The State of the Union address is long enough without having to wait through a decidedly Republican standing-ovation after each of Bush's phrases. I expected the chest-beating and the gloating; Bush was, after all, delivering a 2004 campaign speech. What I didn't expect was the mention of the Kay Report.
Some in this chamber, and in our country, did not support the liberation of Iraq. Objections to war often come from principled motives. But let us be candid about the consequences of leaving Saddam in power. We are seeking all the facts already the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations. Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day.
State of the Union address transcript at CNN
The Kay Report did not validate the Bush administration's claims that Iraq possesses (or recently possessed) WMDs. If anything, the report showed that U.N. sanctions and earlier weapons inspections kept Saddam from developing any new weapons of mass destruction.
President Bush has insisted that the report proves Saddam "was a danger to the world" and thus vindicates the war. Secretary of State Colin Powell chimed in that the Kay report left him "even more convinced … that we did the right thing."
These statements were mustered to counter criticisms from Democratic senators who, upon reading the report, proclaimed that it proves only that Bush had no basis for whipping up prewar fears of an imminent Iraqi danger.
A close reading of the actual, unclassified report—which Kay delivered as testimony on Oct. 2 to a panel of several congressional committees—reveals not only that Bush's critics are closer to the mark, but something much more significant: that Saddam wanted and, in some cases, tried to resurrect the weapons programs that he had built in the 1980s, but that the United Nations sanctions and inspections prevented him from doing so.
The Iraq Sanctions Worked
And other revelations from David Kay's report.
By Fred Kaplan