I feel fine. I acknowledged from the start that Kay might be right, and I am happy now, after the matter has been gone over thoroughly enough, to defer entirely to this inspection team. Until that point, where I am satisfied that it has been looked at enough to have a high degree of confidence in it, I have no problem with anything I actually said, as I recall it. Remember, Kay presented his opinion that there were no stockpiles at the outbreak of war as "personal", and noted that there was some evidence of moving things to Syria, even though he thought it too weak.
I do not consider it a matter of "thinking for ourselves", a meaningless phrase under the circumstances. We are dealing with highly specialized intelligence and its interpretation, in a situation where we are not privy to it. It is the default position to defer to the intelligence professionals, and to find it difficult to believe they could have gotten it so wrong, even acknowledging that there might be legitimate controversy about specific allegations. Every allied intelligence service thought Saddam had stockpiles, that was never the substance of any controversy. It was all arguments over how advanced his nuclear program was, and such. So I am not going to apologize for finding it difficult to believe that there was nothing to find beyond a few violations, such as the effort to increase trajectory. |
