Chalabigate
"Weapons of Mass Deception"
2005-02-07
Kay Warns U.S. Not to Repeat Iraq Mistakes in Iran
Mon Feb 7,12:27 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. official who declared the White House's hunt for illicit weapons in Iraq to be a failure driven by faulty intelligence has warned the Bush administration against repeating its mistakes in the current war of words with arch-foe Iran.
"There is an eerie similarity to the events preceding the Iraq war," David Kay, who led the search for banned weapons of mass destruction in postwar Iraq, said on Monday in an opinion piece in The Washington Post.
"Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran would be a grave danger to the world. That is not what is in doubt," he wrote.
"What is in doubt is the ability (of) the U.S. government to honestly assess Iran's nuclear status and to craft a set of measures that will cope with that threat short of military action by the United States or Israel," Kay added.
President Bush justified the March 2003 invasion of Iraq by saying Saddam Hussein posed a threat because Baghdad had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was reviving its nuclear weapons program.
No such weapons were found. Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee a year ago that U.S. intelligence was "almost all wrong," and later urged reorganization of the U.S. intelligence services.
The U.S. government accuses Tehran of pursuing nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear energy program, a charge Iran denies.
Remarks by top U.S. officials including Vice President Dick Cheney recently stirred concern of possible military action against Iran, which Bush has called the "world's primary state sponsor of terror." However, the administration, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has since stressed diplomacy with in public comments.
"Now is the time to pause and recall what went wrong with the assessment of Iraq's WMD program and try to avoid repeating those mistakes in Iran," Kay said in the Post.
He suggested Washington accept that it cannot prevent Iran from possessing the scientific knowledge for developing a nuclear weapon.
"It is nonsense to talk about eliminating Iran's nuclear capabilities short of war and occupation," said Kay, who urged the administration to rely on U.N. weapons inspectors to uncover any future weapons violations.
"The goal ... is to craft a set of tools and transparency methods that so tie Iran's nuclear activities to the larger world of peaceful nuclear activities that any attempt to push ahead on the weapons front would be detectable."
Kay recommended that the administration safeguard the quality of its intelligence on Iran by involving respected outside experts in its assessment.
He also warned that the United States would only invite international derision by relying Iranian exiles for material to support its case, as it relied on Iraqi expatriates in 2003.
YahooNews
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. official who declared the White House's hunt for illicit weapons in Iraq to be a failure driven by faulty intelligence has warned the Bush administration against repeating its mistakes in the current war of words with arch-foe Iran.
"There is an eerie similarity to the events preceding the Iraq war," David Kay, who led the search for banned weapons of mass destruction in postwar Iraq, said on Monday in an opinion piece in The Washington Post.
"Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran would be a grave danger to the world. That is not what is in doubt," he wrote.
"What is in doubt is the ability (of) the U.S. government to honestly assess Iran's nuclear status and to craft a set of measures that will cope with that threat short of military action by the United States or Israel," Kay added.
President Bush justified the March 2003 invasion of Iraq by saying Saddam Hussein posed a threat because Baghdad had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was reviving its nuclear weapons program.
No such weapons were found. Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee a year ago that U.S. intelligence was "almost all wrong," and later urged reorganization of the U.S. intelligence services.
The U.S. government accuses Tehran of pursuing nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear energy program, a charge Iran denies.
Remarks by top U.S. officials including Vice President Dick Cheney recently stirred concern of possible military action against Iran, which Bush has called the "world's primary state sponsor of terror." However, the administration, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has since stressed diplomacy with in public comments.
"Now is the time to pause and recall what went wrong with the assessment of Iraq's WMD program and try to avoid repeating those mistakes in Iran," Kay said in the Post.
He suggested Washington accept that it cannot prevent Iran from possessing the scientific knowledge for developing a nuclear weapon.
"It is nonsense to talk about eliminating Iran's nuclear capabilities short of war and occupation," said Kay, who urged the administration to rely on U.N. weapons inspectors to uncover any future weapons violations.
"The goal ... is to craft a set of tools and transparency methods that so tie Iran's nuclear activities to the larger world of peaceful nuclear activities that any attempt to push ahead on the weapons front would be detectable."
Kay recommended that the administration safeguard the quality of its intelligence on Iran by involving respected outside experts in its assessment.
He also warned that the United States would only invite international derision by relying Iranian exiles for material to support its case, as it relied on Iraqi expatriates in 2003.
YahooNews
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Milton Frihetsson, 20:37
