David Kay has resigned and been replaced as head of the Iraq Survey Group, and has given an interview with Reuters that is getting a lot of play this weekend, for obvious reasons.
Former chief U.S. arms hunter David Kay has concluded Iraq had no stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, a potential embarrassment for President George W. Bush and ammunition to his election-year Democratic rivals.Undercutting the White House's public rationale for the war on Iraq, Kay told Reuters by telephone shortly after stepping down from his post on Friday that he had concluded there were no such stockpiles to be found.
"I don't think they existed," Kay said. "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," he said.
"I think we have found probably 85 percent of what we're going to find," said Kay, who returned from Iraq in December and told the CIA that he would not be going back.
"I think the best evidence is that they did not resume large-scale production and that's what we're really talking about," Kay said.
In a fresh interview, this time with The Telegraph in London, Kay is also confirming that "a lot" of Iraq's WMD materials were moved to Syria, which is also highly provocative.
David Kay, the former head of the coalition's hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, yesterday claimed that part of Saddam Hussein's secret weapons programme was hidden in Syria.In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Kay, who last week resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year's war to overthrow Saddam.
"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."
It seems to me that this subject is far too important to be argued only through summaries in foreign media reports. David Kay needs to either give a public extended interview in the U.S. with a knowledgeable questioner or testify before an appropriate Congressional committee and say what he's ready to say. Neither of these media interviews seem to be in-depth and are not being presented in full detail. Kay's non-definitive comments are more hurtful than helpful to his country.
Posted by Alan at January 24, 2004 08:15 PM