PAYDIRT (David Kay-Must Read)

New York Post ^ | David Kay

[Republican Red]

October 4, 2003 -- On Thursday, David Kay, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, testified before Congress' Intelligence committees on the activities of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG). His remarks are excerpted here.

I WELCOME this opportunity to discuss the progress that the Iraq Survey Group has made in its initial three months of its investigation into Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programs.

[meenie]

There is not one substantive element in this article. The whole article deals in speculation except for Iraq having WMD's and using them in the Iran war prior to the first Gulf War and on the Kurds shortly thereafter. This was common knowledge at the time. I surmise that David Kay is interested in continuing the investigation as so far the investigation has been rather lucrative for him and his staff of 1400 in the form of over $200,000 per member for the three months he has been investigating. With another 600 million sought to continue the operation, the rape of the American taxpayer continues.

An investigation of many refrigerators in the United States would find bottuli in a neglected corner, with no intention of creating a WMD. Our libraries and internet are full of documents and sites depicting how to make gunpowder, pipe bombs, booby traps, weapons statistics, etc. without the intent to support terrorism. Let's get real here, potential WMD threats become WMD's when used. Paranoia is destroying our ability to make sound judgements and we are wasting millions of dollars furthering it.

[lupie]

bump for later reading

[TrappedInLiberalHell]

There are so many 'opinion' words in this article, I don't have the stamina to actually count them all. 'Forced' is one of them. And then there is the inconsistent (biased) description of the issues. For NPR/PBS, they were 'mistaken claims'. For Fox, they were 'incorrect beliefs'.

I'm beginning to think the media is so cocky that they don't have to make more than the most token of efforts to be fair in their reporting. Merely claiming that they are is enough. That way, we conservatives dutifully and predictably attack them on merits, keeping us busy.

We need Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh more than ever. We have to fight arrogance with stridence. Conservatives have been conditioned to always be on the defensive because we know we're decent people and want to prove it. We're always defending, they're always attacking.

How far must we be pushed?

[TrappedInLiberalHell]

Let's get real here, potential WMD threats become WMD's when used

Then I guess Americans must die in vast numbers on our own soil for us to win this war. Might as well get used to it, huh? When Al Qaeda said 9/11 was just the beginning, I never thought we would wait for them to prove it.

[Alamo-Girl]

Bump!

[Thom Pain]

I believe Saddam and Hitlery Clinton are the same person. Notice that you've never seen the two of them together!

[Grampa Dave]

I believe that the American Mediots and Videoits were paid off to ignore the realities of Mr Kay's reports.

At the least, this spiking of the reality of his report, shows that they favor terrorists having WMDs over GW being our president.

[Grampa Dave]

Andrew Sullivan had an excellent must read article/oped on MrKay's report.


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/994199/posts

Andrew Sullivan: READ THE (WMD) REPORT
andrewsullivan.com ^ | 10/03/03 | Andrew Sullivan


Posted on 10/02/2003 9:33 PM PDT by Pokey78


If you think that David Kay's report on Iraqi WMDs can be adequately summarized by idiotic headlines such as: "No Illicit Arms Found in Iraq," then you need to read this report. If you believe the following "news analysis" by David Sanger in today's New York Times summarizes the findings of David Kay, then you need to read this report. Sanger's piece is, in fact, political propaganda disguised as analysis, designed to obscure and distort the evidence that you can read with your own eyes. His opening paragraph culminates in a simple, knowing, well-crafted lie:

