I commend the Tribune for the masterful editorial Jan. 30 on David Kay’s recent reports on Iraq, intelligence and weapons of mass destruction.
Your reasoned review of the implications of retrospective evaluations of U.S. and other intelligence for our Iraq intervention was excellent.
Quite properly you pointed out that Kay denied that the administration pressured intelligence analysts and that we have as often underestimated as overestimated threats.
You also pointed out that President Bill Clinton and French President Jacques Chirac joined President Bush in declaring pre-invasion Iraq a major threat, as now does Kay.
This excellent editorial was in striking contrast to Georgie Anne Geyer’s tendentious column of the same day on the Commentary page.
In that column she draws entirely different conclusions from Kay’s statements than the Tribune and closes with her usual attack on a “small special-interest group” within the administration that forced us into war. She continues to deny the reality of an administration that acted on now admittedly flawed intelligence in a post-Sept. 11 environment, in which it seemed prudent not to discount threats to U.S. citizens posed by rogue states with proven intention and capability to commit mass murder.
