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David Kay is Not Your Friend
by Selwynn
How much has my respect for David Kay increased since his “candid” statements that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq nor were there “large stockpiles” of such weapons prior to the US invasion? None at all.
Pay careful attention to the fact that David Kay’s statements of criticism are all designed to shift the focus of scrutiny onto the Intelligence community. Pay careful attention also, to the fact that the Bush Administration has been actively supportive of Kay both prior to and after his comments. There have been no attempts to discredit Kay, or downplay his claims. In fact today, Bush had lunch with Kay right after Bush called for an “independent investigation.”
So why has the Bush Administration remained so chummy with its former Chief Weapons Inspector after he so publicly put the final nail in the coffin of the weapons of mass destruction-war justification lie? Because David Kay has been, and continues to be, a loyal ally of the President and his time in the media spotlight serves one tactical purpose: deflect responsibility and criticism from the White House.
George Bush called for an independent investigation. Was it an investigation of his administration, the defense department, the state department or the White House, you might ask? Of course not. Instead, Bush called for an independent investigation of everyone’s favorite scapegoat – the intelligence community.
There is no defensive response from the White House towards the statements of David Kay because David Kay is not a threat. David Kay is doing the bidding of the White House. The Bush administration has the stinking corpse of its lies about the reasons we invaded Iraq hanging around its neck. It is not possible just to ignore the rotting mess. Bush’s attempts to parse words and make rationalizations have not removed the dead weight. There is only one possible solution: find someone else to blame.
Along comes David Kay acknowledges the rotting corpse – but places it instead around the necks of the CIA. Suddenly every major media outlet is speaking of an “intelligence” failure, rather than an Administration failure. All attention is diverted from the White House. It’s not the President’s fault – he was tricked. Mission Accomplished.
Unfortunately, in the long run placing the entirety of the blame on the intelligence community will be a bit of a tough sell. For one thing, alert individuals following American politics know very well that there have been discordant opinions on the veracity of claims about weapons of mass destruction form inside the intelligence community since long before in invasion. For another thing, it is not true that all the intelligence agencies of the world were misled; in fact intelligence from many of the countries who opposed the invasion starkly contrasted our own intelligence claims.
And then there is the now classic example of deceptive justifications for war – the Nigeria claim included in Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address. We know for fact that the CIA expressed reservation and concern about the legitimacy of this intelligence, and strongly advised the White House to take that into account. It did not.
Perhaps more damning still, is the fact that we now know, in part thanks to revelations from the nineteen thousand pages of documents that came along for the ride with former treasury secretary Paul O’Neil, that an invasion of Iraq had been a top priority of this Administration since long before September 11th, 2001. “Find me a way to do it” was the statement of George Bush concerning plans for an Iraq invasion made almost immediately after his was sworn in.
It is ridiculous and offensive (to those of us who pay attention) to have the administration now attempting to act as though they were “bullied” into action by those big meanies at the CIA. The Bush Administration started with their conclusion first – we will invade Iraq – and then set about putting pressure on others to find the “evidence” that would support such action. Coming back to the American people and attempting to use the mouthpiece of David Kay to divert blame to the intelligence community is the latch ditch effort of an Administration which has utterly blown its foreign policy to hell in a hand basket. Big time.
And they have no one to blame but themselves for their mess.
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