Kay Blames Weak Intel in Iraq WMD Failure (AP)

[diamond14]

Kay Blames Weak Intel in Iraq WMD Failure

55 minutes ago

By KATHERINE PFLEGER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Former top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay told members of the Senate Wednesday that the failure to turn up weapons of mass destruction in Iraq exposed weaknesses in America's intelligence-gathering apparatus.

Kay said he felt there would always be "unresolvable ambiguity" about exactly what programs Iraq had because of the severe looting that occurred in Iraq immediately after the U.S.-led invasion and the U.S. military's failure to control it. U.S. investigators believe some Iraqis probably took advantage of that period of chaos to get rid of any evidence of weapons programs, he said.

Kay's appearance had strong political undertones with the justification for war emerging as a top issue in the presidential campaign.

The committee's top Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, pointed to repeated statements by top administration officials flatly stating that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. He pressed Kay to acknowledge that there is no evidence Iraq even had small stockpiles as of 2002. Kay also said that vans the administration claimed were used for biological weapons were likely not intended for such a program.

http://www.comcast.net/News/DOMESTIC//XML/1153_Congress/8cb24803-e0f7-4ef9-bff7-60137270670c.html

[grytpype]

1. Bullsheit.

The Administration got the answers IT WANTED from the CIA. If they were the wrong answers, it's because those were the answers the Adminstration wanted!!!

[shockingelk]

2. imagine that ...

Watch the buck ricochet here and there before it comes to rest in the Oval Office. The Party of Responsibility and Accountability!

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. Blaming the CIA is only temporary

As things get worse in Iraq, this will be revisited. Clearly, Bush& Co. created the justification for this occupation by using 10 year old "intelligence" and hearsay. The fact that it was so easy to hoodwink the congress is what is alarming and is what should be investigated.

[utopian]

4. As I said in another thread

This spin is as transparent as the original arguments for war.

[Say_What]

5. Short memory---three CIA guys testified in October about Cheney

insisting they weren't looking hard enough and even going to Langley to put pressure on junior analysts. These guys testified live on CSPAN in October--the same day as the demonstration in Washington. With a bit of time the transcript should turn up for anyone interested.

<clips>

...The intelligence report was quickly stovepiped to those officials who had an intense interest in building the case against Iraq, including Vice-President Dick Cheney. “The Vice-President saw a piece of intelligence reporting that Niger was attempting to buy uranium,” Cathie Martin, the spokeswoman for Cheney, told me. Sometime after he first saw it, Cheney brought it up at his regularly scheduled daily briefing from the C.I.A., Martin said. “He asked the briefer a question. The briefer came back a day or two later and said, ‘We do have a report, but there’s a lack of details.’” The Vice-President was further told that it was known that Iraq had acquired uranium ore from Niger in the early nineteen-eighties but that that material had been placed in secure storage by the I.A.E.A., which was monitoring it. “End of story,” Martin added. “That’s all we know.” According to a former high-level C.I.A. official, however, Cheney was dissatisfied with the initial response, and asked the agency to review the matter once again. It was the beginning of what turned out to be a year-long tug-of-war between the C.I.A. and the Vice-President’s office.

As the campaign against Iraq intensified, a former aide to Cheney told me, the Vice-President’s office, run by his chief of staff, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, became increasingly secretive when it came to intelligence about Iraq’s W.M.D.s. As with Wolfowitz and Bolton, there was a reluctance to let the military and civilian analysts on the staff vet intelligence.

“It was an unbelievably closed and small group,” the former aide told me. Intelligence procedures were far more open during the Clinton Administration, he said, and professional staff members had been far more involved in assessing and evaluating the most sensitive data. “There’s so much intelligence out there that it’s easy to pick and choose your case,” the former aide told me. “It opens things up to cherry-picking.” (“Some reporting is sufficiently sensitive that it is restricted only to the very top officials of the government—as it should be,” Cathie Martin said. And any restrictions, she added, emanate from C.I.A. security requirements.)

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact

[gauguin57]

6. David Kay on "Nightline" tonight

Today's "Nightline preview" e-mail

TONIGHT'S FOCUS: He has been at the heart of the search for Iraq's weapons for years. Most recently, he was in charge of the U.S. effort to find those weapons. He has just resigned from that position, and tonight he'll sit down with Ted.

David Kay has been one of the central figures in the Iraq drama for, well, it seems like forever. He was one of the chief inspectors for the U.N. when that body had inspectors in Iraq. He was chosen to head the latest U.S. effort to find those weapons or the weapons programs. And in the last couple of days, since he has quit that position, he has said that he thinks it is unlikely that weapons of mass destruction will ever be found there, and that in fact they may have been destroyed years ago.

Does anyone still care about this issue? The administration has worked to minimize the importance of the WMD controversy, which was once cited as one of the major reasons for going to war. In fact, the President yesterday, when asked about it, pointed to other issues, and talked about the general danger that Saddam presented. There's no question that Saddam was a brutal dictator, and the world is better off without him. But that nagging question persists. How could everyone have been so wrong? Why, if Kay and others are right and the weapons were destroyed, why didn't any of the intelligence agencies pick that up?

This will most likely be a major issue in the coming election. Certainly the Democrats want to make it one, and the administration hopes that it will go away. So Ted will sit down with David Kay tonight, to talk about what he found, and what he didn't find, and what it all means. I hope you'll join us.

Leroy Sievers and the Nightline Staff
ABCNEWS Washington bureau

[proud patriot]

7. weak Intel from the Office Of Special Plans

CIA tried to warn and did their job .

bushco choose to ignore the CIA and go with
the Office Of Special Plans Intel ....

[DoYouEverWonder]

8. The only one with weak Intel

is our feeble minded pResident, incurious George. The dude who is too bored or busy cutting brush to bother his beautiful mind with such trivia.

Bu$h lied, people died.

Bu$h lied in the SOTU and on numerous other occasions about the reasons for invading Iraq. His minions and the corporate press totally supported these allegations. Every single one was totally confident that SADDAM HAD WMD's, and was an imminent threat that they had absolutely no other choice under the circumstances but invade Iraq and that war was the only solution. No one was even allowed to discuss any other option.

Bu$h is the one with the weak intel. He refused to listen to any one outside of his small circle of neocon advisers. He repeatedly ignored the CIA and FBI, preferring the evidence the OSP was willing to cook up for him. Bu$hCo didn't invade Iraq because of bad intelligence. Bu$hCo invaded Iraq to take control of Iraq's resources and it didn't matter if the intel was good or bad.