Kay says Iraq war was ‘absolutely prudent’
WASHINGTON: <font size=4>David Kay, who recently resigned as the chief US weapons inspector in Iraq, said Tuesday it was “absolutely prudent” for the US to go to war there.
“In fact,” he told NBC television, “I think at the end of the inspection process, we’ll paint a picture of Iraq that was far more dangerous than even we thought it was before the war.”
“It was of a system collapsing. It was a country that had the capability in weapons of mass destruction areas, and terrorists, like ants to honey, were going after it.”
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Kay pointed out that prior to the war, the French, the British, the Germans and the UN “all thought Saddam (Hussein) had weapons of mass destruction. Not discovering them tells us we’ve got a more fundamental problem”.
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He said, “The tendency to say, well, it must have been pressure from the White House, is absolutely wrong.” Saddam “was putting more money into his nuclear programme, he was pushing ahead his long-range missile programme as hard as he could”.
“We have collected dozens of examples of where he lied to the UN, violated Resolution 1441 and was in material breach,” Kay added. He noted that Saddam “had the intent to acquire these weapons. He invested huge amounts of money in them. The fact is that he wasn’t successful”. —AFP
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dailytimes.com.pk
WASHINGTON (AP) - The former top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq said Sunday he believes Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
David Kay said the challenge for the United States now is to figure out why intelligence indicated that the Iraqi president did have them.
"We led this search to find the truth, not to find the weapons. The fact that we found so far the weapons do not exist, we've got to deal with that difference and understand why," Kay said Sunday on the National Public Radio program "Weekend Edition."
Asked whether he feels President Bush owes the American people an explanation for starting the war on the basis of apparently flawed intelligence, <font size=4>Kay said: "I actually think the intelligence community owes the president rather than the president owing the American people.
"You have to remember that this view of Iraq was held during the Clinton administration and didn't change in the Bush administration. It is not a political 'got you' issue. It is a serious issue of how you could come to the conclusion that is not matched by the future."
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"It's not a political issue. Its an issue of the capabilities of one's intelligence service to collect valid, truthful information."
Since Kay's resignation Friday as the top U.S. weapons investigator in Iraq, Kay has said Iraq had no large-scale weapons production program during the 1990s, after it lost the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and no large numbers of mass destruction weapons were available for "imminent action."
Still, "that is not the same thing as saying it was not a serious, imminent threat," he said Sunday. "That is a political judgment," he said, "not a technical judgment."
Kay's declaration that weapons of mass destruction did not exist before the war puts him in direct contradiction with the official Bush administration position. On Saturday, President Bush's spokesman said the administration stood by its assertions that Iraq had banned weapons when U.S. and British forces invaded last March. The spokesman, Scott McClellan, said it was only a matter of time before inspectors find them.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, in contrast, held out the possibility Saturday that prewar Iraq may not have possessed such weapons. "The answer to that question is, we don't know yet," Powell told reporters on a trip to Georgia. He said U.S. officials had believed Saddam had weapons prewar but had unanswered questions: "What was it?" he asked. "One hundred tons, 500 tons or zero tons? Was it so many liters of anthrax, 10 times that amount or nothing?"
Kay said he believes the American public and politicians now have to grapple with the question of whether the Iraqi dictator posed an imminent threat. Given the reality on the ground, as opposed to estimates, some may reach different conclusions than they did before the war, he said.
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"I must say I actually think Iraq - what we learned during the inspections - made Iraq a more dangerous place potentially than in fact we thought it was even before the war," Kay added.
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Kay came home from Iraq in December and never returned to Baghdad to continue inspections as head of the Iraq Survey Group, sent by the CIA to track down Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
CIA Director George Tenet replaced him Friday with Charles Duelfer, the No. 2 weapons inspector for the United Nations for about seven years.
Kay said he left the position because resources were being shifted from the search for Iraq's weapons stockpiles to counterterrorism and troop protection in Iraq.
Duelfer said Friday he has been assured he will have the appropriate resources.
Kay said he now is going to turn his attention to weapons proliferation issues and the recent lessons learned.
In addition to Iraq, he pointed out, the United States has been surprised this year by nuclear programs in Libya and Iran.
"The Iranian program was not found either by the international inspection agencies or by domestic intelligence services. It was Iranian defectors, Iranian opposition groups outside of Iran that brought it to the world's attention," Kay told NPR.
In Libya, he said, the surprise has been the connections to Pakistan and Malaysia, where he said it appears plants were producing parts.
"It is in many ways the biggest surprise of all, and it was missed," Kay said. "We need to understand our capabilities and what needs to be done to make the nation better."
orangeleader.com
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Kay says some Iraq weapons in Syria: report
Part of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's secret weapons program was transferred from Iraq to neighbouring Syria, and their status has yet to be resolved, Dr David Kay, the just-resigned head of the Iraq Survey Group, was quoted Sunday as telling a British newspaper.
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In what it called an exclusive interview, the Sunday Telegraph said it was told by Dr Kay that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before the start of the Iraq war in March last year.
"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," Dr Kay was quoted as saying.
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"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 [weapons of mass destruction] programs," he said.
"Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."
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Dr Kay stepped down Friday as leader of the Iraq Survey Group, which 10 months after the US and British invasion of Iraq has yet to find any of Saddam's feared weapons of mass destruction.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Saturday it was "open question" as to whether Iraq still had such weapons, but he argued that pre-war intelligence was correct about Saddam's intention to develop them.
-- AFP
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