEANWHILE LIBYA IS FURTHER ALONG IN NUKES THAN WE ESTIMATED. WHY ISNT THAT INTEL FAILURE A SCANDAL???!??!

Before you answer, consider which is worse in a post 9/11 world: Underestimating a threat or overestimating a threat?

[maica]

When you feel that he is under siege, try to remember several things about President Bush.

1) He does not rush out to criticize every dim accusation.
2)He is usually thinking two or three plays ahead of the dims, and his critics end up proving to the world that they are fools.
3) He makes it look easy.
4) He really did fly a fighter jet, which requires focusing on a whole lot of situations simultaneously.

[cake_crumb]

"I heard him say we need to keep looking. But I also heard him say WE WERE ALL WRONG"

Darn I wasn't going to post to this thread. I'm only supposed to be here for the BBC/Kelly/Gilligan/Blair Witch Hunt ...

Please believe me : Kay was absolutely right on both counts. I'm glad you feel these two facts are not irreconcilable. Kay has not, nor will he ever rule out Saddam's WMD.

To the rest of you who asked: yes, Kay knows very, VERY well that one barrel of a chemical of disease that can kill a million people will not be acepted by the brainless as a stockpile. He's watching his Ps and Qs. Saddam had WMD. We've actually found a few. Some are discounted as "insecticide" by the media, though they were stored with chemical ready warheads and biohazard suits. Thus the running joke about Saddam bombing the eggplant fields.

There's WAY more to this than meets the eye, and yes, there were intelligence failures. Intel was looking in the wrong places. THAT'S what Kay was saying.

[HenryLeeII]

The point is that the system failed. We need to have the system fixed.

But that is the nature of intelligence. No country has perfect intelligence. Short of having a spy in every governmental agency of every country and every terrorist organization on earth, intelligence will always be incomplete, imperfect, etc. However, at some point you have to put two and two together assuming it will be four, but sometimes it comes up three.

Hussein admitted to possessing specific amounts of specific BW and CW agents after the Gulf War; our inspection teams went in and discovered less than he claimed and destroyed what they found. That left the unaccounted for portion remaining somewhere. We can't assume that Hussein destroyed them and didn't tell us for no reason.

We also gather intelligence through satellite imagery, but without HUMINT to further explain what we're seeing, we can only safely assume that facilities once used for WMD production then shut down after the Gulf War, but then reactivated for undisclosed reasons, are being used for WMD production.

We can also only safely assume that the Hussein regime's kicking out of U.N. inspectors in '98, coupled with the cat-and-mouse games it was playing in late-2002, was done to conceal things they didn't want us to know. There is no other plausible reason.

Put that together with intelligence that we receive from the Brits, French, Russians, Israelis, Germans, Italians, etc., Bush made the correct decision. Intelligence will never be perfect because it is the product of humans, but we need to have a leader who is willing to put his political future on the line in order to protect this country, and ultimately, the world.

As I said on another thread this morning, the Frank Church/Jimmy Carter politicians that gut the Intelligence Community's budget and put unrealistic restraints on its sources and methods, coupled with the Oprahized public that winces at the thought of ethnically profiling young Arab males taking flying lessons, are what needs to be negated or reformed in order to make our intelligence capabilities better.

[Robert DeLong]

It's been 40 years since Kennedy was assassinated and still the truth about who really did it is unknown, or is it? It really depends on what you may want to believe. There was plenty of time for Saddam to dispose of the WMD in the run up to the war, by either destroying it, burying it, or moving it to another country. Just because none has been found to date does NOT mean we were WRONG. Saddam was not a stupid man. I believe he just miscalculated. I believe he eliminated, buried, or removed the WMD in the run up to the war with the calculation that when none were discovered, world condemnation against the U.S. would force them to retreat where at that time he would come out of hiding and regain control. The U.N. would then lift sanctions and resumption of his WMD programs could be continued without interference. He might have even gained U.N. blessings to amass them openly by stressing that they were necessary to protect Iraq from further "unwarranted" attacks from America and Britain.

