David Kay with advice on Iran

Today's Washington Post has an editorial by David Kay. You remember David Kay, right? He is the man hand-picked by Bush to lead the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which was the group in charge of the search for Iraq's WMD. And surely you remember what he said about Iraq's WMD, right? If you have forgotten, check out these previous posts: Search for WMD is officially over and The DIA and chemical weapons. If you do not want to read those posts, I will sum up Kay's conclusions: there were no WMD.

The title of his editorial is "Let's Not Make the Same Mistakes in Iran." Kay sees strong similarities between what is going on with Iran now and what happened regarding Iraq and the claims of WMD from the Bush administration:

Vice President Cheney is giving interviews and speeches that paint a stark picture of a soon-to-be-nuclear-armed Iran and declaring that this is something the Bush administration will not tolerate. Iranian exiles are providing the press and governments with a steady stream of new "evidence" concerning Iran's nuclear weapons activities. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has warned that Iran will not be allowed to use the cover of civilian nuclear power to acquire nuclear weapons, but says an attack on Iran is "not on the agenda at this point." U.S. allies, while saying they share the concern over Iran's nuclear ambitions, remain determined to pursue diplomacy and say they cannot conceive of any circumstance that would lead them to use military force. And the press is beginning to uncover U.S. moves that seem designed to lay the basis for military action against Iran.

Kay says that there are five steps that must be taken in order to avoid the mistakes that were made in buliding the case that Iraq had WMD. The first step is to accept the fact that Iran has been concealing nuclear activity and "craft a set of tools and transparency measures that so tie Iran's nuclear activities to the larger world of peaceful nuclear activities that any attempt to push ahead on the weapons front would be detectable and very disruptive for Iran." Kay also says that this objective "is reachable." I am not going to purport to speak for Kay, but it sure seems to me that while he is giving advice regarding Iran, he is also saying that a similar approach should have been used in Iraq. Such an interpretation would serve as an indictment of the Bush administration's actions reagarding Iraq, but maybe Kay does not intend such meaning.

The second step is to

acknowledge that dissidents and exiles have their own agenda -- regime change -- and that before being accepted as truth any "evidence" they might supply concerning Iran's nuclear program must be tested and confirmed by other sources. And those other sources should not be, as they often were in the case of Iraq, simply other exiles, or the same information being recycled among intelligence agencies.

(emphasis added). Now this presents better evidence that Kay is also delivering an indictment of the Iraq policy.

The third step is acknowledge the limitations of IAEA (Internation Atomic Energy Agency from the U.N.) inspections, but at the same time appreciate what the IAEA has uncovered and use that information to design inspections that can uncover any other weapons-related activities. Gee--what a concept. You mean weapons inspections can actually produce results so that war is not necessary?

The fourth step gets back to the indictment of the Iraq policy:

Fourth, understand that overheated rhetoric from policymakers and senior administration officials, unsupported by evidence that can stand international scrutiny, undermines the ability of the United State to halt Iran's nuclear activities. Having gone to the Security Council on the basis of flawed evidence to "prove" Iraq's WMD activities, it only invites derision to cite unsubstantiated exile reports to "prove" that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

Regardless of Kay's intention, this describes just what Bush did in regard to Iraq.

And the description of the fifth step does the same thing:

Fifth, a National Intelligence Estimate as to Iran's nuclear activities should not be a rushed and cooked document used to justify the threat of military action. Now is the time for serious analysis that genuinely tries to pull together all the evidence and analytical skills of the vast U.S. intelligence community to reach the best possible judgment on the status of that program and the gaps in our knowledge. That assessment should not be led by a team that is trying to prove a case for its boss. Now is the time to reach outside the secret brotherhood and pull in respected outsiders to lead the assessment.

(emphasis added). Be careful, Dr. Kay. Bush, Rumskull, Wolfowitz, and Condi are going to tell everyone that you are a back-stabbing freedon-hater like Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke.