Good God, I can't believe you people.
Go back, one more time, and read the report. The unclassified version. Who knows what information was in the classified one.
Kay's conclusions, from this preliminary report:
1. Saddam, at least as judged by those scientists and other insiders who worked in his military-industrial programs, had not given up his aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Even those senior officials we have interviewed who claim no direct knowledge of any on-going prohibited activities readily acknowledge that Saddam intended to resume these programs whenever the external restrictions were removed. Several of these officials acknowledge receiving inquiries since 2000 from Saddam or his sons about how long it would take to either restart CW production or make available chemical weapons.
2. In the delivery systems area there were already well advanced, but undeclared, on-going activities that, if OIF had not intervened, would have resulted in the production of missiles with ranges at least up to 1000 km, well in excess of the UN permitted range of 150 km. These missile activities were supported by a serious clandestine procurement program about which we have much still to learn.
3. In the chemical and biological weapons area we have confidence that there were at a minimum clandestine on-going research and development activities that were embedded in the Iraqi Intelligence Service. While we have much yet to learn about the exact work programs and capabilities of these activities, it is already apparent that these undeclared activities would have at a minimum facilitated chemical and biological weapons activities and provided a technically trained cadre.
Or to put it in simpler terms, even if there was no WMD arsenal ready to go, Saddam had every intention of developing them at his earliest opportunity, and he deliberately hid from the U.N. equipment, personnel, and materials dedicated to this purpose. Just in case some of us have forgotten, the latter is a blatant and specific violation of Resolution 1441 and defiance of the U.N. inspection process. Anybody remember Resolution 1441?
Kaplan is nuts. I'm not surprised it took him this long to manage to twist what he read in Kay's report into "nothing to see here, folks. Go home." Oh, yeah, and we should have kept the sanctions on for the next ten years, too. Remember? The ones the Left insisted were killing kids by the truckload?
Remember that the sanctions weren't working. The people Saddam wanted to thrive were doing just fine. Also remember that the U.N. did not find any of what Kay has found. And wouldn't have.
If Kaplan thinks that we would have been better off leaving Saddam and Sons in place--with a proven and documented ambition for WMD--for the next thirty years while Blix and his boys earned their pensions buzzing around Iraq in their SUVs trying to outthink Saddam, why doesn't he just say so.