Posted on 01/16/2004 7:23:00 AM PST by JohnGalt
US weapons hunter won't return to Iraq: report
David Kay, the chief United States weapons hunter in Iraq, has told the CIA he will not return to his post, a US government source said today.
"He has told the DCI (Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet) that he doesn't want to go back, they have been trying to get him to stay," the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
It was unclear whether the CIA had had any success in persuading Mr Kay, who came back to the United States for the Christmas holidays, to stay on the job, the source said.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment.
Mr Kay, reached earlier this week, also declined to comment and referred questions about his status to the CIA.
Tenet last June appointed Mr Kay, a former United Nations weapons inspector, as a special adviser to lead the search for biological and chemical weapons and any signs of a resurrected nuclear weapons program in Iraq.
But the hunt, which is being conducted by the Defence Department's Iraq Survey Group, has come up empty, finding no stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons or any evidence that Iraq had restarted a program to develop nuclear weapons.
The Bush administration cited weapons of mass destruction as its main justification for the war against Iraq that ousted Saddam Hussein from power last April.
A US official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, called Mr Kay's status "up in the air."
Major General Keith Dayton of the Defence Intelligence Agency, who heads the Iraq Survey Group under Mr Kay's guidance, was returning to Iraq this week to continue the weapons search.
US officials last month said Mr Kay had told administration officials he was considering leaving the job as early as January, citing family obligations.
At that time, officials described Mr Kay as frustrated that no banned weapons were found and that some of his staff had been diverted to other tasks.
The White House also said the weapons hunt was a priority for the administration whether or not Mr Kay stayed on the job.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace last week issued a report that accused the Bush administration in the lead-up to the war of making the threat from Iraq sound more dire than the underlying information warranted.
The report's authors said they did not expect any large stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons to be found.
--Reuters
Oh I see... everyone in the world (Clinton, Bush, Powell, most of Congress, the UN, etc.) has been lying about the WMD for years except you and JohnGalt. Y'all are in good company with Ritter and Blix. You could at least add some humor like Baghdad Bob. Give me a break already.
First of all, I am a female : ) Maybe you did not listen to Powell very well...
"We know that in late January, the Iraqi Intelligence Service transported chemical and biological agents to areas far away from Baghdad, near the Syrian and Turkish borders, in order to conceal them," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday. "And they have concealed them from the prying eyes of inspectors."
In an address to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, Powell did not identify or say how many BW and CW weapons were transferred by Iraq. But Powell and other officials said Iraq is believed to have produced such agents as anthrax, VX and botulinum toxin.
IRAQ TRANSPORTS WMD TO SYRIAN, TURKISH BORDERS
So yes...the Bush administration HAS confirmed it. And no, we have not gone in yet, but Bush just signed the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 last month, which "seeks to punish Syria for its alleged ties to terrorism by authorizing economic and diplomatic sanctions against Damascus". So we are applying pressure.
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