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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (6170)	1/25/2004 4:43:42 PM
From: Henry Niman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

No mention of pneumonia, but whatever it is, it seems to be spreading unless many ate contaminated food.

To: epicure who wrote (6170)	1/25/2004 6:23:08 PM
From: Ron	Respond to of 20773

Kay Says Hussein Regime Had No Banned Weapons Associated Press WASHINGTON -- 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 U.S. 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 the weapons do not exist, we've got to deal with that difference and understand why," Mr. Kay said Sunday on the National Public Radio program "Weekend Edition." "It's not a political issue. Its an issue of the capabilities of one's intelligence service to collect valid, truthful information." Since Mr. Kay's resignation Friday as the top U.S. weapons investigator in Iraq, he 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." DOW JONES REPRINTSThis copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit: www.djreprints.com. • See a sample reprint in PDF format • Order a reprint of this article now. 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." Mr. Kay's declaration that weapons of mass destruction didn't 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," Mr. Powell told reporters on a trip to Georgia. He said U.S. officials had believed Mr. Hussein had weapons before the war 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?" Mr. 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. "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," Mr. Kay added. Mr. 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 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. Mr. 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. Mr. Duelfer said Friday he has been assured he will have the appropriate resources. Mr. 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 U.S. 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," Mr. 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," Mr. Kay said. "We need to understand our capabilities and what needs to be done to make the nation better."