Iraq Survey Found NO Nuclear Threat

The Washington Post is reporting this morning that David Kay’s Iraq Survey Group found–contrary to what Kay said in public or told the US Congress– that “it is now clear [Saddam] had no active program to build a weapon, produce its key material;s or obtain the technology he needed for either.”
Read that great piece. And read my commentary on it in the next post beneath this one.

15 thoughts on “Iraq Survey Found NO Nuclear Threat”

  4. This is the first story:
    http://www2.observer.com/observer/pages/frontpage4.asp
    crux:
    “…after spending four of the past six months talking to Iraqis, I do feel that it is relatively safe to make the following five points:
    One, most Iraqis do not want America to leave now or very soon. Two, while it is true that a huge proportion of Iraqis have at least some very negative opinions about the war and life here since, it is also true that a huge proportion of those opinions boil down to anger at the Americans for not being enough of a presence here, not anger at the Americans for being too much of a presence. Three, there is very little to support the notion that Iraqis would be, or feel, notably better off under United Nations occupation than under a United States

  5. The first article is from April, the second is Ms. Durkin’s most recent piece. I find it notable just how sharply her perception of Iraqi public opinion has shifted in the space of six months, certainly not in the direction one might suppose.

  6. Alex, thanks for the URLs. It worked this time.
    I enjoyed reading the pieces. You can see Durkin agonizing how to put together a very complex story in both of them. Good for her, having been there for four of the past six months. (I’m hoping to get there early next year, when I can arrange it.)
    One big problem, for her and her readers, is evidently that she doesn’t know Arabic and has to rely on translators. (Her cultural illiteracy is so deep that she even thinks ghee is some form of “vegetable oil”… ) This has many consequences. It considerably limits her ability to get around and get and/or interpret most dimensions of the story. And it almost immediately labels her, in the eyes of many Iraqis, as the sort of gringa drop-by whose very presence in their country is made possible only by the presence of the occupation forces. So how much are Iraqis–with their own wealth of traumatic memories of what happens to those who displease the “power” at hand– going to risk possible punishment by the occupiers by voicing critical sentiments to their protegee? It’s actually pretty notable that under these circumstances, Iraqis say as much to her that is critical of the US as they do.
    I’m not saying that none of her perceptions or reporting is accurate. Just that there is an almost inevitable skew factor there that thoughtful readers need to be aware of.
    Personally I think it’s wiser to rely on either the deeply informed (if still mediated) interpretation of Iraqi developments put out by someone like Juan Cole who really understands the country and its culture very deeply, or the unmediated views of Iraqi bloggers and other writers, themselves.

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