Friday, August 20, 2004
When all else fails, speculate
Since they couldn't find WMD in Iraq, the CIA is now just going to make shit up:
Having failed to find banned weapons in Iraq, the CIA is preparing a final report on its search that will speculate on what the deposed regime's capabilities might have looked like years from now if left unchecked, according to congressional and intelligence officials.
The CIA plans for the report, due next month, to project as far as 2008 what Iraq might have achieved in its illegal weapons programs if the United States had not invaded the country last year, the officials said.
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David Kay, who led the [Iraq Survey] group before resigning in January, said that speculating on Iraq's future capabilities was never part of the team's mission.
"Absolutely not," Kay said in a telephone interview Thursday. "We were to search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. No one ever suggested to me in any of the discussions before I took the job, afterward, or even when I left, that [assessing Iraq's future capabilities] was a thing that should have been done."
Kay and others also questioned how such an assessment would be possible given the disarray that characterized President Saddam Hussein's government in recent years and external events that had altered the flow of illicit weapons technologies around the world.
Keep in mind also that this speculative assessment is being done after the US already invaded Iraq. So this can't be used as justification for their invasion, because the report is being written after the fact. But don't think that'll stop them from trying.
posted by chris at 2:15 PM
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