Much has been made lately of former UN weapons inspector David Kay’s WMD remarks. Saturday, Kay said post-Gulf War Iraqi WMD may never have existed, leading many to call for an apology from President Bush for misleading the American people. Strangely, a day later, The Telegraph reported Kay as saying Iraqi WMD might have been shipped to Syria prior to the Iraq war. Kay distanced himself from that conclusion.
Charges of misquoting and strained conclusions aside, Kay’s latest words about the existence of Iraqi WMD may be the most important of all.
“We were all wrong,” he told a Senate hearing.
Which brings up an interesting question for the “Bush lied” crowd: Is it possible to lie without knowing the falsity of a certain declaration? I submit to you that the answer must be a declarative “no.” For if not, we’re resting on the absurd assumption that all people at all times must always know with 100 percent certitude the truthfulness of their statements. How God-like.
Therefore, the problem does not rest on whether or not Bush misled us to war–the morality of liberation aside–but rather on a very large and noticeable intelligence gap. And not only are we afflicted with the gap disease, intelligence agencies the world over seem to have caught it as well.
Short of any worldwide conspiracy theories, the problem of Iraqi WMD remains one we still need to get to the bottom of. Instead of accusing President Bush of something in which he took no part (read: intelligence gathering), we must ask why our intelligence was wrong. Furthermore, why did numerous other nations agree? Maybe an even better question to be asked is how he managed to fool just about everyone.
Once we get those answers we can then decide what happened as far as the Iraq war goes. But for now, the “Bush lied” argument makes absolutely no sense and should be shunned.