BOTH Tony Blair and Jack Straw yesterday quoted David Kay, the former head of the US team searching for Iraq’s weapons, as being in support of the case for war.

Are they right to do so? Certainly, Kay has said some passionate things in support of the war. But his evidence to the Senate Armed Services Committee contradicts itself on at least two central points, as senators pointed out.

In fact, Kay’s testimony illustrates the problems that he is discussing. Like much intelligence, it is vivid and anecdotal, but it has caveats attached and is impossible to summarise neatly, vulnerable to selective quotation and open to different interpretations.

There is no question that Kay says many things in support of the war. Most fervently, when asked outright by Senator John McCain, a Republican, if he backed it, despite the failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD), he replied: “Absolutely.”

He offers one reason that is entirely clear cut:

Breaches of UN resolutions

UN inspectors and Kay’s Iraq Survey Group found “hundreds” of violations of UN resolutions — activities that were either banned or that should have been reported. Kay’s team, interviewing Iraqis after the war, heard “testimony that not only did they not tell the UN about this, they were instructed not to do it”.

Fine; that is a clear breach of UN rules. A case for war on that basis would be supported by Kay’s evidence. But then his views become more tangled, on two main issues.

Contradiction 1: Saddam was bluffing v Saddam was deceived.

Did Saddam know he had no WMD? Kay answers yes and no.

On the one hand — and it is one of his most dramatic assertions — Kay says that Saddam was losing control of his regime from 1998 onwards. He was misled by corrupt officials into believing that there was heavy investment in weapons, when they were in fact siphoning off money for themselves.

Some chemical weapons in a tanker were also destroyed in a traffic accident soon after the 1991 war, Kay suggests, but no one dared tell Saddam.

But Kay also argues, inconsistently, that Saddam knew he had no WMD — yet wanted to bluff. “Saddam wanted to enjoy the benefit of having (WMD) without having to pay the cost. He did not want to appear to the rest of the Arab world as having caved in to the US and the UN”.

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