David Kay: Bush, Blair should have known intelligence didn't show Iraqi threat: "He told Britain's ITV network that Bush and Blair ''should have been able to tell before the war that the evidence did not exist for drawing the conclusion that Iraq presented a clear, present and imminent threat on the basis of existing weapons of mass destruction. That was not something that required a war,'' he said.

"He said the leaders may not have been sufficiently critical of intelligence on Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction. ''WMD was only one and I think in their mind, not really the most important one,'' he said. ''And so the doubts about the evidence on weapons of mass destruction was not as serious to them as it seemed to be to the rest of the world.''"

"Kay said two recent reports on intelligence failures in Iraq showed that American and British information-gathering and analyzing systems were ''broken.'' ''I think they are a scathing indictment,'' he said of the reports from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee and a British commission headed by former senior civil servant Lord Butler." ... Kay said analysts were facing pressure to support the belief that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. ''Anything that showed Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction had a much higher gate to pass because if it were true, all of U.S. policy towards Iraq would have fallen asunder,'' he said in the interview.

Quite simply, this is yet another example of high level confirmation of what was well known even before the war started: that it was started for other reasons but WMDs were the pretext presented to the public.

David Kay: Bush, Blair should have known intelligence didn't show Iraqi threat: "He told Britain's ITV network that Bush and Blair ''should have been able to tell before the war that the evidence did not exist for drawing the conclusion that Iraq presented a clear, present and imminent threat on the basis of existing weapons of mass destruction. That was not something that required a war,'' he said.

"He said the leaders may not have been sufficiently critical of intelligence on Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction. ''WMD was only one and I think in their mind, not really the most important one,'' he said. ''And so the doubts about the evidence on weapons of mass destruction was not as serious to them as it seemed to be to the rest of the world.''"

"Kay said two recent reports on intelligence failures in Iraq showed that American and British information-gathering and analyzing systems were ''broken.'' ''I think they are a scathing indictment,'' he said of the reports from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee and a British commission headed by former senior civil servant Lord Butler." ... Kay said analysts were facing pressure to support the belief that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. ''Anything that showed Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction had a much higher gate to pass because if it were true, all of U.S. policy towards Iraq would have fallen asunder,'' he said in the interview.

Quite simply, this is yet another example of high level confirmation of what was well known even before the war started: that it was started for other reasons but WMDs were the pretext presented to the public.