The preliminary report delivered on Thursday by the chief arms inspector in Iraq forces the Bush administration to come face to face with this reality: that Saddam Hussein's armory appears to have been stuffed with precursors, potential weapons and bluffs, but that nothing found so far backs up administration claims that Mr. Hussein posed an imminent threat to the world.
That is not what the administration claimed. (The Times has even had to run a correction recently correcting their attempt, retroactively, to distort and misrepresent the administration's position.) The administration claimed that Saddam had used WMDs in the past, had hidden materials from the United Nations, was hiding a continued program for weapons of mass destruction, and that we should act before the threat was imminent. The argument was that it was impossible to restrain Saddam Hussein unless he were removed from power and disarmed. The war was based on the premise that Saddam had clearly violated U.N. resolutions, was in open breach of such resolutions and was continuing to conceal his programs with the intent of restarting them in earnest once sanctions were lifted. Having read the report carefully, I'd say that the administration is vindicated in every single respect of that argument. This war wasn't just moral; it wasn't just prudent; it was justified on the very terms the administration laid out. And we don't know the half of it yet.

THE MONEY QUOTES: If you don't have time, here are my highlights. First off:

We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN.
Translation: Saddam was lying to the U.N. as late as 2002. He was required by the U.N. to fully cooperate. He didn't. The war was justified on those grounds alone. Case closed. Some of the physical evidence still remains, despite what was clearly a deliberate, coordinated and thorough attempt to destroy evidence before during and after the war. Among the discoveries:
* A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.

* 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.

* Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).

* A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.

* Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.

* Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km - well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.

* Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.
Would you be happy, after 9/11, if the president had allowed such capabilities to remain at large, and be reinvigorated, with French and Russian help, after sanctions were removed? I wouldn't. But the New York Times and Dominique de Villepin would have happily looked the other way rather than do anything real to enforce the very resolutions they claimed to support.

THERE'S MORE: One of the crazy premises of the "Where Are They?" crowd is that we would walk into that huge country and find large piles of Acme bombs with anthrax in them. That's not what a WMD program is about; and never was. Saddam was careful. He had to hide from the U.N. and he had to find ways, over more than a decade, to maintain a WMD program as best he could, ready to reactivate whenever the climate altered in his favor. Everything points to such a strategy and to such weapons being maintained. The bio-warfare stuff is particularly worrying:

With regard to biological warfare activities, which has been one of our two initial areas of focus, ISG teams are uncovering significant information - including research and development of BW-applicable organisms, the involvement of Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) in possible BW activities, and deliberate concealment activities. All of this suggests Iraq after 1996 further compartmentalized its program and focused on maintaining smaller, covert capabilities that could be activated quickly to surge the production of BW agents.
Mustard gas in a matter of months. And concealment all the time:
A very large body of information has been developed through debriefings, site visits, and exploitation of captured Iraqi documents that confirms that Iraq concealed equipment and materials from UN inspectors when they returned in 2002. One noteworthy example is a collection of reference strains that ought to have been declared to the UN. Among them was a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B. from which a biological agent can be produced. This discovery - hidden in the home of a BW scientist - illustrates the point I made earlier about the difficulty of locating small stocks of material that can be used to covertly surge production of deadly weapons. The scientist who concealed the vials containing this agent has identified a large cache of agents that he was asked, but refused, to conceal. ISG is actively searching for this second cache.
When you read this kind of information, you can see why the president has ordered more money to go to this effort. We need every cent. We have to show to the world - and to the appeasers at home - the extent of the threat that this monstrous regime potentially represented.

FOR THE FUTURE: But Kay makes a more important point at the end. He notes that our ability to examine this entire edifice in a liberated Iraq, to see where our intelligence failed and where it succeeded, is a hugely helpful task in the broader war on terror. Over to Kay:

[W]hatever we find will probably differ from pre-war intelligence. Empirical reality on the ground is, and has always been, different from intelligence judgments that must be made under serious constraints of time, distance and information. It is, however, only by understanding precisely what those differences are that the quality of future intelligence and investment decisions concerning future intelligence systems can be improved. Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is such a continuing threat to global society that learning those lessons has a high imperative.
Of course it has. I've waited a long time for this report, and kept my peace until it came out and we had some empirical data to measure. What we now see may not impress those who are looking for any way to discredit this administration and this war. But it shows to my mind the real danger that Saddam posed - and would still pose today, if one president and one prime minister hadn't had the fortitude to face him down. We live in a dangerous but still safer world because of it. Now is the time for the administration to stop the internal quibbling, the silence and passivity, and go back on the offensive. Show the dangers that the opposition was happy for us to tolerate; show the threat - real and potential - that this war averted; defend the record with pride and vigor; and fund the reconstruction in ways that will make it work now not just for our sake but for the sake of those once killed in large numbers by the weapons some are so eager not to find.

