Reports oversimplify David Kay's statements about weapons of mass destruction.

Jan. 25, 2004: PoliSat .Com's Political Satire/ Commentary Daily Update # 01·· ™©·2004·(Home)·
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Reports oversimplify David Kay's statements about weapons of mass destruction..

Shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April, 2004, reporters asked David Kay, the then-former U.N. Weapons Inspector, who was then a consultant for NBC/MSNBC News, whether the Coalition Forces would find "smoking-gun" proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Kay unequivocally replied, "They'll find an arsenal of smoking guns." Months later, the U.S. appointed Kay to head the search in post-war Iraq for weapons of mass destructions. Last September, Kay reported to Congress that although they had not found "stockpiles" of chemical or biological weapons, they had found sample quantities, essential ingredients for mass-producing them, the means to recommence production of them, and plans to do so as soon as sanctions and/or pressure for inspections were to end.

What received the most attention in the news was Kay's assertion that his team had not found the "stockpiles" which Iraq had admitted having produced before the 1991 Gulf War and claimed to have destroyed afterward but without proof of when, how and where. Ignored was Kay's statement that his team had found massive evidence of Iraqi capabilities and intentions to resume production of WMD at the earliest opportunity after sanctions and/or pressure for inspections could be terminated. We now know Iraq's pre-war expectations (fed by what Iraqi intelligence documents uncovered since the war reveal as covert assurances to Saddam Hussein by the French and Russians that the U.S. would do nothing more than drop a few more bombs on Iraq rather than invading) were that international pressure to end sanctions would outlast international pressure for continuation of inspections, after which Iraq would resume production of chemical and biological weapons and reconstitute its nuclear program. We now know Saddam Hussein was in the process of acquiring from North Korea missiles with ranges vastly exceeding the ranges permitted under U.N. resolutions.

Reports in the The Telegraph within the last couple of months quoted Iraqi military personnel captured since the war as having said that during the war, the Iraqi military had understood that some of the "Toyota pickup truck" vehicles being operated by Saddam Hussein's most fanatical followers were equipped to launch chemical weapons. The Telegraph quoted such source as having claimed personal knowledge of one incident in which an order to launch such weapons was issued in the waning hours of the war but that the order was not obeyed because local conditions were such that the launching of such weapon would have killed Iraqi soldiers rather than Coalition forces. Relying upon the same source, or related sources, The Telegraph also reported that the speed of the ground war not delayed for a period of bombing as Hussein had expected interrupted the command and control ability to effectively issue orders for use of such tactical weapons by the specially equipped Toyota trucks.

Yesterday, and much of today, news reports abound describing statements yesterday by Kay to the news media to the effect that he has now concluded that Iraq did not manufacture massive stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons during the 1990's and that intelligence reports that large quantities of the pre-1991 stockpiles were no longer remaining in undestroyed form in Iraq before commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Many news outlets trumpeted these statements as "admissions" that Iraq didn't have any amount, or form, of weapons of mass destruction before the war.

Today, the London Sunday Telegraph reports that Kay stated today that he believes that shortly before the war, Iraq transported elements and/or components of (or for) such weapons across the border into Syria. Other experts have expressed agreement that such is likely to have been the case. Just as it's uncertain such report is true, it's equally uncertain that it's false. No one could seriously contend (and Kay does not so contend) that we yet know enough to know whether such claims and/or claims of tactical availability of such weapons before, and during, the war are true or not. Whether Saddam Hussein still possessed massive stockpiles of chemical and/or biological weapons he's known to have possessed at the time of the first Gulf War (which he didn't use then either), is less important than whether he possessed tactical quantities of such weapons, and the means to deploy them, before, or during, Operation Iraqi Freedom. Kay's failure to find the massive quantities believed to have been left over from the era of the first Gulf War is really irrelevant to whether there remain in Iraq or Syria yet undiscovered tactical quantities of such weapons.

Say critics, since searching has stalled, "Saddam had 'Reformed' after all."· ·

"'Legitimate business[-type] man'
is how I describe what I am,"
proclaimed Corleoné,
whose bigger cojones
maintained him as boss in his land.

In public, said Vito to all,
"Though once I caused many a pall,
I've now gone 'legit'
and promised 'no hits'--
I've ended 'em once and for all."

"Like Vito, I said through entreaters,
'I'd changed to benevolent leader,'
but Dubya like cops
believed I had not
been cured of the role of repeater.'"

"Since Dubya has yet to discover
where illegal weapons are covered,
it's proof I'd complied
with sanctions devised
before 'Start the war' Dubya uttered."

To those who believe I abridged
my programs with germs in the 'fridge,
as grounds to restrict
what Bush can inflict,
in Brooklyn, I'll sell you a bridge.

One is certainly free to assume that in the mid-1990's Saddam Hussein became infected with the religion of disarmament and really destroyed all such weapons and refrained from thereafter producing and concealing tactical quantities of same and tactical means for their delivery. One is equally free to assume that a sociopathic crime-family boss is likely to become a zealous follower of the Golden Rule and order all his thugs to foreswear violence and become genuine civic do-gooders. Experts on Saddam Hussein have long known his two favorite "role models" were Joseph Stalin and The Godfather character, Don Vito Corleone. One of the things he admired most about them was that both were ruthless and neither would have ever disarmed. It would have been wholly out of character for the sociopathic, megalomaniacal Hussein to have abandoned his WMD programs. That's why I don't subscribe to the defenseless Saddam theory so readily embraced by critics of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

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