The Big Lie Being Prepared

David Kay, neo-con and one of the strongest supporters of the war, will argue that Iraq was building dual-use systems to eventually produce banned weapons.

The sources say Kay -- who has in the past hinted in general terms at Iraq's deception in hiding a weapons program -- will build a strong, but largely circumstantial case that Hussein dispersed his weapons programs.

Joseph Cirincione, a nonproliferation specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said the argument over going to combat "was whether the threat was so imminent and dangerous that we had to go to war. If Kay says there was potential there, that refutes the administration's rationale for going to war. No one ever argued there was nothing there."

Cirincione and others said the potential to build weapons was a problem that "inspections could deal with," including the Bush administration's attempts in 2001 to tighten the Iraq sanctions to stop the flow of more dual-use equipment.

Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector who is a major critic of the Bush administration, said resting the case heavily on dual-use equipment is not compelling because any modern state would have such equipment. "Iraq is a modern, industrial state, or was, that needs access to technology to survive. A lot of that technology is dual-use in nature."