[Grampa Dave]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/995020/posts

Iraq paid N. Korea to deliver missiles
Washington Times ^ | Oct. 4, 2003 | Bill Gertz and Stephen Dinan


Posted on 10/04/2003 6:34 AM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl



Iraq paid N. Korea to deliver missiles


By Bill Gertz and Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES



Saddam Hussein's government paid North Korea $10 million for medium-range Nodong missile technology in the months before the Iraq war, but never received any goods because of U.S. pressure, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq said yesterday.
David Kay, who is leading the Iraq Survey Group, said there is "a lot of evidence" Iraq was rebuilding its banned missile program, which it actively hid from U.N. weapons inspectors.
Mr. Kay, in a telephone interview with reporters, also said the discovery that Iraq's intelligence service had built at least a dozen clandestine weapons laboratories was one of the surprises of the three-month search for weapons of mass destruction and missile programs that he led.
"The other surprise is the extent to which the Iraqis had moved ahead in the missile area," Mr. Kay said, noting that Iraq had three missile programs that violated U.N. sanctions against building missiles with ranges greater than 93 miles.
He said European countries were involved in Iraq's three covert missile programs, which included a copy of the 620-mile-range Nodong missile.
"I can't name them right now," he said.
Mr. Kay also admitted that he was surprised not to have found stocks of hidden chemical, biological and nuclear-related weapons of mass destruction.
"I think all of us who entered Iraq expected the job of actually discovering deployed weapons to be easier than it has turned out to be," he said.
On North Korea, Mr. Kay said the Iraqis launched negotiations for North Korean missile assistance in 1999 and the cooperation continued through 2002. It was the first time U.S. officials had disclosed a link between Iraq's missile program and North Korea.
Both Iraq under Saddam and North Korea, along with Iran, were labeled as an international "axis of evil" by President Bush.
Mr. Bush yesterday said the evidence in the interim report Mr. Kay delivered to Congress this week on the first three months of the search for weapons showed Saddam was "a threat, a serious danger."
"The report states that Saddam Hussein's regime had a clandestine network of biological laboratories, a live strain of deadly agent botulinum, sophisticated concealment efforts, and advanced design work on prohibited longer-range missiles," Mr. Bush said on the South Lawn of the White House.
Mr. Bush said the preliminary findings "already make clear that Saddam Hussein actively deceived the international community, that Saddam Hussein was in clear violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 and that Saddam Hussein was a danger to the world."
Critics, including Democrats on Capitol Hill who have heard the classified briefings Mr. Kay gave this week, said the fact no weapons of mass destruction have been found should cause the administration to change its rhetoric.
"I would hope that at a minimum, that the administration would hold off continuing to make the kind of statements that it is making, even recently, about Saddam Hussein's capabilities in this area," said Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Kay gave a classified briefing to the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday.
"This isn't an issue about intentions or what the hopes were or what the plans were or what the programs were," Mr. Levin said. "What took us to war were statements about weapons of mass destruction in the possession of Saddam Hussein and the threat of their imminent use."
