Posted on 01/24/2004 8:37:33 AM PST by tallhappy
Here are excerpts of a telephone interview conducted with David Kay, after he stepped down as the chief United States arms hunter in Iraq:
Why did you decide to step down?
It was, as usually it is in these cases, a complex set of issues, it related in part to a reduction in the resource and a change in focus of ISG (Iraq Survey Group). When I had started out, I had made it a condition that ISG be exclusively focused on WMD. That's no longer so. The reduction of resources. And the reason those were important is, and at least to me they were important, is I didn't feel that we could complete the task as quickly as I thought it important to complete the task, unless we exclusively focused ISG.
You're talking about that they were asking some of the analysts to do the insurgency work, right?
Yes.
Is it true that one of the reasons you wanted to step down was because you don't believe that anything will be found?
No. No, that wasn't the reason. In fact, the reason I thought it important to complete everything is that ... by the time we get to June ... we're not going to find much after June. Once the Iraqis take complete control of the government it is just almost impossible to operate in the way that we operate. In fact it was already becoming tough. We had an important ministry that would not allow its people to be interviewed unless they had someone present. It was like the old regime.
I think we have found probably 85 percent of what we're going to find.
The country is such and he hid so much that you can probably spend the next decade of your life in the country, and you will find things, but I think in terms of understanding that program, we're well on the way, almost at the end, so that you can say what went wrong, what they had."
What happened to the stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons that everyone expected to be there?
I don't think they existed.
I think there were stockpiles at the end of the first Gulf War and those were a combination of U.N. inspectors and unilateral Iraqi action got rid of them. I think the best evidence is that they did not resume large-scale production, and that's what we're really talking about, is large stockpiles, not the small. Large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the period after '95.
After '95?
We're really talking about from the mid-90s, when people thought they had resumed production
What about the nuclear program?
The nuclear program was as we said in the interim report, I think that will be a final conclusion. There had been some restart of activities, but they were rudimentary.
It really wasn't dormant because there were a few little things going on, but it had not resumed in anything meaningful.
You came away from the hunt that you have done believing that they did not have any large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the country?
That is correct.
Is that from the interviews and documentation?
Well the interviews, the documentation, and the physical evidence of looking at, as hard as it was because they were dealing with looted sites, but you just could not find any physical evidence that supported a larger program.
Do you think they destroyed it?
No, I don't think they existed.
Even though in the mid-1980s people said they used it on Halabja?
They had stockpiles, they fought the Iranians with it, and they certainly did use it on the Kurds. But what everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the '90s.
What are you going to do now?
I'm going back to the private sector. I know that. But I haven't done anything. I said I wouldn't do that until I left.
The left and dems will use this big time to beat the dead BushLied horse.
I heard an audio excerpt of Kay saing this on ABC radio news last night and am surprised nothing was posted on this, unless I missed it.
I'd just like to know what the meaning of large is, and do small stockpiles mean the weapons are any less deadly?
I guess the lesson here is to forget anything that doesn't come directly from a named government source if you want accuracy and accountability.
I think that is pretty obvious. Large is enough to do some damage. Small is laboratory quantities for experimentation but not for practical use.
Note that there has not even been small quantities found. Don't you think that it is the WMD story that is the dead horse and the Bush Lied horse is alive and well and being furiously hidden behind the Wizard of Oz's curtain?
The really good news is that he may not have made mass quantities to give to his friends.
Does NOW wish the Rape Rooms were still runnning??
Pray for W and The Truth
The above is what he actually said.
I would like to questions asked.
1. Do you think they had small stockpiles?
2. Do you think they had a "just in time" capacity for quickly generating stocks?
Did anyone see the Kay report the other night on Frontline? They were pulling up to chemical plants, they would be stalled as weapons were driven out the back. They have pic of huge centrifuges for purifying uranium. I wonder if they ever found those.
anyone remember Mansoor Ijaz saying that there was evidence of a family with radiation poisoning they received from trying to smuggle uranium out of Iraq? I would love an update.
Basically the UN footdraggers made the US the marked police car parked in front of the crack house for 8 months prior to the raid.
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