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What to say about David Kay's comments on NPR?

It's notable to watch how each news outlet spins the remarks. This morning on CNN, Soledad O'Brien trotted out the question of whether Dubya had some splainin' to do in an interview with a former UN inspector. The kindly Brit patiently explained to her that it was likely more a failure of intelligence than one of executive judgement.

The Washington Post Express edition had the headline "Kay Raps U.S. Intel on WMD: Outgoing inspector doubts Iraq had banned weapons." The headline encourages interpretation that is inaccurate; Iraq had banned weapons, notably missiles that violated negotiated range limits. No, it seems they didn't have ready-to-go stockpiles of Anthrax and VX - but this is a distinction that merits a more subtle treatment, especially since Kay also noted that Bahgdad had an active program to weaponize ricin.

Predictably, the blathering morning talent at the Fox Morning show fell all over themselves to make excuses for not finding the stockpiles of weapons ...

So like most news these days, it seems that most folks (including myself) will take away from this new information almost exactly the opinion that they originally brought to the table. The Dems are typically outraged at the "nefarious and incompetent" motivations that brought us to war. The administration will close its eyes, put its fingers in its ears and say and say "we'll find 'em, we'll find 'em, we'll find 'em!"

And me?

Well I'll say, "ricin?" Missiles that can hit Israel? 13 years of flipping us the bird and a proven history of deceit? These are surely good enough reasons to go to war for me.

Update: Also mentioned in Kay's comments is the assertion that "some components of Saddam's WMD program" went to Syria. I'd say this is a rather heavy piece of news.

Posted by Bill at January 26, 2004 10:28 AM | TrackBack (0)