Kay brings WMD back to the forefront
By Bill Schneider
CNN Political Unit
 |
Former top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay.
Story Tools
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS
|
Follow the news that matters to you. Create your own alert to be notified on topics you're interested in.
Or, visit Popular Alerts for suggestions.
|
|
(CNN) -- The Democrats got a gift this week, from someone who may not have intended to give them one.
They say don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Or a political Play of the Week either.
"If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today -- and we do -- does it make sense for the world to wait to confront him," Bush proclaimed in October 2002.
But DID we know that?
"It is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarized chemical and biological weapons there," former top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday.
The White House has been backing off its original claim that Saddam actually HAD dangerous weapons. Now it's simply that he wanted them.
"Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day," Bush said during his State of the Union address on January 20.
Kay says the problem was a massive intelligence failure -- not political interference.
"Let me take one of the explanations most commonly given," said Kay on Wednesday. "Analysts were pressured to reach conclusions that would fit the political agenda of one or another administration. I deeply think that is a wrong conclusion."
But Democrats smelled blood.
"What happened was more than a failure of intelligence; it was the result of manipulation of the intelligence to justify a decision to go to war," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, on Wednesday.
Which happens to be exactly the charge that had been leveled at British Prime Minister Tony Blair. But this week, an official investigation cleared Blair of any wrongdoing.
"The allegation that I or anyone else lied to this House, or misled the country, by falsifying intelligence on weapons of mass destruction is itself the real lie," said Blair before the British House of Commons on Wednesday.
Democrats are now calling for an investigation in the United States.
"We've got to get to the bottom of it with a comprehensive investigation, not just with a partial investigation of the CIA's failures -- and there were many -- but also of the administration's exaggerations," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, on Wednesday.
Inspector Kay may not have found any military weapons, but he sure came up with a political bombshell and the political Play of the Week.
Kay defends going to war with Iraq, but that's no longer the issue. The issue is whether the White House misrepresented the evidence
