Flutterby™! : David Kay on WMD

Since you're undoubtedly getting it through filters of varying biases (including mine), you should go read for yourself David Kay's Statement on the Interim Progress on the Activities of the Iraq Survey Group. So, through my filter: Lots of use of "potential" and "could" and "committed to", no evidence of Colin Powell's statement of "... on the order of a thousand tons" which I'd think might occupy a little more space than what Kay claims to be looking for when he says:

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;

I also have to wonder about:

When Saddam had asked a senior military official in either 2001 or 2002 how long it would take to produce new chemical agent and weapons, he told ISG that after he consulted with CW experts in OMI he responded it would take six months for mustard. Another senior Iraqi chemical weapons expert in responding to a request in mid-2002 from Uday Husayn for CW for the Fedayeen Saddam estimated that it would take two months to produce mustard and two years for Sarin.

How long did it take Aum Shinrikio to produce Sarin (and they dabbled in botulin, anthrax, cholera, and others)? Ho long would it take your average high school chemistry department to produce mustard gas? Hell, given a grape vineyard in the off-season (they grow mustard on 'em) I can make a paste that'll reduce a human to blisters and agony with little more equipment than two rocks. (Something my dad discovered by accident when he attempted to scrimp and create a home-made mustard plaster for sore muscles...)

However, for all of my cynicism, neither extreme should take solace in this report. There are remotely piloted vehicles that clearly violate the 150km limit, there was live botulism toxin; even if violations of the letter of the U.N. sanctions have been minor the spirit was clearly trampled. And they're only a few percent through hundreds of square miles of outposts and buildings, not to mention thousands of reams of documents, many of which have been intentionally destroyed.

But while the potential for all of those offensive weapons we were told exist is indeed there, this report makes clear that inspections were working and the sanctions were having an effect. And the current difficulties faced by U.S. forces in Iraq are also a good reminder that for all that we'd like to separate the government from its citizens, governments do not exist without some level of consent from the governed; no matter what the military victories it'll be a huge social change to have the effect on the culture that the administration is now using as its fallback position.

And if enlightenment of the populace is our reason for invasion, we've got a whole lot of countries left to invade. In my mind, South Carolina and Kansas have not yet been removed from that list.