“Where are the weapons of mass destruction?” seems to be a fairly common question… “Where are the weapons of mass destruction?” seems to be a fairly common question floating around editorial pages and democratic presidential debates. The consensus seems to be that there aren’t any, and up until a few days ago, I found myself compelled to agree.

But that was before I came across this interesting little congressional testimony given by weapons inspector David Kay. The speech, delivered Oct. 2 unveils some shocking things, which have received almost no coverage in the media. The little media coverage Kay’s report did receive, at least in the New York Times and Associated Press, was some of the most irresponsible reporting I have ever seen. Barely quoting the main body of the report, they left the impression that it was an admission of failure. And that is blatantly deceptive.

At the time of the report, the Iraq Survey Group had been present in Iraq for three months and had faced repeated harassment and “overt intimidation,” suffering three major attacks in September alone.

I should mention that Kay takes time to emphasize that this is just a preliminary report and that more time will be needed to come to clear conclusions. He then goes on to describe a lengthy list of finds, all of which serve to seriously indict Iraq. As things stand now, he states, “We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002.”

He talks about “intensive concealment efforts,” which include the destruction of hard drives and burning of specific files, in laboratories and companies that were suspected of dealing in weapons of mass destruction.

They have actually found biological weapons agents in the home of a scientist – which the scientist admits to having been asked to conceal. This same scientist went on to identify another, larger stock of agents that he was asked to conceal. As of Oct. 2, the teams had not had time to uncover this second stock.

They have uncovered advanced plans for missiles that would have a range of 1000 kilometers, well beyond the 150-kilometer limit dictated by the United Nations. If completed, those weapons would have been able to reach targets all over the Middle East, including Cairo and Abu Dhabi.

Two scientists who were formerly key figures in Iraq’s biological weapons programs admitted that Iraq had worked under the guise of legitimate companies to produce systems and processes relevant to biological weapons and confessed that current legitimate processes could be altered to produce anthrax in one week.

In fact, they found mounds of evidence to suggest that, after 1996, Iraq further compartmentalized its WMD programs and that most of them operated, not under the strategy of blatantly creating weapons, but of creating a potential to create weapons that could be realized in a few weeks time, were it necessary. In 2002, Saddam was making inquiries as to just how quickly they would be able to change operations to produce chemical weapons.

Most alarming to me, however, are the records of a “high-level dialogue” between Iraq and North Korea about the purchase of arms. At their meeting in Baghdad in 2000, North Korea said that they recognized the difficulties imposed on Iraq by their U.N. regulations but would work “to cooperate with Iraq on the terms it specified.”

I’ve barely scratched the surface here. There’s stuff about Saddam never abandoning his plans to acquire nuclear weapons and all sorts of other striking revelations. You should check it out. A simple Yahoo search for Kay’s testimony will do the trick.

So, they still haven’t found actual completed weapons yet. But I don’t think these findings can be ignored. And there was that massive increase in traffic going into Syria just before the war. I think a stand-up comic characterized the situation best: “If your mom tells you that, in six months, she’s going to come into your room and look for pot, guess what? In six months there’s not going to be any pot in your room.”

The report does emphasize that Iraq was being severely frustrated by U.N. regulations. For the most part, they seemed to be working. But for how much longer? I think it’s fairly clear that Iraq had potential to become a threatening player on the world stage. But as to whether that threat could have been muffled by any other means than war, I guess we’ll never know.

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