y had fooled him into believing in non-existent weapons. My experience, and the character of day to day life in Iraq, indicate just the opposite. We at the MOST have been trying to put 8000 scientists and engineers back to work without their Baathist enforcers and “project managers.” It has been a Herculean task. While the scientific knowledge of the individuals is intact, actually managing complex programs is well beyond the reach of these people.
To assert that the scientists bypassed the Baathist infrastructure, the Iraqi Intelligence Service, and Special Republican Guard commanders, all the while fooling Saddam is, to put it mildly, a real stretch. To this day, many still fear the consequences of cooperating with the ISG. We would need to see the detailed rationale for Dr. Kay’s conclusions on this matter to gauge if Saddam was really fooled by scientists scared to death of him and the Baath Party, or if he ran one of military history’s most successful deception operations. If he did the latter, we must also ask why he would risk the toppling of his regime, and his death or capture, over non-existent WMDs. The only alternative explanation to these two questionable scenarios is that WMD stockpiles did in fact exist, but that they have been hidden, and/or spirited out of the country.
Dr. Kay and the ISG have already proven that Iraq was in violation of several UN resolutions. Their findings include, among others, that Iraq was involved in manufacturing of the biotoxin Ricin “right up to the end,” the restarting of Saddam’s nuclear program, and the development of BW “seed” agents, such as botulinum, that could be used to regenerate stockpiles of BW agents once UN sanctions were lifted.
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