February 1, 2004

Ex-Arms Inspector Now in Center of a Political Maelstrom New York Times - David A. Kay, the arms inspector who changed his mind about the existence of unconventional weapons in Iraq, is perplexed by all the fuss he has caused. The weapons are simply not there, he says; it is empirical. The actual transcript of what was said at the Senate Armed Services Committee is here. Allow me to quote a few choice statements, you probably won't see in the mainstream media: "Let me be absolutely clear about it -- Iraq was in clear and material violation of 1441. They maintained programs and activities, and they certainly had the intentions at a point to resume their program. So there was a lot they wanted to hide because it showed what they were doing that was illegal. I hope we find even more evidence of that."   "Clearly they were in violation not having declared (the 47 chemical rockets found in January)  and turned them over. But there was no evidence that the warheads themselves had ever been filled. But they were in violation of 1441. They possessed those, and they should have declared them and allowed the U.N. to destroy them." and: "Well, in interviewing the Republican Guard generals and Special Republican Guard generals and asking about their capabilities and having them, the assurance was, they didn't personally have them and hadn't seen them. But the units on their right or left had them. And as you worked your way around the circle, those defending Baghdad, which is the immediate area of concern, you got this very strange phenomena of, "No, I don't have them. I haven't seen them. But look to my right and left." This was an intentional ambiguity." 9:12:41 PM

MyDoom Knocks Down SCO Web Site Reuters - The MyDoom Internet worm on Sunday knocked down the Web site of a small software company by bombarding it with a flood of data as Microsoft Corp. prepared for a similar, planned attack by the virus-like program this week. The SCO Group Inc., a software company that has drawn the ire of Linux advocates for trying to collect license fees for the freely available software system, confirmed MyDoom had knocked its Web site, http://www.sco.com, out of commission. "Internet traffic began building momentum on Saturday evening and by midnight Eastern Time the SCO Web site was flooded with requests beyond its capacity," SCO said in a statement. SCO said it expected the attack to persist and was putting in measures to deal with the threat. 8:57:59 PM