The Many Ways to Slice a Kay

Paul Craddick (whose blog is very handsomely designed, by the way) focuses on David Kay's statements with respect to Syria in a post that is very much worth reading. Parsing various sources, he concludes the following to be the nuanced opinion that Kay has found it difficult to convey through professionally conducted interviews:

To sum up my impression: "WMD-related stuff probably went to Syria, but we don't know exactly what; it would be good to pursue the matter further, but we can't; since we're focusing on what we can establish at least somewhat definitively, this one will most likely have to be filed under 'intriguing and unresolvable'."

That's the sense that I've gotten, although I would emphasize something that Paul addresses: we don't know what, in all this, abuts classified information. In other words, the view that Kay is presenting for public consumption is inherently broad.

But turning back toward the media, Paul's post reminded me of something that I've neglected to point out in any of my writing on this topic. To see the mechanics of the distortion of Kay's message, consider this exchange from an interview with Tom Brokaw:

TB: Intelligence report says ... "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with range in excess of U.N. restrictions. If left unchecked it probably will have a nuclear weapon within this decade."

DK: Well, I think it’s got elements that we have certainly seen are true. The area that it’s probably more seriously wrong in is in the nuclear area.

TB: But as you know, the vice president and, to a lesser degree, the president of the United States, raised the nuclear threat as a reason that the United States had to go to war against Iraq.

DK: I think the weight of the evidence — was not great.

If you watch the video (which isn't working for me just now), you'll see that Kay's tone and body language were sending quite a different message than the words suggest of themselves. So much is this true that it's obvious that MSNBC edited the video a split second before Kay was able to say "but." Unfortunately, the original interview is currently locked away in the network's vaults, so it's unlikely we'll never know what degree of "not great" he meant.

Posted by Justin Katz at January 31, 2004 10:12 AM
News Media