US expert slams WMD 'delusions'

[Judi Lynn]

Last Updated: Saturday, 5 June, 2004, 10:25 GMT 11:25 UK

US expert slams WMD 'delusions'


Kay has repeatedly said there are no WMDs in Iraq
Weapons of mass destruction do not exist in Iraq and it is "delusional" to think they will be found, says former chief US weapons inspector David Kay.
Mr Kay told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that British and American leaders should simply apologise and admit that they were wrong.

He said Saddam Hussein had intended to reconstitute his weapons programme at some point and had acted illegally. However, there were no actual WMD stockpiles, he said.

Mr Kay led the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq until he stepped down as head of the Iraq Survey Group in January.

He said at the time that he did not believe there had been large-scale production of chemical or biological weapons in Iraq since the end of the first Gulf War in 1991.
(snip/...)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3778987.stm

[hlthe2b]

1. But, but, but, but.......

what about that Sarin ordinance that the Freepers were just drooling over. (Don't you just know Freeper land hates this, knowing how much they pinned their hats and accolades on Kay?)

I don't suppose this will get wider media coverage, but Kays statement on camera should become part of a campaign ad.

[pinniped]

17. Those gun freaks were also drooling over that BS worldnet story...

a few weeks ago titled something like, "WMDs found"!

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. He was gonna reconstitute his WMDs.

Well, if that isn't provocation for American retaliation, I don't know what is. :eyes:

[Disturbed]

3. That was an immediate threat.

The mushroom cloud of Iraqi nuke over NYC.

[central scrutinizer]

4. yes, we were only 45 minutes away

from annihiliation. Here's the proof:

<http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/images/I60726-2004Jan06>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A60340-2004Jan6¬Found=true

on edit: damn - why didn't the picture come up?

[mulethree]

16. uh oh

My high school notebooks are full of sketches of spaceships and submarines and the like, some have nukes and positron cannons and the like. Hope Cheney doesn't find out.

My image of Iraqi WMD and (more important) delivery capabilities - a hydrogen balloon with a plague-infected rat dangling by it's tail from the balloon's string.

[timtom]

19. omigod

that's about the funniest I've ever read at DU. Well said, mulethree!

[Media_Lies_Daily]

21. But Ashcroft may feel there is a link between your drawings and Unit 731..

...used by Japan during WWII to experiment on humans with various biological weapons/diseases.

<http://www.marshallnet.com/~manor/ww2/unit731.html>

Excerpt:

"Planned Bacterial Attack on the United States.

Proposals included use of these weapons against the United States. They proposed using balloon bombs to carry disease to America and they had a plan in the summer of 1945 to use kamikaze pilots to dump plague infected fleas on San Diego.

Some Japanese generals proposed loading the balloons with weapons of biological warfare, to create epidemics of plague or anthrax in the United States. Other army units wanted to send cattle plague virus to wipe out the American livestock industry or grain smut to wipe out the crops. As it happened, 9,000 balloons each carried four incendiary and one antipersonnel bomb across the Pacific on the jet stream to create forest fires and terror from Oregon to Michigan."

Just when you think you have a new idea...

[peterh]

15. Well…maybe reconstitute, but more important….”intellectual capacity”

"There has been a lot of misunderstanding as to exactly what it was we expected to find and when we expected to find it...... The most fundamental, most important thing that was not destroyed (by the UN weapons inspectors) was the intellectual capacity in Iraq to recreate systems of weapons of mass destruction." - John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs. In the evolving list of reasons for why the war with Iraq was necessary, the latest is Iraq's "intellectual capacity" for producing WMD...


Sidebar: I was wondering if Charles Krauthammer of AEI ever admitted he had a credibility problem?

"Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We've had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven't found any , we will have a credibility problem." - Charles Krauthammer, American Enterprise Institute, April 22nd, 2003.

[Spazito]

5. I love AFP's headline on this story...

Blair fools himself if he believes Iraq had WMD: expert

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=afp/iraq_britain_us_weapons

[Bandit]

6. But he had Plans to create Programs for WMDs

This guy just doesn't keep up with the news. We knew all along that it was just plans to create programs that we were after. Saddam had an idea so we figured we should attack. That will teach them Arabs to do any thinking.

[bvar22]

7. The fact that he (Saddam) wanted to produce WMD...

...but was unable to do so is PROOF that the Clinton policy of containment was 100% effective.

The bush* invasion of Iraq was unnecessary, 825 American lives wasted, 15,000 innocent Iraqis killed for no reason, $200 Billion dollars thrown away....so that chimpy* could be a War President!

