THE FALL PRODUCT LINE

Meanwhile, Saddam's secrets rise from the desert: New revelations from the man leading the WMD survey team show that Saddam gave the order to fire his deadly weapons. Con Coughlin assesses the meaning of this little-acknowledged breakthrough (Con Coughlin, 17/08/2003, Daily Telegraph)

[I]f Dr Kay's recent predictions about uncovering the secrets of Saddam's various weapons of mass destruction programmes prove to be correct, then the painstakinginvestigation currently being undertaken by Lord Hutton into whether the British Government exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam would be rendered irrelevant.

Certainly many of the discoveries now being made by the survey team would come as no surprise to Dr Kelly who, irrespective of the doubts he expressed about the Iraqis' ability to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of Saddam giving the order, was under no illusion about the wider threat posed by the Iraqi leader's clandestine programmes.

Indeed, the reason that Susan Watts, Newsnight's science editor, and other BBC reporters such as Andrew Gilligan were in contact with Dr Kelly in the first place was that, because of the work he had undertaken as a member of Dr Kay's United Nations weapons teams in Iraq in the 1990s, he was well-acquainted with all aspects of Saddam's weapons programmes.

As Miss Watts made clear in her evidence to Lord Hutton last week, Dr Kelly "thought very definitely that there were [Iraqi] weapons programmes and that if there were to be any evidence of this, it might well be a lengthy process to find that evidence and a process of putting together pieces of information, and that that process was really only beginning".

The fundamental purpose of the work now being carried out by Dr Kay's survey team in Iraq is to complete the process to which Dr Kelly was referring, namely to bring to a close the painstaking weapons inspection process that was launched following the 1991 Gulf war - in which Dr Kelly played an important role but which, because of Saddam's various attempts to obstruct the process, was never completed.

Despite having to work in onerous conditions, Dr Kay and his inspection teams remain confident that they will be able to provide convincing evidence of Saddam's illegal weapons programmes.

When asked during a recent interview with the American NBC television network whether he would find evidence on Saddam's biological, nuclear and chemical weapons programmes, Dr Kay replied: "I think we will have a very strong case on all of those. I think we'll have a strong case on missiles as well."

Past performance may be no guarantee of future success, but it would hardly be surprising if Democrats (and Labourites) soon find that T. S. Eliot was wrong and September is the cruelest month. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 19, 2003 12:18 AM