We went to war over THIS?

unresolved ambiguity

So, Kay is either a liar, or doesn't have his own facts straight as the times article contradicts what Kay is quoted to have said to "The Sunday Telegraph" of London.

If only Saddam had let the inspectors do this job before the war, the whole issue could have been avoided.

If only Saddam had let the inspectors do this job before the war, the whole issue could have been avoided.

Ashcroft defends war on Iraq[/size]
In wake of Kay's WMD dissent, he says Saddam used ?'evil chemistry'
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 1:28 p.m. ET Jan. 26, 2004
VIENNA, Austria - In the wake of remarks by outgoing weapons inspector David Kay that he did not believe Iraq had outlawed weapons of mass destruction, Attorney General John Ashcroft strongly defended the war that toppled Saddam Hussein, saying Monday that his past use of "evil chemistry" and "evil biology" justified U.S. actions.

Ashcroft, who was in Vienna for talks with top Austrian officials on measures to fight terrorism and drug trafficking and improve air travel security, told reporters that Saddam's arsenal remained a menace and was sufficient cause to overthrow his regime.

"Weapons of mass destruction including evil chemistry and evil biology are all matters of great concern, not only to the United States but also to the world community. They were the subject of U.N. resolutions," he said.

Al-Qaida threat not seen as diminished
Ashcroft called terrorism "the antithesis of freedom" and said it remained a global menace. "We see no nations as immune to the al-Qaida terrorist threat," he said.

He addressed reporters briefly after meeting with Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, Interior Minister Ernst Strasser and Justice Minister Dieter Boehmdorfer. On Tuesday, he was to meet with members of Austria's elite Cobra police commando unit, which has had members acting as sky marshals on select flights.

Ashcroft made the comments a day after Kay, the outgoing top U.S. weapons inspector, pressed U.S. intelligence agencies to explain why their research indicated that Iraq had banned weapons before the invasion.

Kay said Sunday that he now believed Saddam had no such arms.

"I don't think they exist," Kay said on National Public Radio. "The fact that we found so far the weapons do not exist ?- we've got to deal with that difference and understand why."

Scientists may have diverted money
Kay told The New York Times in an interview for Monday's editions that U.S. intelligence agencies did not realize that Iraqi scientists presented Saddam with fanciful plans for weapons programs and then used the money he authorized for other purposes.

"The whole thing shifted from directed programs to a corrupted process," Kay told the Times. "The regime was no longer in control; it was like a death spiral. Saddam was self-directing projects that were not vetted by anyone else. The scientists were able to fake programs."

Kay said that Iraq did try to restart its nuclear weapons program in 2000 and 2001 but that evidence suggested that it would have taken years to rebuild after being largely abandoned in the 1990s.

He said that it was now clear that the CIA's basic problem was that the agency lacked its own spies in Iraq who could provide credible information but that he did not believe analysts were pressed by the administration to make their reports conform to a White House agenda.

The White House said Monday that inspectors should continue searching to determine the extent of Saddam's programs. But White House press secretary Scott McClellan did not repeat past administration statements that forbidden weapons would be found.

"We want to compare the intelligence before the war with what the Iraq Survey Group learns on the ground," McClellan said, who was traveling with President Bush to a speech in Little Rock, Ark.

Cheney in Italy
Although the White House has insisted that illicit weapons eventually will be found in Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell recently held open the possibility that they would not.

Cheney, on a visit to Italy to thank that nation for its help in Iraq, did not mention Kay's remarks Monday in a speech to 200 government and business leaders and university students in which he urged all free nations to fight the spread of the world's most dangerous weapons.

"In all of our actions, the world's democracies must send an unmistakable message: that the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction only invites isolation and carries with it great costs," Cheney said. "Leaders who abandon the pursuit of those weapons will find an open path to far better relations with governments around the world."

Powell, in a futile bid for U.N. support for war, told the Security Council last Feb. 5 that Iraq was making prohibited arms, with a "conservative estimate" of 100 to 500 tons of chemical weapons on hand.

By this weekend, however, he had added two words, wondering aloud to reporters during a flight to Tblisi, Georgia: "What was it? One hundred tons, 500 tons or zero tons?"

But Powell said last week that while questions remained about the weapons, Saddam's intention to acquire them was not clouded.

"What he had in the way of programs to generate an inventory and what he had in the way of intentions is absolutely clear," Powell said without elaborating.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

It would be wrong to describe the US and British invasion of Iraq last March as a "humanitarian intervention," Human Rights Watchsaid in its annual report.

"The Bush administration cannot justify the war in Iraq as a humanitarian intervention, and neither can (British Prime Minister) Tony Blair," the group's executive director Kenneth Roth said Monday.

"Saddam Hussein's atrocities should certainly be punished, and his worst atrocities, such as the 1988 genocide against the Kurds, would have justified humanitarian intervention then," said Roth in the report's keynote essay.

"But such interventions should be reserved for stopping an imminent or ongoing slaughter. They shouldn't be used belatedly, to address atrocities that were ignored in the past."

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