Powell points the finger at the INC Treason Lobby...
Last week, the CANADIAN PM said Iraq had WMDs;
A month ago the head of the Israeli military said Saddam had WMDs (though not in the quantities we thought);
NATO, the UN, Spain, Russia, Britain, Australia, Denmark, Poland, not to mention the CIA all thought Iraq had WMDs; and
about a month ago the IRANIANS came out and said we would "find" WMDs in Iraq---of course, the Iranians said we would "plant" them, but this indicates to me that Iran knows they were there.
Now, given that EVERY DAMN COUNTRY IN THE WORLD said they were there, were they ALL misled by one engineer? Even Iraq's Muslim buddies the Iranians? Don't the Israelis, the Russians, NATO, and the CIA have different sources? When everyone in the room says the wall is brown, the chances are that it's brown.
Powell is either in denial or he is operating against his own administration or there's some scheme afoot to distance the administration from WMDs.
This has been a difficult period for Pres. Bush's team.
Chalabi and the INC should be thrown to the wolves if what Powell is saying is true.
Don't you love the phrasing? They still try to frame it that President Bush was directing a crafting of a lie for "cover" to go to war.
What pumpkin heads.
Gee ..doesnt that kinda make it "their" fault for being "mislead" since they are the "spy" agency
that is responsible for not being duped.....
But Mr. Powell knew that......
Let's play pin the tail on the CIA
imo
I should have known you'd post this.
#1. I'm so glad you weren't around in WWII.
#2. Without going back to re-read the transcript, I don't think that Powell said that someone "deliberately" lied.
#3. I know how you'll respond - you are the only true conservative, anyone who supports the war is a traitor, etc. It never changes.
#4. Every country in the world thought Saddam had a WMD program.
#5. Powell has never retracted that satellite photos show convoys of trucks leaving Iraq going to Syria.
#6. The chemicals found in Jordan's thwarted WMD attack last month are believed to come from Syria via Iraq.
#7. How many minds have you changed this year? One, maybe?
#8. We didn't go to war based just on WMD. We also went because of Saddam's long standing relationship with Osama bin Laden, a relationship that goes back over a decade.
#9. Saddam at least knew 9/11 was coming but you probably believe ole OBL was just gossiping with Saddam when he warned him.
Less than two months before 9/11/01, the state-controlled Iraqi newspaper “Al-Nasiriya” carried a column headlined, “American, an Obsession called Osama Bin Ladin.” (July 21, 2001)
In the piece, Baath Party writer Naeem Abd Muhalhal predicted that bin Laden would attack the US “with the seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House.”
The same state-approved column also insisted that bin Laden “will strike America on the arm that is already hurting,” and that the US “will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs” – an apparent reference to the Sinatra classic, “New York, New York”.
10. Other links between Saddam and Osama Bin Laden can be found here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1127451/posts
11. Saddam could have avoided all this if he'd only been more cooperative with the UN.
12. Powell has never retracted this:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said his pre-war testimony to the U.N. Security Council about Iraq's alleged mobile, biological weapons labs was based on information that appears not to be "solid."
Powell's speech before the Security Council on February, 5, 2003 --detailing possible weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- was a major event in the Bush administration's effort to justify a war and win international support.
Powell said Friday his testimony about Iraq and mobile biological weapons labs was based on the best intelligence available, but "now it appears not to be the case that it was that solid," Powell said.
The following are the key points of Powell's February 5 testimony to the U.N. Security Council:
Recorded conversations: Powell played what he said was a tape of a colonel and brigadier general of Iraq's elite Republican Guard discussing hiding a vehicle before U.N. inspectors arrived to search a site.
Powell said the conversation indicated the Iraqi officials knew inspectors were coming and what they would be looking for. One official is heard to say: "We have this modified vehicle. What do we say if one of them sees it?" The other official says: "I'll come to see you in the morning. I'm worried. You all have something left."
The other official then says: "We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left."
Powell said this indicates the Iraqis hid or destroyed banned materials. He said the vehicle came from a company "well known to have been involved in prohibited weapons systems activity."
Satellite images of "active chemical munitions bunkers": Powell then showed satellite photos that he said indicated the presence of "active chemical munitions bunkers" disguised from inspectors.
The first photo showed was from a weapons munitions facility, which Powell said was one of 65 such facilities in Iraq. He said the photo contained "sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions," including a decontamination truck and special security.
