Leadership Quote by David Kay

What’s doing the real work here isn’t evidence; it’s reassurance. David Kay wraps uncertainty in the language of institutional competence: “survey group,” “great leader,” “utmost confidence.” As a scientist speaking in a politically radioactive moment (Kay led the Iraq Survey Group hunting for weapons of mass destruction), he leans on credibility as a substitute for deliverables. The public wants a clean verdict. He offers process.

The repeated “I think” is a tell. It reads like verbal hedging, but it’s also an attempt to sound measured - the posture of someone who knows the limits of what can be proven. Yet that carefulness gets rerouted into an endorsement of leadership, not findings. Charlie Duelfer becomes the proxy for certainty: trust the man, and you can tolerate the messier reality that the data may not cohere into the answer everyone’s waiting for.

The phrase “as full an answer as you can possibly get” is especially strategic. It quietly lowers expectations while sounding maximal. It doesn’t promise the “full answer,” only the fullest answer available - a preemptive defense against the inevitable accusation that the truth was missed, buried, or spun. In a scientific register, this would be a humble nod to limitations; in a public-facing, post-invasion context, it functions as reputation management.

Kay is signaling: don’t read gaps as incompetence or bad faith. Read them as the boundary of the knowable - and let institutional authority stand where certainty can’t.