Soccer Dad

Gellman vs. Kay Round2

Yesterday's Daily Pundit linked to the Washington Post article that "Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper" Specifically:

The remnants of Iraq's biological, chemical and missile infrastructures were riven by internal strife, bled by schemes for personal gain and handicapped by deceit up and down lines of command. The broad picture emerging from the investigation to date suggests that, whatever its desire, Iraq did not possess the wherewithal to build a forbidden armory on anything like the scale it had before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Dailypundit comments:

This endless, overwritten chunk of indigistible "investigative reporting" from the ... journalists at WaPo misses the point entirely. Of course, since that is what it is designed to do.

The worry about WMD in Saddam's hands was not that he had huge stores of same, but that he had some, and that he might supply al-Qaeda or another terror organization with the means to wreak havoc in the US or elsewhere. Absolutely nothing in this rambling, badly sourced pile of slanted speculations does anything to shake the strong probability that Saddam did, indeed, retain such capability. We weren't worried about Saddam having ten tons of anthrax. We were worried about him giving one pound of anthrax to an al-Qaeda cell operating in New York City or Washington, D.C. We weren't worried about Saddam having ten thousand gallons of VX nerve gas. We were worried about him giving a gallon of VX to an al-Qaeda suicide cell operating in the NYC subway system.

What's interesting is that an earlier article concluding that Saddam didn't really have any WMD was rebutted by David Kay. I'm skeptical of Gellman's claims, not least because of his regular references to "unauthorized interviews." The fact that the Post - and Gellman specifically - was previously rebuffed by Kay (though it didn't treat Kay's response with much respect) calls into question its integrity. Is Gellman right or is he lashing out at Kay? I have to at least suspect the latter.

Posted by SoccerDad at January 8, 2004 12:36 PM