After meeting with senators yesterday, Mr. Kay, a CIA adviser to the Defense Department, told reporters that Iraq's extensive missile program was "all hidden."
"They were much more than paper studies; there was actual physical work taking place on several of these. [They were] not discovered by the inspectors because the Iraqis prevented them," Mr. Kay said.
As for the assistance Iraq was receiving from the unnamed countries, he said: "Our fear is that that same assistance may be made available to other countries, and we would like to close off that avenue of proliferation."
Under the terms of the North Korean deal, Iraq was to receive "missile technology for the Nodong, a 1,300-kilometer missile, as well as other nonmissile related but prohibited technologies."
"The Iraqis actually advanced the North Koreans $10 million," he said. "In late 2002, the North Koreans came to the Iraqis as a result of the Iraqis inquiring 'Where is the stuff we paid for?' and the North Koreans said, 'Sorry, there's so much U.S. attention on us that we cannot deliver it.' "
Baghdad then demanded that North Korea return the $10 million. "And when Operation Iraqi Freedom commenced, the North Koreans were still refusing to give the $10 million back," he said.
The information was disclosed in documents obtained by the U.S. survey group that showed "the Iraqis attempting more vigorously every time to recover that $10 million."
Mr. Kay said the bad deal was "a lesson in negotiating with the North Koreans that the Iraqis found out the hard way."
"Money in advance may not come your way if there is nondelivery on a contract," he said.
Iraq also was working to convert some of the 300 Chinese-made HY-2 Silkworm antiship missiles into land-attack cruise missiles, Mr. Kay said. The most ambitious program involved replacing the liquid-fueled rocket motor on the Silkworm with turbine engines taken from Russian-made Mi-8 and Mi-17 transport helicopters.
Mr. Kay said the conversion program was "intriguing and, I guess, frightening if it had been carried out."
"This was designed to be a 1,000-kilometer cruise missile that would have carried a warhead of about 500 kilograms, a significant warhead with a large range," Mr. Kay said.
Other Silkworms had been modified into 93-mile-range land-attack cruise missiles and about 12 had been built at the time the Iraqi war started March 19.
"One of these was the one that slammed into the Kuwaiti shopping center during the war," Mr. Kay said.
Other covert missile programs involved two liquid-fueled rockets that were "in the design stage" and would have ranges of up to 620 miles, including the Nodong derivative.
These missiles "were far enough advanced for us to have the diagrams that we managed to recover, thanks to Iraqi scientists and engineering assistance," Mr. Kay said.
Mr. Kay said inspectors have theories about what may have happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, including that the arms were smuggled out of the country or hidden immediately before or during the outbreak of the war.
"Multiple reports" from Iraqis indicate that weapons of mass destruction or related goods were shipped out to Iran, Syria and Jordan, Mr. Kay said. "It's very difficult to confirm that from inside Iraq. We [are] trying to do that."
Mr. Kay said many scientists are still afraid to work with the Americans because of security concerns, noting that two scientists working with U.S. officials had been shot — one fatally — since the war. Officials don't know who attacked the scientists, but believe it is possible they were retribution attacks for working with the Americans.
"It's true, two who have collaborated with us, one has been assassinated, literally hours after meeting with one of the ISG [Iraq Survey Group] officers," Mr. Kay said. "Another took six bullet wounds and it's amazing to me that he is still alive."
Joseph Curl contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports

