In his latest column, Jack Kelly has damned himself as a liar. There isn't any question that Kelly's claims in the column are untrue, and it is nearly impossible to believe that Kelly doesn't know it.

Beginning with Kerry hedging his bets on the WMDs in Iraq issue, Kelly strings together unnamed sources, allegations without evidence, theories and suspicions in his column to "prove" that Iraq had chemical or biological weapons, and spirited them to Syria before the US invasion. He wraps things up with a quote that is an absolute lie, and then tells his readers that the liberal media is concealing the evidence of WMDs for political reasons:

"New evidence out of Iraq suggests that the U.S. effort to track down Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction is having better success than is being reported," Mr. Timmerman said. "In virtually every case - chemical, biological, nuclear, and ballistic missiles - the U.S. has found the weapons and the programs that the Iraqi dictator successfully concealed for 12 years from U.N. weapons inspectors."

[. . . ]

These developments have received little attention from the major media, perhaps because they are unhelpful to Democratic prospects in the fall. But what if the Jordanian attack had succeeded? What if the target had been Chicago instead of Amman? Some things are more important than domestic politics

What Kelly is banking on his readers not knowing is that an unimpeachable expert, David Kay--the man hand-picked by the Bush administration, and who was absolutely convinced before and for months after the war that illegal weapons existed in Iraq--has clearly stated that such weapons did not exist in the years before the invasion. in fact, David Kay very publicly said that there should be an investigation into how the government has so badly misjudged the question. A few weeks before he was appointed to replace Kay on the US team hunting WMDs, Charles Duelfer said this on The Newshour:

The prospect of finding chemical weapons, biological weapons is close to nil at this point. They're talking to a lot of Iraqi scientists, anyone who has known where they are, they've spoken to. They've had every incentive to show them where they are and they have come up with nothing.

[. . .}

Bear in mind, compared to the inspectors when we were in Iraq, they've had access to all the country, access to all the scientists and military people; they've been offering rewards for people to turn in people.

There has been every incentive in the world for the Iraqi people and the Iraqi scientists to come forward and say this is where the weapons are. That hasn't happened.

Jack Kelly does quote Dulfer, but he never bothers to tell you that Dulfer himself doesn't believe that there never were any biological or chemical weapons to find.

The fact is, Kelly is trying to justify a war that has taken more than 700 lives and cost well over $200 billion. As a cheerleader for this war from the beginning, he shares responsibility with all of those inside and outside the government that deceived the American people about the threat Iraq posed. Now to protect the remaining shreds of his reputation, he continues to lie in the pages of The Blade hoping no one will notice that he has long left the shores of responsible journalism behind.
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