WMD....maybe never!?!

[NoCalMike 0]

CNN

 

 

 

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The former top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq on Wednesday blamed intelligence failures for the apparently incorrect conclusion that Saddam Hussein possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction before the U.S.-led invasion.

 

David Kay, who resigned last week as leader of the Iraq Survey Group searching for banned weapons, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he believed a "fundamental analysis of how we got here" is needed to ensure the best possible intelligence in the future.

 

Kay appeared before the Armed Services Committee after a closed-door session Wednesday morning with the Senate Intelligence Committee.

 

Kay told the senators that the intelligence he had seen before the war indicated Saddam had banned weapons and that France and Germany -- countries that had opposed the war -- had stated that the Iraqi dictator possessed such weapons.

 

"It turns out we were all wrong, and that is most disturbing," Kay said.

 

Kay said that while it was "theoretically possible" large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons could be found in Iraq, the prospect was "highly unlikely."

 

He said he did not believe that anyone had pressured intelligence officials to conclude that Saddam's government had banned weapons.

 

"Almost in a perverse way, I wish it had been undue influence because we know how to correct that," Kay said. "We get rid of the people who, in fact, were exercising that.

 

"The fact that it wasn't tells me that we've got a much more fundamental problem of understanding what went wrong, and we've got to figure out what was there."

 

Asked if there should be an independent investigation, Kay said that "it's important to acknowledge failure."

 

"I must say my personal view -- and it's purely personal -- is that in this case, it will -- you will finally determine that it is going to take an outside inquiry both to do it and to give yourself and the American people the confidence that you have done it," Kay said.

 

He said the extensive looting that followed Saddam's ouster in April will leave an "unresolvable ambiguity" about what happened to the weapons programs.

 

"A lot of that traces to the failure, on April 9, to establish immediately physical security in Iraq -- the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentioned, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well," Kay said.

 

But Kay, who supported the war, said the Iraq Survey Group's conclusions did nothing to undercut his belief that Saddam needed to be removed from power.

 

He said Iraq was in violation of U.N. Resolution 1441, which mandated Saddam to disclose and destroy prohibited weapons.

 

He said inspectors have found hundreds of cases of Iraqi officials concealing from U.N. weapons inspectors evidence that placed Iraq in clear violation of the world body's resolutions.

 

He added that Iraq had become totally corrupt after 1998, when U.N. inspections ceased, improving the likelihood that banned weapons could wind up in the wrong hands.

 

During the debate over whether to invade Iraq, the Bush administration argued repeatedly that Iraq was violating U.N. resolutions requiring its disarmament after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The administration also dismissed findings of U.N. weapons inspectors, who returned shortly before the war and reported finding no banned weapons.

 

The Armed Services Committee's chairman, Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia, noted that the survey group's work was not complete.

 

But Democrats have said Kay's findings show the Bush administration misled the country in arguing that war with Iraq was necessary.

 

The committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said administration officials, including President Bush, made "numerous vivid, unqualified statements about Iraq having in its possession weapons of mass destruction -- not programs, not program-related activities, not intentions."

 

"When lives are at stake and our military is to be placed in harm's way -- in other words, when we decide to go to war -- it is totally unacceptable to have intelligence that is this far off or to exaggerate or shape the intelligence for any purpose by anybody," Levin said.

 

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Is this foreshadowing or what, it seems obvious that the "intelligence" or lackthereof will be blamed for this........ugh.

[Spicy McHaggis 0]

Is this foreshadowing or what, it seems obvious that the "intelligence" or lackthereof will be blamed for this........ugh.

1. What should be blamed?

 

2. Your tone and use of "ugh" implies that some innocent group was wronged, which is completely false.

[Guest Cerebus]

Here is a summary of Kay's full report.

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

Why do you want to blame Bush for this?

 

If the intelligence community is feeding him bad info, and let's be honest Clinton believed the same things, how is this whole situation not their fault?

[Guest Cerebus]

There was this article in the New Yorker. It uses an outdated DIA report as a centerpiece and too many unnamed sources, but speaking as an ex-Navy intel officer (albeit for a very brief period) it covers a lot of bases. I'd be interested to see a full non-partisan investigation on how this happened and if the accusations made by the author has real merit. Of course, I'd also like a toilet made of solid gold.

