I misjudged David Kay, the former head of the Iraqi Survey Team. Before the war he believed that Iraq had large quantities of WMDs and said so publicly. He was often at odds with the other members of the UN inspection teams.

After the invasion, there was David Kay in front of those infamous trailers talking to the TV cameras. I remember him saying, “These are the fermentation tanks used to…” as he went on to explain the purpose of each piece of hardware and its use in the process of producing WMDs.

Later when he was named to head the Iraqi Survey Team, I thought to myself, there is no way this guy is going to be objective. He will just echo the party line for the Bush Administration. I never said so publicly, and I am glad for once that I kept my mouth shut.

It’s rare for an individual of a group to speak out like he did. John Dean, during the Nixon Watergate Scandal did so but only after prosecutors were hot on his tail.

However, there are a couple of statements of David Kay that I must take exception to. The first is when he said, “We all got it wrong.” Not everybody got it wrong. Scott Ritter, a member of the UN inspection team from 1992 to 1998 got it right and so did a host of other individuals.

You also said that Iraq was more dangerous than we thought because of the instability in the years preceding tour invasion. Come on David! You heard Colin Powel’s brief at that UN. That was scary. The fact that some Iraqi Scientists briefed Saddam on proposed programs, took the allotted money, and then produced nothing. What’s so dangerous about that? So what, if Saddam was a bit delusional and spent much of his time writing novels. That is certainly better than if he was intensely focused on the defense of his country and in charge of a tightly controlled command structure.

Thank you Mr. Kay for establishing a benchmark for ground truth, that even the Bush administration has been unable to dislodge.

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