David Kay Stands Down as U.S. Special Advisor on Iraq WMD (Just on their ticker now)

BBC News ^ | 1/23/04

[areafiftyone]

David Kay Stands Down as U.S. Special Advisor on Iraq WMD. More to follow...

[areafiftyone]

Thanks. That's not good. The Democreeps are going to jump on this.

[avital2]

yes the Dems will land on this, but am i the only one who finds it more than passing strange that the UN inspectors came across much more by accident than our guys found intentionally looking. i believe we'll find the country was scrubbed. it simply does not make sense that Saddam would expunge the bios and chems when no inspectors were looking after 1998 out of the goodness of his heart. no sense at all

[nuffsenuff]

Could they be teeing it up?

Get everyone (the Democrats and looney leftists) a lathered up that there are no WMD, and BAM! Evidence?

[MamaLucci]

I certainly hope so.
Here's a quote from another thread on this subjest:
"Ex-U.S. Arms Hunter Kay Says No Stockpiles in Iraq because they are in Syria."

[GraniteStateConservative]

Looks like Kay basicly feels like he's accomplished all he was ever going to be able to accomplish as far as finding WMD.

[xzins]

Thanks for the info.

The media seems to be spinning this as a "quitting" with that word meaning frustration, anger, spur of the moment, surprise, etc.

[alnick]

Is that "because they are in Syria" a quote from Kay or a quote from a Freeper?

[Spunky]

"The new appointee is Charles Duelfer, who has stated before he didn't think weapons would be found."

My guess he'll have eat those words

It appears Duelfer don't want to eat those words.

I was just listening to radio news and the news reporter quoted Duelfer as saying; "Who knows, there may still be something to be found".

[Shermy]

So many possible agendas to find WMD and not to find WMD...

[NutCrackerBoy]

Whether Charles Duelfer is a skeptic or no, the focus of the investigation is switching to what was the intent of the regime. Whether there are some stockpiles in Syria or not, perhaps there really was no massive production going in the 90s, and we are just now finding that out.

Still, the regime was in violation of UN resolution 1440 since it failed to account for any stockpiles. Programs were in evidence, the intelligence community wasn't hallucinating. The Iraqis really were running around and hiding things from weapons inspectors. But no massive production. We will just have to find out what we can.

[MamaLucci]

Speculation from a freeper.

[alnick]

Thanks, ML.

[piasa]

UN inspectors didn't find diddly squat for the first several YEARS they were in Iraq.

[piasa]

More like his tour of duty is up, and time for someone else to put in their time. Kay has already been there long enough, and Hussein's buddies already assassinated at least two of the Iraqi scientists he was working with.

[Mo1]

I was just listening to radio news and the news reporter quoted Duelfer as saying; "Who knows, there may still be something to be found".

Sounds like he has a change in his tune

[Mo1]

Thanks for those links

[TheWriterInTexas]

Moreover, we had every reason to believe he still had them and would use them.

We were finding stuff up till 1995. The pattern was always the same. Saddam claimed he didn't have them; we would find them. Then he would say they weren't weapons grade. They were. Then he would say we found them all, and we'd find more.

In the interim years, he had plenty of time to do any number of things. The failures of our own intelligence community (Pakistan and India, anyone?) and restructuring under Woolsley caused us to rely heavily on the kindess of allies in sharing intelligence.

The buzz was on. We knew he was hosting terrorists, because we captured Abu Abbas (of the Palestinian Liberation Front) after we liberated Iraq!

The regime was also in violation of UN resolution 1154, which authorized the use of force if Iraq failed to cooperate.

They were bloody well failing to cooperate!

[Jerez2]

Exactly, Mo1. Why would Saddam keep stockpiles of WMDs? He instead kept 'fertilizer' and 'insecticide' ready to combine and insert into delivery-system weapons in mobile labs. All of which we have found. As Charles Krauthammer put it in October 2003:

"Saddam decided years ago that keeping mustard gas and other poisons in barrels was unstable and corrosive, and also hard to conceal. Therefore, rather than store large stocks of weapons of mass destruction, he would adapt the program to retain an infrastructure (laboratories, equipment, trained scientists, detailed plans) that could ``break out'' and ramp up production when needed. The model is Japanese ``just in time'' manufacturing, where you save on inventory by making and delivering stuff in immediate response to orders. Except that Saddam's business was toxins, not Toyotas.

"The interim report of chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay seems to support the Ekeus hypothesis. He found infrastructure, but as yet no finished product... Because Saddam's practice was to store his chemical weapons unmarked amid his conventional munitions, and we have just begun to understand the staggering scale of Saddam's stocks of conventional munitions. Saddam left behind 130 known ammunition caches, many of which are more than twice the size of Manhattan. Imagine looking through ``600,000 tons of artillery shells, rockets, aviation bombs and other ordnance'' -- rows and rows stretched over an area the size of even one Manhattan -- looking for a few barrels of unmarked chemical weapons.

And there are 130 of these depots..."

See: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/998806/posts

[bushfamfan]

Yes, I've seen that. That's a reversal from David Kay as well. He believed Iraq continued with its WMD programs. But aside from this being used to trash this President and administration by the press and Demonrats, let us consider how they should respond. It is incredible that the accusations continue to be made as if we had nothing to be concerned about with the Iraqi regime. It's been a longstanding worry about Iraq and WMD. From using those very weapons. From their denying having such weapons to them being found. From their agreements at the end of the Gulf War and their refusal to cooperate with UN weapons inspectors to the UN weapons inspectors being out of Iraq since '98. From the Demonrat president and Demonrat Senators and Reps saying what a threat Saddam was and his WMD to them now attempting to turn it around at this President and saying it was no worry at all. From the Demonrat Congress demanding a vote on action towards Iraq and VOTING FOR IT to now turning around and saying it wasn't meant as such! And I guess the UN, French, intelligence all over the world was wrong about Iraq and WMD because they were never a problem now. The point is that they have a hard time in now attempting to turn this against this administration because everyone in this world had the belief that Iraq had and was continuing on with WMD. Iraq didn't simply comply with our inspectors and our worries and there is no way after 9/11 the US was going to accept Iraq continuing to verbally threaten us and continue to shoot at our airplanes and not disclose what happened with their WMD. The President has to make a better case in pointing it all out and not let these scums get away with saying this was all made up.