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

I think the gold toilet has a better chance of happening.

[Guest MikeSC]

Why do you want to blame Bush for this?

 

If the intelligence community is feeding him bad info, and let's be honest Clinton believed the same things, how is this whole situation not their fault?

Because they wish to blame Bush for everything.

 

Heck, remember all of the heat because he said that Hussein was trying to buy uranium from Niger?

 

The IRONIC thing is that he never once said Niger --- he said Africa.

 

His critics wish to nail him for things that are not his fault or that he did not say.

-=Mike

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

Why do you want to blame Bush for this?

 

If the intelligence community is feeding him bad info, and let's be honest Clinton believed the same things, how is this whole situation not their fault?

Because they wish to blame Bush for everything.

 

Heck, remember all of the heat because he said that Hussein was trying to buy uranium from Niger?

 

The IRONIC thing is that he never once said Niger --- he said Africa.

 

His critics wish to nail him for things that are not his fault or that he did not say.

-=Mike

hush.....

 

leave logic and reason out of this.

[Vern Gagne 0]

The Senate had access to the intellligence before the war. This is simply politics. Both sides play the game, this time it's the Democrats.

[2GOLD 0]

As far as I was concerned, we were going in to get Hussein out. I just knew he needed something, anything to convince America to do it. We don't do that "because it's the right thing to do" stuff in this country.

 

WMD, didn't really believe that was the reason anyway.

[Guest hunger4unger]

Bush lying in order to justify the invasion of another country - whoda thunk it!

[spiny norman 0]

Most recent reports show that intelligence developed the theory of WMDs during the act of making love. They convinced Bush he could no longer sit back and allow Iraqi infiltration, Iraqi indoctrination, Iraqi subversion and the Iraqi conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

[Guest Cerebus]

My question, is if Bush supposedly lied about these NBCRs he would HAVE to know that people would want them found after Saddam was out and that they wouldn't have been found. If he were lying he might as well have said, "We are going there to save the unicorns. Our intelligence indicates that Saddam is slaughtering herds and herds of unicorns and if we don't act now, thousands of them will lose their lives." It's fun for liberals to think that Bush lied the whole way through, but it simply doesn't make sense. And don't give me any of that "OMGBUSHLOWIQSOSTUPIDLOL2004~!!!1" either. This has little to do on whether or not Bush lied but its more to the point that this was Massive Intelligence Failure #2 for the Bush administration. I'm more interested in seeing how it got to this point than seeing a liberal circle jerk over the fact that Bush is in deep shit.

[C Dubya 04 0]

i think that Bush would actually be best served to make a statement on this sooner rather than later. If I were him, I'd blame the intelligence, fire some people and then release footage of the mass graves that were discovered to show that getting rid of Saddam was necessary regardless of WMDs or the lack thereof. I think that the administration is making a mistake by sticking to their guns and saying that there are WMDs to be found.

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

Bush lying in order to justify the invasion of another country - whoda thunk it!

Please, do the world and my children a great service and never breed.

[Guest BionicRedneck]

Bush lying in order to justify the invasion of another country - whoda thunk it!

Please, do the world and my children a great service and never breed.

But he is right. Bush has lied in order to justify the invasion of another country. Sure, the ridiculously inept "intelligence" is more to blame for this whole thing, but Bush is still sticking to it when it's clear that these WMD aren't gonna show up. I have some sympathy for Bush over this situation, but he needs to basically come out and tell the truth. Of course, that isn't going to happen within a million years.

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

Bush lying in order to justify the invasion of another country - whoda thunk it!

Please, do the world and my children a great service and never breed.

But he is right. Bush has lied in order to justify the invasion of another country. Sure, the ridiculously inept "intelligence" is more to blame for this whole thing, but Bush is still sticking to it when it's clear that these WMD aren't gonna show up. I have some sympathy for Bush over this situation, but he needs to basically come out and tell the truth. Of course, that isn't going to happen within a million years.

No, he's not. Bush invaded the country on intelligence reports and a belief, that Clinton shared, that Iraq was building WMD. He's not lying if he was being fed bad intelligence. And he hasn't come out and said anything because this is still under review in the Senate. So calling him a liar is a baseless claim for the most part.

