Did Kay State That Iraq Did Not Have WMDs…

KAY LEAVES AFTER FINDING NO WMDs: The WP reports Bush’s personal weapons inspector David Kay is leaving his post after finding no WMDs in Iraq. While the Administration previously tried to spin Kay’s interim report as proof that Iraq was interested in acquiring WMD, Kay was firm in pointing out that no proof that Saddam had WMD had been found. As Kay said, “We have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material…We have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile biological weapons production effort…Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled chemical weapons program after 1991… Iraq’s large-scale capability to develop, produce, and fill new chemical weapon munitions was reduced – if not entirely destroyed – during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections.”

On Friday night Mr Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group, which is in charge of the weapons hunt, said he had concluded there were no Iraqi stockpiles to be found. “I don’t think they existed. What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last Gulf War [in 1991] and I don’t think there was a large-scale production programme in the nineties,” he said in an interview with Reuters.

David Kay, the former head of the coalition’s hunt for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, yesterday claimed that part of Saddam Hussein’s secret weapons programme was hidden in Syria.

In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Kay, who last week resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year’s war to overthrow Saddam.

“We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons,” he said. “But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam’s WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved.”

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday the Bush administration last year told him and other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities.

Nelson, D-Tallahassee, said about 75 senators got that news during a classified briefing before last October’s congressional vote authorizing the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Nelson voted in favor of using military force.

Nelson said he couldn’t reveal who in the administration gave the briefing.

The White House directed questions about the matter to the Department of Defense. Defense officials had no comment on Nelson’s claim.