WMDs the final word?

[Chris Alger]

In his NPR interview yesterday, David Kay was asked the following question about Con Coughlin's alleged quotation by him in the Telegraph and gave the following answer.

Q: "You told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper that you do believe that some weapons materials may have been moved to Syria. What can you tell us about that?"

Kay: "I think that's a compressed [laughter] view of what I said. What I said is there's ample evidence of movement to Syria, uh, before the war. I mean there's satellite photography, there are reports on the ground, of a constant stream of trucks, cars, rail traffic across the border. We simply don't know what was moved. And that's an important area for which continued work has to be done. Although I must say there's very little you can do in Iraq to determine what was moved, the real answers to that are in Syria. And the Syrian government has shown absolutely no interest in helping us resolve this issue."

In other words, prior to the bombing, people unsurprisingly fled. It is therefore conceivable that something Kay is looking for went with them, but he can't say if there's any evidence of this other than "movement" of people and vehicles. He offers nothing about weapons, weapons components, weapons program-related components, or any of the other increasingly distant threat words the White House now uses to justify the war.

Three things are interesting here:

1. Con Coughlin's reputation as an unscrupulous shill for the war is unabated. After reporting huge Iraqi demonstrations in support of the war that no other journalist ever sees, after reporting secret documents linking Iraq to al Qaeda that not even the U.S. government sees, and now a "compressed" (i.e., overly specific) "quote" from Kay. Small wonder that Coughlin doesn't report even the nature of the evidence he claims Kay disclosed. (Coughlin's boss Conrad Black, BTW, also publisher of the Israeli propaganda tabloid The Jerusalem Post, is being sued for looting $200 million from the Candian holding company while it's directors looked the other way. One of the directors is Iraq war architect Richard Perle).

2. Ariel Sharon claimed back in December 2002 that "We are certain that Iraq has recently moved chemical or biological weapons into Syria." So why hasn't the leading recipient of U.S. aid refused to disclose to the CIA's chief weapons inspector even the slightest evidence for the alleged certainty? Why doesn't Bush castigate Israel by saying "we give it $5 billion of taxpayer money every year and Israel won't even give us a clue about what went to Syria, even though lack of WMD is undermining my credibility and Israel is 'certain' of its proof?" Because it's transparent nonsense.

3. Kay's last comment about Syria's refusal to cooperate is a telling indicator of how U.S. policy actually undermines efforts to curtail terror and the spread of WMD. I think it was Nicky that posted some excellent stuff about Syria's early cooperation with the U.S. in tracking down al Qaeda members. This budding relationship, however, was terminated by the White House in order to maintain a constant state of hostility toward Syria. Syria was also the sponser of a UN resolution to verifiably ban all WMD's from the Middle East. The U.S., of course, opposed this, meaning that it died on the vine, because it would also apply to Israeli nukes which threaten the entire region.

These bits of innuendo about Syria are nothing more than scraps of red meat the right occasionally throws to race warriors like you to support bloodbaths in more Arab countries, as you evidently hope for, "after the election."