We can only confirm that the weapons weren't there when we looked for them.
I read the rest of the available information as saying that the UN can only confirm that weapons were there 3 months before we got there.
The weapons were not lost due to poor security by us - they were transported out of Iraq or dispersed around Iraq between the time that the UN got out and we got in.
The only logical places to go with this are that the UN wasn't going to do anything about these types of weapons so we had to invade, and we should have actually invaded earlier and with more of an element of surprise in the timing, rather than give UN inspectors time to leave. Of course, Kerry is not a man of logic and reason.
I understand your point, but if you read the transcript of Mik's story it can be parsed as saying that the 101 spent some time at al Qaqaa, found some stuff, moved on. It does not specifically say that they searched for and found no Cemtex, and concluded the Cemtex had been removed. I'm just not convinced, based on the NBC transcript, that this absolutely contradicts and discredits the NYT story in a way to make it irrelevant.