Mr. Kay's Report

Sunday, October 5, 2003; Page B06

THE INTERIM REPORT of David Kay, leader of the hunt for Iraq's weapons, strongly suggests that important parts of the case made by President Bush and his aides before the war were wrong.

The administration said that Iraq had reconstituted a nuclear weapons program, and Mr. Bush said that Saddam Hussein might have a bomb within a year. But Mr. Kay said Thursday that what he has learned so far points to "tentative but quite frankly rudimentary efforts . . . it's not substantial at all."

The administration maintained that Iraq was still producing deadly chemical agents such as mustard, sarin and VX. Mr. Kay reported that "multiple sources" have told his 1,200-member team "that Iraq did not have a large, centrally-controlled chemical weapons program after 1991."

In the dozen summary pages of his report made public, Mr. Kay emphasized that after three months of work his conclusions are preliminary and that he may yet find chemical or biological munitions. Yet already enough is known to conclude that both the president and the nation's intelligence community must be accountable for misstating, or being mistaken about, the extent of the Iraqi threat.

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KEY QUOTE:

"Mr. Kay's report suggests that Mr. Tenet, and the president, would be better off admitting their mistakes and cooperating in the attempt to discover what went wrong."

For a frame of reference here, the Washington Post supported going to war