[RedSock]

23. 30,000 in the first few weeks

According to Woodward's Plan of Attack, Pentagon sources told him the US killed at least 30,000 in the first few weeks of the invasion. Who knows how many have been slaughtered by now?

[Longhorn]

8. Apologize for being wrong or for lying?

This is why the Bush administration was in such a hurry to start the war -- they couldn't give the UN inspectors more time to discover that there were no WMD's! Did they plan to plant them or did they just figure it wouldn't matter later on?

And they were right! The only reason some previous war supporters have turned against this war is because the occupation hasn't worked out so well -- not because they didn't find any WMD's. It's as if they knew it was a pretext all along and they don't care! I just don't get it!

[Judi Lynn]

10. They couldn't begin to allow them to find NO WEAPONS.

You're so right. As long as the possibility of any weapons remained they had a blank check to invade. Once in, who cares? Screw it!

We're we all stupid as children to NOT see this side of America, or is it a new developement? I really can't remember this many stupid, vicious folks around until fairly recently. _{George Bush} has consolidated them.

Welcome to D.U., Longhorn. :hi: :hi: hiya!

[KeepItReal]

9. Flip-Flopping David Kay...

I can't remember how many times Bush & Co. trotted out Kay as a counter to inspector Scott Ritter on countless TV shows in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

*Ritter* was the former U.N. weapons inspector who said from day 1 that Saddam had no WMDs.

David Kay's reinvention of himself and his story should not be overlooked, IMHO...

[gbwarming]

11. No Kidding. Here's a powerful GNN piece on the smearing of Ritter

http://www.guerrillanews.com/war_on_terrorism/doc4541.html

Ritter's War
Stephen Marshall, Manhattan, May 26, 2004

Over the course of the last year, news organizations have had to eat large portions of humble pie. While the alternative press raised red flag after red flag about the Bush administration's Weapons of Mass Destruction claims, almost every mainstream U.S. news organization simply parroted the official fictions. The New York Times, a paper commonly referred to as "liberal" by the right, went even further, running numerous high-profile stories that featured anonymous sources who claimed Iraq had a viable and dangerous WMD program. Many of the Times' sources were Iraqis tied to Ahmed Chalabi, a man the U.S. now accuses of being a spy for Iran.

Today, The New York Times issued a mea culpa, headlined "Correction: The New York Times on Iraq coverage." The Times editors write, "Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge." Nowhere in the Times explanation is a reference to Scott Ritter, the former U.N. weapons inspector whose warnings were all but ignored by the paper, and pretty much every other big media outlet. While many news organizations are undergoing similar soul-searching, none have bothered to give Ritter his proper due. In this extensive media analysis, GNN's Stephen Marshall looks back at Ritter's WMD battles, the media and the politics of being right:

Character Assassination


In the late summer and fall of 2002, six months before the invasion, former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter hit the major networks, claiming that the Bush administration was "deliberately distorting the record in regards to weapons of mass destruction." Despite his radical position, Ritter's credentials as a U.S. Marine and fearless weapons inspector made him impossible to ignore. So he became the most visible opponent of the administration's assertion that Saddam was a threat to the United States. And, in response, the corporate media did everything in their power to assassinate his character. We decided to trace the media coverage that Ritter received during September, 2002.


It was a busy month.
(lots more...)

[Judi Lynn]

13. KeepItReal, I saw some of those shows, too!

David Kay got really cranky toward Scott Ritter. Crabby. Grouchy! He was really pushing the administration's line prior to our unwarranted invasion.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

22. To Kay's credit, he did state that there were NO Iraqi WMDs prior to...

...the invasion of Iraq. Nobody was paying attention by then, and the NeoCon Junta was going to use that reason to invade Iraq come hell or high water.

Another story which received absolutely NO play whatsoever stated that the UN inspectors had CERTIFIED that Iraq was WMD-free in 1995.

[sampsonblk]

12. No mention in Freepland!

Big surprise. The right wingers have been saying all along "but if you listen to what Kay actually said..." Bullshit.

He said there ain't none - consistently.

[qwertyMike]

14. Kick for the lucring delusional Freepers

:kick:

[D-Notice]

18. Not quite...

Don't think it's a case of Bliar being delusional (about WMD, he's delusional about other things), he just knows that Bush's guaranteed him they'll be discovered in Sept/Oct

[trapper914]

20. A Pretty Big Reach

Kay says there had been no wide scale production since '91, yet says Saddam had intentions on reconstituting them. That sounds to me like he's throwing a bone to the * administration. If Saddam did nothing from '98-'03 when no one was watching, what makes Kay think he was ever going to produce WMD again?