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Interview with David Kay - "I don't think [stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons] existed"
IOL/Reuters ^ | 1-24-04

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.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: biological; chemical; david; davidkay; iraq; iraqiwmds; kay; weapons; wmd
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To: tallhappy
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.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1063926/posts

61 posted on 01/24/2004 1:14:46 PM PST by alrea (let's go back to when liberalism meant freedom from central authority)
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To: tallhappy
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.

www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1063926/posts

sorry. not too good at this.

62 posted on 01/24/2004 1:15:52 PM PST by alrea (let's go back to when liberalism meant freedom from central authority)
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To: alrea
I got it. Thanks.
63 posted on 01/24/2004 1:23:23 PM PST by tallhappy (Juntos Podemos!)
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To: goodnesswins
I'm glad I wasn't on the TITANIC with you.....instead of saving SOME of them, you would have seen it as NOT part of the CONSTITUTION to SAVE ANYONE.....Use LIFEBOATS???

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

64 posted on 01/24/2004 1:39:15 PM PST by billbears (Deo Vindice.)
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To: goodnesswins
And he had made attempts to kill your family in the past. The war was right.
65 posted on 01/24/2004 2:06:47 PM PST by Tribune7 (Vote Toomey April 27)
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To: RandallFlagg; tallhappy
More quotes:

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.

66 posted on 01/24/2004 2:12:36 PM PST by Tribune7 (Vote Toomey April 27)
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To: Tribune7
tell billbears.....he seems to have a tough time understanding.
67 posted on 01/24/2004 5:38:50 PM PST by goodnesswins (Poverty is more about the "mental" than the "money.")
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To: billbears
I recently asked someone how many more months or years of unsuccessfully searching for WMD would it take before she'd think it reasonable to conclude there were none.

She thought 10 years.

I think she might have been low-balling me. I suspect a fair number of Freepers will die believing there were WMD in Iraq, and we just never found them.

And why not? They have good role models.

Because no matter what the issue, we'll never hear this President or Vice-President say "I was wrong".
68 posted on 01/25/2004 12:17:59 AM PST by ConsistentLibertarian
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To: billbears
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.

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.

69 posted on 01/25/2004 12:25:31 AM PST by Fledermaus (Democrats are just not capable of defending our nation's security. It's that simple!)
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To: billbears
The Constitution states that the top priority of the government is to defend her citizens. This was totally constitutional. The danger was Iraq constant disregard for fullfilling any of the 17 resolutions the most important being 681, the ceasefire. We've been in a perpetual ceasefire since 91. The s!*t had to go down at some point.

1441 (and previous resolutions) put the onus on Iraq and Hussein to prove that they we're "clean." There was no presumption of innocence to be had by Hussein and Iraq because they have been on probation since 91. If he pulled a huge bluff then he lost.

The fact is that if we get attacked again we are in prime position to respond. No arguments with Saudi Arabia or Turkey about use of bases for launching points.

In the final analysis, we got rid of the guy, have given 28 million people the chance to have an open government (if they eventually can keep it), free press, freedom of speech, freedom to live without fear of torture, execution, proved the UN is inept and corrupt along with France, Germany and Russia and have a launching point for further action (can anyone say Syria?) if necessary. Slam dunk by this patriot's count.
70 posted on 01/25/2004 1:06:22 AM PST by torchthemummy
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To: Rome2000
If you have WMDs, you don't need "large stockpiles".
That is the whole idea of WMDs.... large casualties with small weapons.
The "large stockpiles" statement is irrelevant!
71 posted on 01/25/2004 5:12:18 AM PST by W04Man (Bush2004 Grassroots Campaign visit W-04.com for FREE STICKERS)
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To: Fledermaus
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.

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....

72 posted on 01/25/2004 9:11:58 AM PST by billbears (Deo Vindice.)
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To: torchthemummy
The danger was Iraq constant disregard for fullfilling any of the 17 resolutions the most important being 681, the ceasefire.

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?

73 posted on 01/25/2004 9:13:51 AM PST by billbears (Deo Vindice.)
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To: CMClay
Exactly. Thomas Friedman of the N.Y. Times ... who is no conservative in any shape, form or fashion, although he's regularly lambasted as a right-wing media whore at DU ... has consistently made the best case for war in Iraq taking WMDs completely out of the equation: (A.) To stamp out an evil, murdering dictator and (B.) to set up a successful, vibrant, American-style democracy in the Mideast to show the young skulls full of mush over there (to borrow a phrase from Rush) that there is an alternative to Wahabbi jihadism.
74 posted on 01/25/2004 5:29:03 PM PST by GB
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To: bray
"Then why didn't he just let the world inspect freely??"

Iraq agreed to inspections with no restrictions, and thus Hans Blix and that UN team were running around Iraq until they were withdrawn as the invasion was pending.

At the time, Blix was deemed to be idiot, as he couldn't find the WMDs which were "obviously" there.
75 posted on 01/26/2004 10:58:08 AM PST by BlackVeil
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To: BlackVeil
Nice job of revisionist history! The Iraqis bugged his hotels and he had to give a list of inspection sights. Up until the last couple months many sites were off limits. I guess it depends what your definition of free is. Fact is the world is a safer place thanks to W and Our Troops.

Pray for W and The Truth

76 posted on 01/26/2004 3:40:48 PM PST by bray (The Wicked Witch of NY and Her (9-6) Flying Monkeys are In Flames!)
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To: billbears
Jefferson's attacking of Tripoli was pre-emption since they never attacked our borders. Just merchant shipping.

77 posted on 01/27/2004 12:12:44 AM PST by Fledermaus (Democrats are just not capable of defending our nation's security. It's that simple!)
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