Golly.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - David Kay stepped down as leader of the U.S. hunt for banned weapons in Iraq (news - web sites) on Friday and said he did not believe the country had any large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons.
In a direct challenge to the Bush administration, which says its invasion of Iraq was justified by the presence of illicit arms, Kay told Reuters in a telephone interview he had concluded there were no Iraqi stockpiles to be found.
"I don't think they existed," Kay said. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War (news - web sites), and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the '90s," he said.
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In his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Bush (news - web sites) insisted that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had actively pursued dangerous weapons programs right up to the start of the U.S. attack in March.
"Had we failed to act," Bush said, "the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day."
Who is he even trying to kid anymore?
Incidentally, regarding the oh, say, ninety seconds of the NPR interview with Dick Cheney that I caught the other day, Cheney mentioned Bill Clinton twice. Why is this significant? Because the latest shell game is trying to pass off this bullshit like it was all Clinton's idea. "We inherited the policy of regime change." ush himself mentioned it, albeit one time, in pitiful address the other night. "We inherited this from the previous administration." If this crew of idiots were to invade Cuba tomorrow and make a fucking mess of that country as well, Cheney would respond with, "Well, we inherited this policy from John Kennedy."
Talk is cheap until you act upon it assholes. Clinton's policy was not, "let's unilaterally invade Iraq against the wishes of almost the entire world, publicly degrade the UN so as to have maximum impact with right-wing zealots back home, give out no-bid contracts to Halliburton, a company that by coincidence just happens to have been run by the Vice-President....and then fuck it all up in the process.
When the U.S. loses this war, I'm sure Cheney will try the same shit and blame Clinton again, but by then no one will believe him and he'll be out of office.
Posted by mike at January 23, 2004 10:06 PM