>>Kay's report is just that: a report.<<

Kay was sent in to find facts and gather evidence regarding Iraq's capabilities

>>These geniuses decided that it was enough to go to war.<<

Uhhh, It was AFTER the war.


>>Sorry, I don't buy it or endorse it.<<

Who cares what you buy or endorse? Kay was recognized as a unbiased and reliable source of information by both sides of the political spectrum. His report includes the following:

"From birth, all of Iraq's WMD activities were highly compartmentalized within a regime that ruled and kept its secrets through fear and terror and with deception and denial built into each program;

2. Deliberate dispersal and destruction of material and documentation related to weapons programs began pre-conflict and ran trans-to-post conflict;

3. Post-OIF looting destroyed or dispersed important and easily collectable material and forensic evidence concerning Iraq's WMD program. As the report covers in detail, significant elements of this looting were carried out in a systematic and deliberate manner, with the clear aim of concealing pre-OIF activities of Saddam's regime;

4. Some WMD personnel crossed borders in the pre/trans conflict period and may have taken evidence and even weapons-related materials with them;

5. Any actual WMD weapons or material is likely to be small in relation to the total conventional armaments footprint and difficult to near impossible to identify with normal search procedures. It is important to keep in mind that even the bulkiest materials we are searching for, in the quantities we would expect to find, can be concealed in spaces not much larger than a two car garage;

6. The environment in Iraq remains far from permissive for our activities, with many Iraqis that we talk to reporting threats and overt acts of intimidation and our own personnel being the subject of threats and attacks. In September alone we have had three attacks on ISG facilities or teams: The ISG base in Irbil was bombed and four staff injured, two very seriously; a two person team had their vehicle blocked by gunmen and only escaped by firing back through their own windshield; and on Wednesday, 24 September, the ISG Headquarters in Baghdad again was subject to mortar attack.

What have we found and what have we not found in the first 3 months of our work?

We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later:

· A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.

· A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

· Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

· New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.

· Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).

· A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.

· Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.

· Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km -- well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.

· Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.

In addition to the discovery of extensive concealment efforts, we have been faced with a systematic sanitization of documentary and computer evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies suspected of WMD work. The pattern of these efforts to erase evidence -- hard drives destroyed, specific files burned, equipment cleaned of all traces of use -- are ones of deliberate, rather than random, acts."



>>Whether Saddam was "making" or "planning to make" weapons the fact remains that you do not arbitrarily drop bombs and invade with your green machine unless you are fully justified.<<

And just what, in your mind, is justification for taking military action and toppling a regime that sponsors terror. How many innocent lives must be lost to terrorism before President Johann decides to say, "You know what? It's time we make the tough decision and deal with this problem."

Or would you just ignore it and wait for another 9/11 or more London bombings in major western cities?


>>Pre-emptive strikes are cowardly. COWARDLY.<<

Destroying the capability of an enemy to harm you is basic strategy in any conflict. To NOT do so is idiotic. Is a Navy SEAL a coward when he throws a flash-bang into a room prior to entering and engaging a target? He has struck preemptively at the senses of his opponent, effectively neutralizing his ability to inflict harm.


>>Business based means business-based. They are a business-based family. Have been for eons. Oil is the business<<

And how exactly has Bush benefitted from the Iraq war?

>>I have no proof<<

Thank you.

>> *de facto* because they are so adept at covering up and lying and sneaking and hiding.<<

Hmmm, and here I thought you just called him a callous ignoramus...You can't have it both ways! Either he is a diabolical genius and master strategist who has the ability to fool every major media outlet and silence any opposition or he is a bumbling, moron, who couldn't devise a winning strategy to save his life.

Well? Which is it?