It is quite staggering how every time the weapons inspector David Kay makes a statement he is immediately misreported. As the Telegraph reported yesterday, Mr Kay, who has just resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said 'he did not believe there were stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. David Kay, who resigned after a fruitless eight-month search as head of the 1400-strong Iraq Survey Group (ISG), also said he did not believe Saddam Hussein had produced weapons of mass destruction on a large scale in the 1990s - since the first Gulf War.'

But this was immediately taken to mean that he had said Saddam never had any WMD at all. The Independent yesterday headlined its story: 'Saddam's WMD never existed, says chief American arms inspector'. Well no, he didn't. Robin Cook, that dispassionate observer, said: 'It is becoming really rather undignified for the Prime Minister to continue to insist that he was right all along when everybody can now see he was wrong, when even the head of the Iraq Survey Group has said he was wrong.' Well, no he hasn't. BBC Radio Four's World this Weekend pursued the same line with Environment Secretary and government trusty Margaret Beckett, who quite rightly pointed out that Mr Kay had said he didn't think 'large scale weapons stockpiles' existed after 1991, a very different matter, and that not just Britain and the US but the UN and every country in the world had thought Saddam still had the ongoing capability to make these weapons and still intended to do so.

Now today's Sunday Telegraph reports Mr Kay as saying some of Saddam's WMD has been hidden in Syria.He said:

' "We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved." '

Whether Saddam had large stockpiles or not is beside the point. How much anthrax or smallpox virus or VX nerve gas does it take to kill very large numbers of people, for heaven's sake? He was considered to be a threat because he was thought to be continuing to produce the damn things, period. As for having hidden them in Syria, this was suggested at the start of the war by Israeli intelligence and subsequently by others. It is entirely plausible. What is not plausible is that he secretly destroyed the WMD he was known to have possessed -- because he had used it -- while refusing to tell the UN he had done so, thus inviting the nemesis which ultimately descended.

David Kay said in his interim report he had uncovered a network of clandestine biological warfare programmes which Saddam had gone to huge efforts to keep secret. This report too was promptly misrepresented as an admission that he had drawn a blank. Such wilful misreporting by our anti-war media and politicians is the product of ruthless and vicious bias. Expect much more of the same as we become engulfed this week by Hutton hysteria.

Posted by melanie at January 25, 2004