Democrats are doing their best to score political points from CIA weapons inspector David Kay’s statements that he doesn’t believe Iraq had WMD stores—despite Kay’s own cautions that the issue was a failure of intelligence, not a deliberate attempt to mislead: Kay: Lack of Iraqi WMD Requires Review.

“I don’t think they exist,” David Kay said Sunday. “The fact that we found so far the weapons do not exist — we’ve got to deal with that difference and understand why.”

Kay’s remarks on National Public Radio reignited criticism from Democrats, who ignored his cautions that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction was “not a political issue.”

“It’s an issue of the capabilities of one’s intelligence service to collect valid, truthful information,” Kay said. Asked whether President Bush owed the nation an explanation for the gap between his warnings and Kay’s findings, Kay said: “I actually think the intelligence community owes the president, rather than the president owing the American people.”

The CIA would not comment Sunday on Kay’s remarks, although one intelligence official pointed out that Kay himself had predicted last year that his search would turn up banned weapons.