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.
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sorry. not too good at this.
Not sure I understand what the Titanic has to do with the Constitution. The question that remains is this. Did Hussein at any time after the Gulf War represent a clear and present danger to the borders of this nation of states anymore so than any other third world dictator? If the WMDs are there, you may have an argument (albeit a very limited one). If he did not then he represented no more of a threat than any other nation that supplies and arms terrorists, say like Saudi Arabia, who our government calls an 'ally'.
The Constitution was not written with the intent of pre-emptive action against any nation that may in the future present a threat. Thought processes such as that came from those that hold Wilson's interference in WWI and FDR in high regard, namely the neocons
Saddam Hussen's actions will not be tolerated . . .We intend to make that point clear with the use of force
--Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) 1996
Look, we exhausted virtually all our diplomatic effort to ge the Iraqis to comply with their own agreements and with international law. Given that, what other option is there but to force them to do so? . . . The answer is, we don't have another option. We have got to force them to comply, and we are doing so militarily
-- Daschle Feb. 1998
The quotes can be found on page 161 in Laura Ingraham's Shut Up & Sing.
That's just blatantly false and only your opinion. The Constitution said "protect and preserve" the United States and you are just interpreting that they way you want to.
And yes, Iraq posed a direct threat to our country in that they declared war on us more than once, invaded their neighbors and threatened to destabilize the region (which would threaten our security) and were far more involved in supporting terrorism and use of WMD's than any other country other than Iran and North Korea who, along with Iraq, are the Axis of Evil.
To say at threat has to be against our country within in our borders is to ignore the facts of how the world exists in this day. Making that statement, you obviously don't think blowing up an American plane full of Americans flying out of, say, India is an attack on us. That's naive beyond belief and not what our founding fathers thought. Even Jefferson sent the Marines to kill pirates in Tripoli because of their attacks on our merchant ships at sea. According to you, he was a neocon and the pirates weren't attacking our nation within our borders so he was wrong.
Fortunately, thinking like yours is in the minority.
LOL, interesting isn't it then that for the first 140 years of this nation's history, no pre-emptive action was taken from Washington with the one exception of the War Between the States. Not even WWII was pre-emptive. Guess those leaders must have been going on 'false' pretenses as well huh?
I'm sure you can provide documentation that the Founders meant to attack nations even before they became a threat I imagine....
Danger came from ignoring world government resolutions? Don't conservatives want the US out of the UN so we don't follow UN resolutions we disagree with?
Pray for W and The Truth
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