As expected, the CIA's lead weapons inspector told congressional intelligence committees Thursday that his team has not yet found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
However, David Kay said inspectors have found evidence of a biological weapons program.
He also noted more substantial activity in missile production than Iraq disclosed to the United Nations."Believe me, we're working as hard as we can. I know the importance attached to this work. There's a lot more work to do before we can declare we're at the end of this road rather than at the beginning," Kay said. "We have found a great deal, much of which was not declared to the United Nations."
He said the inspectors' task is made difficult by Iraqis still loyal to Saddam Hussein's ousted regime,
but also because even the bulkiest materials they are looking for can be hidden in space not much larger than a two-car garage."It's a huge country and there's a lot to do," he said.
Our country has been clamoring to see some WMD's since about a week after we invaded Iraq. Every night we see law makers wringing their hands and asking why we went to Iraq if there were no weapons.
We went to Iraq because there could have been weapons. In our counrty we have something called "probable cause," which is alluded to in the Fourth Ammendment to our constitution. It allows our law enforcement officials put aside search and seizure laws if they determine there is an iminent threat. This is a basic tenant of our legal system which has been held up by our courts since this country began.
Now apply that thinking to Iraq. Saddam Hussein was not allowing anybody into his country to verify wether or not he had WMD's.
Even when he did allow the UN in, those inspectors had to deal with constant interference. What became apparent to our President and his administration was that Saddam was apparently hiding something. Given our nation's belief in probable cause, Bush felt he couldn't risk not going into Iraq.Our President was not going to trust somebody as obviously despotic and maniacal as Saddam Hussein. He was not going to allow Hussein to possibly attack us with WMD's before we responded. Just the possibility of such an attack, however remote, should be enough to justify this war.
It seems now, however, that the popular public opinion in this matter is that the U.S. went into Iraq in order to gain control of oil wells there. This accusation just doesn't make any sense. Recently George Bush met with Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, at Camp David.
One of the things our President negotiated for us was access to Russia's oil supply, which is huge. We hadn't been buying oil from Russia due to lingering Cold War feelings, but that is now in the past. This new access will make us much less dependant on oil from the middle east.So why would our President risk invading Iraq if we were going to get oil from Russia anyway? The problem is that our media, which tends to be fairly liberal, is intent on spinning a negative aspect on this war. I'm not sure the reason for this, but I can make some guesses. Some are probably out to make our President look bad. Some are probably aging Berkeley still protesting wars. More then likely they just don't like Bush's politics so they try to find a way to attack him on whatever level is available. Its petty, but effective, and unfortunately our population, for the most part, swallows up such negativity whole-heartedly.
CNN.com - Kay: No weapons yet, but evidence of intent - Oct. 2, 2003