On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 14:46:10 -0500 (EST), "Harry Krause"
wrote:

From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 1/29/04:
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/o...man/index.html

No mystery to untangling WMD puzzler

Just for you Harry, from yesterday's Washington Post.

Mr. Kay's Truth-Telling

Thursday, January 29, 2004; Page A28


GIVE DAVID KAY credit for courage. The recently departed chief of the
Iraq Survey Group was one of those who confidently predicted that
stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons would be found in Iraq
after the U.S.-led invasion. Yesterday he straightforwardly told a
Senate committee hearing that "we were almost all wrong." There were,
he said, almost certainly no large stocks of illegal weapons in Iraq
and no evidence that any had been produced in recent years. Mr. Kay
has chosen to go public with this disturbing news not because he
wishes to embarrass the Bush administration or cast doubt on the
mission in Iraq but because he believes it vital that the faults in
intelligence gathering that led to the mistaken weapons estimates be
identified and corrected. There is indeed a critical need for such a
review: U.S. security in an age of proliferation and terrorism depends
on it. What a shame that, rather than accept Mr. Kay's conclusions,
both the president and his Democratic opponents prefer to play them
for political advantage.



President Bush and most of his aides have quietly backed away from
their once-unambiguous assertions that Iraq possessed weapons of mass
destruction. Mr. Bush now speaks of
"weapons-of-mass-destruction-related program activities" or, as he did
Tuesday, doggedly insists that Saddam Hussein was a "danger." Mr.
Kay's team has documented those activities, and the former inspector
agrees with the president's characterization of Saddam Hussein -- as
do we. The problem is that Mr. Bush has not taken the next step, which
is to admit that the intelligence that he was provided by U.S.
agencies and that he and his administration then relayed to the
country -- sometimes in exaggerated terms -- was substantially
mistaken. To do so might be politically perilous in an election year;
it's far easier to argue, as the administration has, that we must wait
many more months before drawing any conclusions. But the truth cannot
be put off forever, and it should not have to wait until after
November. The longer Mr. Bush delays, the longer it will be before
intelligence agencies can be held accountable and reforms undertaken.

Democratic members of Congress and presidential candidates are not
making a responsible reckoning any easier. Instead they have attempted
to twist Mr. Kay's conclusions to serve their arguments that Mr. Bush
fabricated a case for war against a country that posed no serious
threat. Mr. Kay punctured those theories yesterday. He bluntly told
Democratic senators that he had found no evidence that intelligence
analysts had come under administration pressure to alter their
findings; pointed out that the Clinton administration and several
European governments had drawn the same conclusions about Iraq's
weapons; and stated that his investigation showed that Saddam
Hussein's regime was in some ways more dangerous than was believed
before the war -- because its corruption and disintegration had made
it more likely that weapons or weapons technology would be sold to
"others [who] are seeking WMD." That didn't stop Howard Dean from
charging on the campaign trail that "the administration did cook the
books" -- an allegation that, so far as Mr. Kay's testimony is
concerned, is false.

The partisanship and demagoguery that have overtaken the discussion of
Iraq's missing weapons mean that investigations of the intelligence
failure by the Bush administration or Congress are unlikely to be
thorough or credible. The only proper approach to the problem,
suggested yesterday by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and quickly seconded
by Mr. Kay, is an independent inquiry. The president and Congress
should agree on the appointment of an expert, nonpartisan commission
with full secrecy clearance and subpoena power to examine why the
intelligence on Iraq proved wrong and to report on how such failures
can be prevented in the future. "It's not a political issue," Mr. Kay
told National Public Radio. "It's an issue of the capabilities of
one's intelligence service to collect valid, truthful information."
************************************************** *****

In case you missed it, I'll repeat it:

"Democratic members of Congress and presidential candidates are not
making a responsible reckoning any easier. Instead they have attempted
to twist Mr. Kay's conclusions to serve their arguments that Mr. Bush
fabricated a case for war against a country that posed no serious
threat. Mr. Kay punctured those theories yesterday. "

I don't know if the Post meets your respectability criteria.

John H

On the 'Poco Loco' out of Deale, MD
on the beautiful Chesapeake Bay!