David Kay, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector, yesterday said an independent investigation should be conducted into the flawed intelligence over Iraq’s weapons capability. Kay said the intelligence was “fundamentally flawed but was not deliberately distorted.” Kay’s call came during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The White House dismissed the idea of an independent investigation and said inspections should continue. Kay also said he did not believe that the Bush administration had pressured intelligence analysts to exaggerate the threat. But leading Democrats disagreed. Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts said “Many of us feel that the evidence so far leads only to one conclusion, that what has happened was more than a failure of intelligence; it was the result of manipulation of the intelligence to justify a decision to go to war.”