Black Box Recorder

Portrait of the inspector as an old huckster

David Kay, former US inspector for WMD in Iraq, attempting to shift the blame for the failure of his mission onto US intelligence:

Asked if the president owes the country an explanation for the failure of weapons stockpiles to turn up, Kay told NPR, "I actually think the intelligence community owes the president, rather than the president owing the American people."

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

David Kay, former pro-war shill, testifying before Congress in September 2002 on the uselessness of national intelligence for determining the state of Iraq's "nuclear program":

It is very unlikely that national intelligence efforts can add much clarity to the exact status of Saddam's nuclear program. The same deception and concealment capabilities that were directed at the inspectors will have hindered national intelligence services. WMD programs have long been the hardest targets for intelligence service to unravel, even when they are very large.
...

What is clear is that unless we take immediate steps to address the issue of removing the Saddam's regime from power in Iraq, we will soon face a nuclear armed and embolden [sic] Saddam. With time, and we can never be sure of how long that will be, Saddam will be able to intimidate his neighbors with nuclear weapons and find the means to use them against the United States. Saddam's own actions to obstruct the efforts of the international community to carry out the removal of his WMD capacity as mandated by the UN Security Council at the end of the Gulf War accounts for the uncertainty as to the exact status of that program today. These same actions of obstruction, however, remove all doubt about his aim to acquire and enlarge his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons stockpiles. Absence the forceful removal of Saddam, unambiguous certainty as to the status of his WMD programs is likely to come only after the first use of these weapons against the United States and its friends. This is a very high price to pay - potentially many times over the human toll one year ago in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania - for clarity as to the exact status of any nuclear program.

Several points indicated by the bold passages above: (a) the "actions of obstruction", and not what intelligence was or was not saying, "removed all doubt" about Iraq's WMD, and (b) to "enlarge" stockpiles presupposes already existing stockpiles, i.e., actually-existing possession and not hoped-for or fantasized possession.

So: Kay is now blaming the national intelligence service for not determining that there were no WMD in Iraq, even though before the war he very clearly discounted the role national intelligence services could play in determining whether or not there were WMD in Iraq.

Sorry, Mr. Kay, but you are a liar and a fraud. Your primary motivation was always "replacement" of Saddam, not disarmament, which makes your lie doubly offensive. And after everything that has happened with Iraq, I can only assume that anyone who believes you now is a liar and fraud as well.