Bush should take blame for listening to and believing CIA estimates,
but every intelligence agency around the world was fooled by Saddam's
bluff on WMD. A year ago, nobody at the UN questioned that significant
WMDs existed in Saddam's Iraq. In fact, WMD death count was cited as
one of the main reasons not to remove Saddam by force. You're ignoring
twelve years of history Bob.

------------------

Kay Says Iraq Likely Had No Banned Arms
Former Top U.S. Inspector Says Iraq Likely Had No Weapons of Mass
Destruction Before the War
The Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040125_670.html

WASHINGTON Jan. 25 - The former top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq said
Sunday he believes Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction
before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. David Kay said the challenge for
the United States now is to figure out why intelligence indicated that
the Iraqi president did have them.

"We led this search to find the truth, not to find the weapons. The
fact that we found so far the weapons do not exist, we've got to deal
with that difference and understand why," Kay said Sunday on the
National Public Radio program "Weekend Edition."

Asked whether he feels President Bush owes the American people an
apology for starting the war on the basis of apparently flawed
intelligence, Kay said: "I actually think the intelligence community
owes the president rather than the president owing the American people.

"You have to remember that this view of Iraq was held during the
Clinton administration and didn't change in the Bush administration. It
is not a political `got you' issue. It is a serious issue of how you
could come to the conclusion that is not matched by the future."

"It's not a political issue. Its an issue of the capabilities of one's
intelligence service to collect valid, truthful information."

Since Kay's resignation Friday as the top U.S. weapons investigator in
Iraq, Kay has said Iraq had no large-scale weapons production program
during the 1990s, after it lost the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and no large
numbers of mass destruction weapons were available for "imminent
action."

Still, "that is not the same thing as saying it was not a serious,
imminent threat," he said Sunday. "That is a political judgment," he
said, "not a technical judgment."

Kay's declaration that weapons of mass destruction did not exist before
the war puts him in direct contradiction with the official Bush
administration position. On Saturday, President Bush's spokesman said
the administration stood by its assertions that Iraq had banned weapons
when U.S. and British forces invaded last March. The spokesman, Scott
McClellan, said it was only a matter of time before inspectors find
them.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, in contrast, held out the possibility
Saturday that prewar Iraq may not have possessed such weapons. "The
answer to that question is, we don't know yet," Powell told reporters
on a trip to Georgia. He said U.S. officials had believed Saddam had
weapons prewar but had unanswered questions: "What was it?" he
asked. "One hundred tons, 500 tons or zero tons? Was it so many liters
of anthrax, 10 times that amount or nothing?"

Kay said he believes the American public and politicians now have to
grapple with the question of whether the Iraqi dictator posed an
imminent threat. Given the reality on the ground, as opposed to
estimates, some may reach different conclusions than they did before
the war, he said.

"I must say I actually think Iraq what we learned during the
inspections made Iraq a more dangerous place potentially than in fact
we thought it was even before the war," Kay added.

Kay came home from Iraq in December and never returned to Baghdad to
continue inspections as head of the Iraq Survey Group, sent by the CIA
to track down Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

CIA Director George Tenet replaced him Friday with Charles Duelfer, the
No. 2 weapons inspector for the United Nations for about seven years.

Kay said he left the position because resources were being shifted from
the search for Iraq's weapons stockpiles to counterterrorism and troop
protection in Iraq.

Duelfer said Friday he has been assured he will have the appropriate
resources.

Kay said he now is going to turn his attention to weapons proliferation
issues and the recent lessons learned.

In addition to Iraq, he pointed out, the United States has been
surprised this year by nuclear programs in Libya and Iran.

"The Iranian program was not found either by the international
inspection agencies or by domestic intelligence services. It was
Iranian defectors, Iranian opposition groups outside of Iran that
brought it to the world's attention," Kay told NPR.

In Libya, he said, the surprise has been the connections to Pakistan
and Malaysia, where he said it appears plants were producing parts.

"It is in many ways the biggest surprise of all, and it was missed,"
Kay said. "We need to understand our capabilities and what needs to be
done to make the nation better."