[Guest hunger4unger]

Bush lying in order to justify the invasion of another country - whoda thunk it!

Please, do the world and my children a great service and never breed.

Wow..that's was pretty harsh. It doesn't change the fact that Bush is a liar

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

Bush lying in order to justify the invasion of another country - whoda thunk it!

Please, do the world and my children a great service and never breed.

Wow..that's was pretty harsh. It doesn't change the fact that Bush is a liar

Prove it......

 

show me your magical sources that show you all the information the President saw before the war.

[Downhome 0]

I didn't want to start a thread about this, so I just found the most recent Iraq topic to say this in.

 

FoxNews just reported on Dayside that seven US soldiers have been killed today after an explosion, with even more wounded.

[Mole 0]

But I thought the "war" was over?

[Justice 0]

Bush lying in order to justify the invasion of another country - whoda thunk it!

Please, do the world and my children a great service and never breed.

Wow..that's was pretty harsh. It doesn't change the fact that Bush is a liar

Excuse me, but didn't the UN believe there were WMDs in there in the first place to even justify Weapons Inspections? The UN, for 12 years, said that Iraq had weapons. Intelligence agencies all over the world (Including France's and Germany's) agreed with this. If anything, I wanna know why we didn't find this out during 7 years of UN Weapon Inspections.

 

Oh right, the UN is completely inept at everything they do. My bad.

[Justice 0]

But I thought the "war" was over?

Well, we were reporting casualties in Japan 2 years after WWII due to enemy fire there, but are you going to say that WWII ended in 1947 rather than 1945?

 

Idiot.

[CanadianChris 0]

I still maintain that going into Iraq was the right thing to do. However, I think Bush is going to pay a price for this, like it or not, because he's ultimately the one who's making the decisions.

[Vyce 0]

For those of you saying he lied:

 

No intelligence agency in existence - in the U.S., the U.N., in Europe, etc. - EVER said that Saddamn had NO weapons of mass destruction.

 

EVERYONE said he had them.

 

The issue was NEVER that he did not have them, just whether the inspections should continue rather than a preemptive war.

 

Even today, there are reports coming from Iraqis that are stating Saddam developed WMDs and has some of them hidden in secure locations.

[Spicy McHaggis 0]

I still maintain that going into Iraq was the right thing to do. However, I think Bush is going to pay a price for this, like it or not, because he's ultimately the one who's making the decisions.

Or he can use it to his advantage by overhauling the entire intelligence community.

[BX 0]

I love this. No matter what happens, you guys are going to shit all over the U.N.

 

Before the war, you said, "Stupid inept fucking U.N, MOVE ASIDE, AND WE'LL FIND THE WEAPONS!".

 

After the war, you're saying, "Stupid fucking inept U.N, you have seven years to find nothing. You're totally stupid."

[Vern Gagne 0]

I didn't want to start a thread about this, so I just found the most recent Iraq topic to say this in.

 

FoxNews just reported on Dayside that seven US soldiers have been killed today after an explosion, with even more wounded.

I thought that happened in Afghanistan.

[Justice 0]

I love this. No matter what happens, you guys are going to shit all over the U.N.

 

Before the war, you said, "Stupid inept fucking U.N, MOVE ASIDE, AND WE'LL FIND THE WEAPONS!".

 

After the war, you're saying, "Stupid fucking inept U.N, you look for seven years for something that you say are sure is there and it isn't. You're totally stupid."

I corrected it since BX said something that made no sense.

 

Well, since the UN didn't decide to go in it with us it was a no-win situation:

 

No Weapons: The UN is shown to be inept after going through 7 years of inspections and constantly asserting that they are there up until the very beginning of this war.

 

Weapons: The UN is shown to be inpotent as they refuse to take out Saddam Hussein for violating UN Resolution 1441.

 

And considering that we've done more in the 1 year we've been in Iraq than the UN is the entire time they've been trying to handle Iraq should tell you something about their effectiveness.

[Guest hunger4unger]

"Saddam has WMDs, we guarantee it,

we know where they are, and we're willing

to put our reputations on the line and that's a fact..."