Powell makes case against Iraq today
Posted on 02/05/2003 1:36:08 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Powell makes case against Iraq today
Secretary's speech to defend U.S. talk of war before a skeptical U.N.
02/05/2003
NEW YORK - Colin Powell, secretary of state, becomes Colin Powell, prosecutor, on Wednesday, arguing to world diplomats that war may be necessary to curb Saddam Hussein's ambitions for chemical and biological weapons.
He may well face a hung jury.
On the eve of Mr. Powell's globally televised presentation to the U.N. Security Council, French President Jacques Chirac again called for giving U.N. weapons inspectors more time before going to war. Germany, Russia and China have also challenged the Bush administration's threats to remove the Iraqi dictator.
Mr. Hussein, meanwhile, in a rare television interview, denied the allegations that Mr. Powell plans to lodge against him: that Iraq is hiding chemical and biological weapons and has ties to terrorists who could conceivably deliver them.
Mr. Powell also plans to argue that Mr. Hussein is violating a United Nations resolution by working to hide illegal weapons from U.N. inspectors, aides said. He is expected to cite telephone intercepts and surveillance photographs in urging the council to support the possible use of force if Mr. Hussein refuses to disclose his weapons stockpiles.
"The U.S. seeks Iraq's peaceful disarmament," Mr. Powell wrote this week in The Wall Street Journal. "But we will not shrink from war if that is the only way to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction."
Hussein speaks out
Mr. Hussein, giving his first Western television interview in a decade, said that U.N. inspectors have found no illegal weapons in Iraq.
"It is in our interests to help them reach the truth," Mr. Hussein said to a retired British lawmaker conducting the interview. "The question is whether the other side wants to reach the truth or whether it wants to find a pretext for aggression."
Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, meanwhile, warning that it's "five minutes to midnight," disputed Mr. Hussein's claim of cooperation and urged Iraq to change its ways or face attack.
"I don't think that the end is there, that a date has been set for an armed action," Dr. Blix said. "But I think that we're moving closer and closer to it, and therefore it seems to me that the Iraqi leadership must be well aware of that."
Dr. Blix's report to the Security Council last week, criticizing what he called Iraq's refusal to accept disarmament, set the stage for Mr. Powell's presentation Wednesday.
The secretary's 90-minute talk is expected to feature slide shows and satellite photographs, but its impact may be strictly theatrical; even if the U.N. Security Council balks at a new resolution setting a firm deadline for Iraqi compliance, President Bush may go ahead, as he is busy assembling a "coalition of the willing" to take action.
Mr. Powell is also spending time in New York speaking with U.N. representatives of the other 14 Security Council members, each of whom is expected to respond to his speech.
Burden of proof
As Mr. Powell honed his remarks, Bush administration officials said the burden of proof, as defined by the resolution the Security Council approved in November, is on Mr. Hussein to prove that he has disarmed.
Not only has he refused to do so, officials said, but his government has worked actively to deceive the inspectors who were sent back into Iraq under the U.N. resolution. Aides said Mr. Powell's evidence includes surveillance photos and telephone intercepts that show Iraqi officials conspiring to move equipment to evade the inspectors.
Mr. Powell will further argue that this is a continuation of Iraq's conduct since the end of the Gulf War, aides said, which led to the collapse of an initial inspection system in 1998. He plans to emphasize that Mr. Hussein has failed to account for weapons he was known to have in the 1990s, including anthrax and nerve gas.
Ties to terrorism
Mr. Powell is also expected to discuss links between the Hussein government and terrorists who could serve as couriers for weapons of mass destruction. Aides said that includes al-Qaeda, the network that planned the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Bush aides believe Iraq has given aid to Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish fundamentalist group that has been accused of sheltering al-Qaeda warriors after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
Mr. Hussein denied any terrorist links, telling his interviewer: "If we had a relationship with al-Qaeda, and we believed in that relationship, we wouldn't be ashamed to admit it." Officials in other countries scoff at the notion of cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaeda, noting that the latter consists of Islamic fundamentalists while Mr. Hussein is secular.
Mr. Powell may also argue that Mr. Hussein continues to be interested in developing nuclear weapons, though last week's U.N. inspection report said there is no evidence the Iraqi leader has revived his nuke program.
While American officials said Mr. Powell will make a powerful case, some analysts said he may be hurt by the fact that so much of his evidence is based on secret intelligence. Such information is often vague, and U.S. spy agencies don't want to say too much about it so as not to tip off Iraq about sources and methods.
"In general, it's hard to make the sort of case one expects in a court of law using intelligence information," said Bruce Berkowitz, a senior analyst at RAND. "Intelligence information by its nature is almost always inconclusive."
'Much to be done'
U.S officials believe they have the authority to go into Iraq now, based on what they see as its violation of the U.N. disarmament resolution. Other nations want a second Security Council resolution giving Iraq a hard and fast deadline. President Bush said he doesn't object to a second resolution, as long as it does not delay the matter for months.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, America's most vocal ally in the confrontation with Iraq, is pushing for a second resolution, but appeared to make little headway after a meeting with Mr. Chirac, the French president.
"There is still much to be done in the way of disarmament by peaceful means," Mr. Chirac said.
Mr. Powell's speech may be the most watched performance of an American diplomat since 1962, when U.N. ambassador Adlai Stevenson showed satellite photos of Soviet missile installations in Cuba.
Expect no such smoking guns this time, aides said. Instead, Mr. Powell will try to make what they called a step-by-step case that Iraq has spent more than a decade flouting U.N. demands that it disarm.
"I think that anybody with an open mind and open ears and open eyes will see that the Iraqis are failing to comply with the U.N. resolution," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
Analysts said there would likely be things for both supporters and opponents of war to latch on to.
"Whether it's overwhelming or whether it falls short will largely lie in the eye of the beholder," said James Lindsay, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "People will see what they want to see."
E-mail djackson@dallasnews.com
He may well face a hung jury.
David Jackson, your Bush-hate and bias is showing again ! Give 'em heck, Colin ! Both barrels.
From another thread...
The White House has been regularly receiving the NSA transcripts ever since the inspectors returned to Iraq late last year. The damning nature of some of the transcripts, officials said, explain President Bush’s occasional outbursts of anger at the Iraqis, as well as the willingness by Powell—who had previously cautioned against war—to lay out a damning picture of Iraqi noncompliance in next week’s speech. One official who had dinner with Powell recently said the secretary remarked how “we have a stronger case than many people realize.”
FOX News: Powell Lays Out Case Against Saddam
I thought I'd link it to this article too. Colin really did a great job, didn't he !?
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