[Eala]

Did they not hear what this man was reporting?

Yes they did. But always remember, the press lies without shame.

[Jeff Head]

Iraq posed a real and immeidate threat to the United States and our interests. He was embarked on a very serious NBC weapons program and had been for years...and we knew he had chemical weapons that he already had used.

It is clear to the most feable minded that had he developed the more lethal nuclear and biological weapons he would have used them as well...either on his own people, his neighbors or us.

We know he was affiliated with terrorists and it is too likely that he would have used those terrorists as his long range, stealth weapons.

All of this adds up to a chance we could not take and I am glad President Bush would not take it and was firm in addressing it.

Now...on to N. Korea and Iran. Either they give up the similar aims or we must force them to suffer the same fate IMHO.

I just wish they would seriously address the immigration problem and close that avenue...that corridor, for these terrorist stealth missiles (suicide fanatics) into our nation. They must stop politicising it and address it with the same resolution that we went after Iraq with.

Unless we do ALL of these things...we may find ourselves looking at a DRAGON'S FURY scenario with all of its horrific implications.

[VOA]

bump

[michaelt]

Believe what you want to believe.

Meanwhile, I'll support getting rid of regimes that would harm this country if they could - before they can.

[olliemb]

You are so right. Imagine if the report said definitely nothing has been found--Saddam is and continues to be a saint. That would have put ARnold and Rush off the headlines. I do wonder how all this coordinated bad news happens--makes me wonder of a Left Wing Conspiracy--(oh my I am starting to sound like Hillary)

[jwalsh07]

An investigation of many refrigerators in the United States would find bottuli in a neglected corner, with no intention of creating a WMD.

Lunacy, sheer lunacy. The boutulinum was found in the refrigerator of an Iraqi CB scientist. 1 gram of botulinum, properly weaponised, can kill hundreds of thosuands.

In your world, we would give them every chance they needed to properly weaponise and deploy it.

Thank goodness for President Bush.

[Grampa Dave]

Our intel people probably have a next number for service re country of terrorists to regime change. The Axis of Evil countries and those who would like to be an Axis of Evil country are being watched.

Apparently GW has 6 or 7 such countries lined up. I think that Weasely Clark this past week complained about GW's list.

So any bets to which country is next if they don't fall from inside?

My bet is Iran and its puppet buddy Syria.

[VOA]

Upon arrival, the exploitation team encountered small piles of ash where individual
documents or binders of documents were intentionally destroyed.
Hard drives had been deliberately destroyed. Computers would have had financial value
to a random looter; their destruction, rather than removal for resale or reuse,
indicates a targeted effort to prevent Coalition forces from gaining access to their contents.

THE SMOKING GUN
Well, that's what the mainstream media would be blaring if a Democratic President
had gone against everything Democratic and had launched Operation Iraqi Freedom.

If your country is being "blowed up real good", you don't spend time buring files
and busting hard drives when you could be heading to the best bunker around or
getting under one roof with your loved ones.

[Jeff Head]

potential WMD threats become WMD's when used

Only problem with that logic is that when used by a tyrant such as Saddam...hundreds of thousands, maybe millions die.

If there are regimes collaborating with terrorists who clearly are a real threat of using their developed WMD's on us or our allies...then we should preempt them.

I believe we should make it clear that Iran and N. Korea will suffer a similar fate of some type if they do not verifiably give it up as well. There never was a peace with N. Korea...only an armistice. They are acting like that is still the fact that it is. Perhpas we should wake up to that.

As to Iraq...we did not need the WMD threat to go in there. Saddam had violated the agreements he signed to stop hostitlities in the first war over and over again. Part of that agreement, as I understand it, gave the United States unilateral authority to act. Well, now we have done so...only about 8-10 years later. I am glad we have a president, despite other disagreements I have with him over several other issues, who was willing to act in this regard and defy the liberals and the U.N.

We are better for it...and the Iraqi people are better for it. And the vast majority of them know and understand this.

Now that it is done, it is important to understand where he was with his WMD research and who was collaborating with him on it.

Just my opinion. No more, no less.

Jeff

[olliemb]

"without the intent to support terrorism"


You mean to tell me that even if the cache of WMD were found in one storage room in Iraq, the intent of the use by terrorists still needs to be proven to you.

[Jeff Head]

Iran and Syria are likely candidates...and we are there in force now.

But I believe the one that poses the nearest term threat is N. Korea. I hope we either get them to turn the corner due to sanctions and embargoes...or that we see some type of preemptive strike soon. Otherwise they are going to be in a position to start lobbing them around the region.

We shall see.

I pray to God each day that our leaders, such as they are, will be influenced by His Spirit to find a way through this mine field. In order to do that, and to hear that spirit, we need at least a few virtuous ones up there...so while I am at it...I pray that virtue will garnish their thoughts and seep in through all of the political manuevering and temptations of power and vice somehow...someway.

Best Fregards to you my friend.