CIA report says Iraqi chem/bio weapons programs continued into 2003

CIA weapons inspectors have found a lot more evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq than the media has been reporting.

David Kay, the CIA inspector in charge of the US probe, is widely quoted as saying that his team has found nothing in Iraq so far.

That simply is not true. Kay told Congress on October 2, “Deliberate dispersal and destruction of material and documentation related to weapons programs began pre-conflict and ran trans-to-post conflict.”

“Additional information is beginning to corroborate reporting since 1996 about human testing activities using chemical and biological substances, but progress in this area is slow given the concern of knowledgeable Iraqi personnel and their being prosecuted for crimes against humanity,” Kay told Congress. Other points:

“ISG [Iraq Survey Group] teams are uncovering significant information – including research and development of BW-applicable organisms, the involvement of Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) in possible BW activities, and deliberate concealment activities.”

“Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist’s home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.”

“New research in BW-applicabale agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemmorhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.”

Kay states that the report is only preliminary, and that much more investigation is to be done. In short: The initial evidence justifies President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq.

Kay has noted the misleading headlines in some of the nation’s major newspapers.

Like the distorted media coverage of present events in Iraq – coverage which contributes to warrantless public skepticism and defeatism – the misleading reports about what the CIA is finding in Iraq are helping the terrorist enemy.