Powell showed later photos from the same facility that he said showed the bunkers had been "sanitized" before U.N. inspectors arrived. He also showed satellite photos he said indicated that earth was moved and graded to hide evidence at a chemical production site called Al-Musayyib.
Scientists banned from interviews: Powell said Saddam had personally barred Iraqi scientists from participating in interviews with U.N. inspectors and forced them "to sign documents acknowledging that divulging information is punishable by death."
"The regime only allows interviews with inspectors in the presence of an Iraqi official, a minder," Powell said.
"The official Iraqi organization charged with facilitating inspections announced, announced publicly and announced ominously that, 'Nobody is ready to leave Iraq to be interviewed.' "
He said this was a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, which requires Iraq to abandon its alleged weapons of mass destruction programs and disarm.
Mobile biological weapons labs: Calling the discovery "most worrisome," Powell said U.S. intelligence indicated Iraq had production facilities for biological weapons "on wheels and on rails."
"The trucks and train cars are easily moved and are designed to evade detection by inspectors," Powell said. "In a matter of months, they can produce a quantity of biological poison equal to the entire amount that Iraq claimed to have produced in the years prior to the Gulf War."
Powell said the evidence included firsthand accounts from four sources -- among them, an Iraqi chemical engineer who supervised one of the facilities and an Iraqi civil engineer "in a position to know the details of the program."
Nerve gas unaccounted for: Powell said Iraq failed to account for its stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons, including four tons of the nerve gas VX. He said a single drop of VX can kill a human being.
"We have evidence these weapons existed," Powell said. "What we don't have is evidence from Iraq that they have been destroyed or where they are."
He said Iraq denied it had ever weaponized VX, and that U.N. inspectors had presented information on January 27, 2003 that conflicts with the Iraqi account of its VX program.
Nuclear efforts continue: "We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program," Powell told the council. "On the contrary, we have more than a decade of proof that he remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons."
Powell said Iraq had continued efforts to develop nuclear weapons and missiles capable of striking targets at a distance of up to 1,200 kilometers (745 miles).
He said Saddam has "a cadre of nuclear scientists with the expertise, and he has a bomb design," but lacks the fissile material needed for a nuclear explosion.
Powell said that in an effort to develop fissile material, Saddam "has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries, even after inspections resumed."
Powell said Iraq had "no business" obtaining such tubes, even if they were for use in conventional rocket programs as Iraq and some experts have claimed.
Links to terrorism: Powell asserted that Iraq has had high-level, long-standing contacts with the al Qaeda terrorist network. He said al Qaeda fugitives from Afghanistan have found safe haven in northern Iraq and al Qaeda associates are operating in Baghdad.
Powell also said an al Qaeda fugitive linked to the October killing of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Jordan has found "safe haven" in Iraq and has plotted attacks in Europe.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/04/03/powell.iraq/
How incredibly frightening. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't that why we have a CIA? Aren't they the ones that are not supposed to get fooled by anyone? Has our intelligence machinery become so decrepit that they have taken to listening to unreliable sources as their sole means of gathering information?
Just more evidence that competence left Washington in 1988 and has not been seen since.
I wish they'd just shut up about this. Why does Powell go so far in statements like these?? The administration just keeps making it worse, like with this Abu Gharub POW scandal. Shut up already! It's obvious Saddam Hussein's Iraq was not innocent of WMD charges as they've found programs and evidence that they were in fact in violation. That right there should say enough. But getting to the WMD-the whole world lied and misled then and I'm sick of the President and administration taking this charge that it led us to war on a lie when there is so much hypocrisy all around that discredits such a claim. And the WMD we'd be looking for would be complicated to find in the first place and easy to bury under sand or in a house someplace. I'm sick of this insanity. Here's yet another story on it.
Since Colin Powell himself made that rather dramatic presentation at the U.N. holding up a small vial of white powder representing anthrax, I think some intrepid reporter ought to pin him down on where he believes the source of the deadly anthrax was that killed several people in the wake of 9/11, an event now conveniently forgotten by most people. This is after all still an unresolved issue the last time I checked.
Remember, this is an NY Times article. Powell was probably misquoted at the very least.
Newsmax's first page has a streamer with this..
"...Powell said that he had cited intelligence that had been “deliberately” falsified in an effort to win public approval for the war."
Wonder what that's all about.