[plain talk]

Bingo. You said what I was thinking. One can always find imperfections everywhere you look. What needs to happen is for conservatives to turn the tables on these liberals and blame them for our intelligence short-comings. And this requires looking back at the last couple of decades. Bush should concede nothing on this Iraq matter.

[tentmaker]

I accept that Saddam was a threat to the world and deserved to be ousted. That's not the point here. The point is that the system failed. We need to have the system fixed.

I am not so sure that there was a failure at all here. I am certain that the Bush administration did not lie to us or exaggerate their claims of danger. If anything, they understated the danger (probably being politically careful). We know that in the past, Iraq had large stockpiles of various weapons because they admitted it. They then claimed to have destroyed it all but could never convince anybody that they were telling the truth. Our intelligence services reported various facts (most of which are not public), but I have not seen any of them refuted yet. They also presented many partial pictures of what was going on in Iraq and the Bush administration chose to act on a conglomeration of past facts, current facts, and possible future scenarios that included unacceptable levels of risk.

This is not failure, it is making decisions that have to be made with incomplete data and making them in the best possible manner within the limitations. These limitations were known at the time, and any guesses on filling the unknown data were just that - guesses. We did not know how far along his weapons programs were and we did not know what had happened to all his weapons stockpiles, but that lack of knowing, and Iraq's determination to keep us in the dark was threat enough to act.

David Kay said today that while the corruption in Iraq may have disguised how active the weapons programs actually were, that same corruption made Iraq an even MORE DANGEROUS place than was previously thought, because it was nearly inevitable that in such an environment, a terrorist buyer would connect with an Iraqi seller.

[HenryLeeII]

If we had a free press this would be possible. But, since we don't, any attempt at an impartial look at political tampering with the intelligence-gathering process would be labeled as "mean-spirited right-wing partisanship." Plus, this is an issue that can't be reduced to a three-word phrase or two-second soundbite, so the average American would either yawn while flipping to another station or swallow the lefty press interpretation uncritically.

[tentmaker]

Saddam was not a stupid man. I believe he just miscalculated. I believe he eliminated, buried, or removed the WMD in the run up to the war with the calculation that when none were discovered, world condemnation against the U.S. would force them to retreat where at that time he would come out of hiding and regain control. The U.N. would then lift sanctions and resumption of his WMD programs could be continued without interference.

That scenario may be quite likely. Remember that Kay's October report showed that the weapons programs continued right up until the war began and that they had been scaled down and concealed and were often using surrogates, so that production could have been switched over in a mattter of days to the dangerous agents. This fits right in with your conjecture.

[oceanview]

Kay on with Wolf Blitzer now, its clear that the media now wants to take down Tenet.

[mabelkitty]

Edwards, Kerry, and Lieberman go on and on about National Security and terrorism.

And yet they are absent from the hearings....

Perhaps this should be brought up right before the next primaries.

[cake_crumb]

"Bush should concede nothing on this Iraq matter"

Agreed. There is nothing to concede. Let's hope the administration has learned a lesson from the 16 words he didn't say crap.

[plain talk]

I'm sorry. What 16 words?

[cake_crumb]

Right, President Bush did NOT lie. There are as many intelligence failures as there are successes, depending on the "is" type interpretation used. Actual intelligence failures, such as the CIA is being accused of, are extremely rare. Saddam had a WMD program. Intelligence was correct on that. The details were a little screwed up, but the extent of THAT isn't known. The pertinate fact here is that Saddam DID have an active WMD program. THAT is the ONLY fact that matters.

[k2blader]

Bump for later browse.

[cake_crumb]

?? 16 wordgate...the 16 word sentence he did not say in his 2002 SOTU address. C'mon, I know it was just one of the many phone micrigates manufactured by the left, but surely you remember.

He used neither the word "Niger" (or ANY country) OR "yellowcake" yet the media kept misquoting him. I loved it when he got disgusted with that Dana whateverhisnameis from the WP, who asked him about "those 16 words". President Bush asked Dana if he could quote the line, and Dana said no he couldn't, but if given enough time he could find it. The guy asked a question about a statement he didn't even know. That minigate pretty much ended there.

[cake_crumb]

"Phone" was supposed to be "phony". Makes far more sense when you use the right word.