Call it a day and move on

USA TODAY
By Jim Prince and Kerry Candaele

Following the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq in March, the Bush administration’s ever-confident search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has been like watching a balloon slowly lose its air.

Now the release of weapons inspector David Kay’s Iraq Survey Group report to Congress last week has popped that balloon. Like the U.S. military and United Nations inspectors, who, combined have spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars in the same search, Kay’s group reported that it found no operable WMD stocks. The White House should acknowledge that fact and move on to the much more important business at hand: Iraq’s reconstruction.

Instead, President Bush is throwing money at a question for which we already have an answer. Everyone knows that Saddam Hussein was a genocidal thug. Everyone knows that he was obsessed with possessing unconventional weapons of all kinds. Everyone knows that at one time he possessed a WMD program. And we also now know 00 again thanks to Kay and his 1,400 member team 00 that Saddam was not an imminent threat with WMD at the time of war. In fact, there is not much of an upside to continuing this search, unless the gambit is for domestic political consumption alone. Spending $600 million to keep Kay in business for another nine months looks more and more like a desperate attempt to keep a lame horse on a track for one last election year lap. With his approval rating falling like hard rain on a flat rock, Bush and his men and women of eternal confidence might be hoping for an “October surprise,” a cheap political gift to the American people for all of their time and money.

Are there some better ways to use that cash? Why not use the $600 million proposed for the continuing WMD search to help get the lights and water permanently turned on in Baghdad? Or better yet, use the funds to find out why our intelligence services have been so inept at gathering what they are paid to gather, namely, reliable information on WMD, who has them and when and how they might be used. And perhaps we can even save a few dollars for refurbishing a tired school or two at home.

Now, that would be money well spent.

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