Kay resigns from ISG saying there are no WMD

[toontra]

Just breaking. It seems he has had enough. Convenient timing - just after the State of the Nation address!

[IJ Reilly]

Probably had something to do with Cheney's remarks, which I posted to another thread, which seemed almost designed to embarrass Kay. I hope Kay doesn't retreat to the sidelines. I hope he becomes a huge nuisance to the Bush administration, at least half as much as Paul O'Neill.

[IJ Reilly]

Sorry for the double post, but here's a link to an article about Kay's resignation:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20040123/ts_nm/iraq_usa_weapons_dc

In a direct challenge to the Bush administration, which says its invasion of Iraq was justified by the presence of illicit arms, Kay told Reuters in a telephone interview he had concluded there were no Iraqi stockpiles to be found.

"I don't think they existed," Kay said. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the nineties," he said.

[toontra]

Originally posted by IJ Reilly
I hope Kay doesn't retreat to the sidelines. I hope he becomes a huge nuisance to the Bush administration

The way he's gone public so quickly suggests that he's very p***ed off, and is ready to join the growing band of people who feel they've been duped, manipulated, insulted and abused by Bush over the "intelligence" behind the war.

[denjeff]

i wonder how the general more stupid public opinion is going to remember this. on political discussion fora, it s easy to express your opinion, but will the mass media have the guts to report this properly?

[g5man]

Do you remember Powell presentation? He showed us a small vial. Kay said he does not think tons will be found, nor did he say there will be no WMD found period.

[toontra]

Originally posted by g5man
Do you remember Powell presentation? He showed us a small vial. Kay said he does not think tons will be found, nor did he say there will be no WMD found period.

I'm surprised you want to remind us of the Powell presentation. Almost everything he said has since been refuted or discredited.

Of course Kay couldn't say there won't be any banned weapons found; no-one can. But he appears to be pretty certain that the amounts which the US & UK claimed were there to justify war are definitely not there.

If you really believe that the future of the free world is endangered by an Arab with a test-tube then I'm afraid you have swallowed the paranoid propaganda undigested.

There were two main camps before the war - those who thought Iraq possessed WMD and were a global threat and those who didn't. All that has happened in recent months vindicates the latter. It is also becoming clearer every day the lengths to which the US & UK governments went to in order to mislead and deceive people into supporting war.

[SPG]

I heard Cheney talking to Juan Williams the other morning on NPR when I woke up. I couldn't believe the amount of outright BS he was spewing. He basically repeated all the discredited claims of the past year, which the interviewer didn't challenge him on at all.
How can the number 2 of the greatest power in the world either be so clueless or such an unabashed liar? Shocking...simply shocking.

[pseudobrit]

Originally posted by g5man
Do you remember Powell presentation? He showed us a small vial. Kay said he does not think tons will be found, nor did he say there will be no WMD found period.

How convenient. I think some people like to pull the wool over their own eyes. Nice of the Bush administration to provide you with plenty of thick wool.

[g5man]

Originally posted by pseudobrit
How convenient. I think some people like to pull the wool over their own eyes. Nice of the Bush administration to provide you with plenty of thick wool.

No I think you have your head in the sand. Remember this is only the first draft. Kay report

1. From birth, all of Iraq's WMD activities were highly compartmentalized within a regime that ruled and kept its secrets through fear and terror and with deception and denial built into each program;


2. Deliberate dispersal and destruction of material and documentation related to weapons programs began pre-conflict and ran trans-to-post conflict;


3. Post-OIF looting destroyed or dispersed important and easily collectable material and forensic evidence concerning Iraq's WMD program. As the report covers in detail, significant elements of this looting were carried out in a systematic and deliberate manner, with the clear aim of concealing pre-OIF activities of Saddam's regime;


4. Some WMD personnel crossed borders in the pre/trans conflict period and may have taken evidence and even weapons-related materials with them;


5. Any actual WMD weapons or material is likely to be small in relation to the total conventional armaments footprint and difficult to near impossible to identify with normal search procedures. It is important to keep in mind that even the bulkiest materials we are searching for, in the quantities we would expect to find, can be concealed in spaces not much larger than a two car garage;


6. The environment in Iraq remains far from permissive for our activities, with many Iraqis that we talk to reporting threats and overt acts of intimidation and our own personnel being the subject of threats and attacks. In September alone we have had three attacks on ISG facilities or teams: The ISG base in Irbil was bombed and four staff injured, two very seriously; a two person team had their vehicle blocked by gunmen and only escaped by firing back through their own windshield; and on Wednesday, 24 September, the ISG Headquarters in Baghdad again was subject to mortar attack.


What have we found and what have we not found in the first 3 months of our work?


We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later:


· A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.


· A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.


· Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.


· New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.


· Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).


· A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.


· Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.


· Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km -- well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.


· Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/02/kay.report/

You guys better stop giggling with each story that you believe builds up your case.

[toontra]

Originally posted by g5man
No I think you have your head in the sand. Remember this is only the first draft.
You guys better stop giggling with each story that you believe builds up your case.

Instead of quoting huge chunks from a report months old, how about responding to what Kay said yesterday, now he has freed himself from the extreme political pressure he was obviously under. After all, that is what the thread is about (but when has that ever stopped you!)

The US strategy is these cases is obnoxious. They quote people, often out of context, as long as they are saying something (anything) which supports their aims. But when those same people put the record straight, they are discredited and belittled.

[denjeff]

well said toontra!!!

but that s what politics is about nowadays. have a good imago and a secret agenda... lie, but from time to time hold a child in your arms... send people to death and visit them on thanksgiving...

i am not going to say bush is a coward, because he refused to do his duties for the army, that would be backstabbing... but i honestly can say that he is screwing everything up right now. your children will pay the bill (unless you come live here with me, in the free europe... i know some people who already moved, maybe they can help you integrate...).