Posted on 05/17/2004 5:33:58 AM PDT by JohnGalt
WASHINGTON, May 16 — Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said for the first time on Sunday that he now believes that the Central Intelligence Agency was deliberately misled about evidence that Saddam Hussein was developing unconventional weapons.
He also said, in his comments on the NBC News program "Meet the Press," that he regrets citing evidence that Iraq had mobile biological laboratories in his presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003.
The assertion about the mobile labs was one of the most dramatic pieces of the presentation, which was intended to make public the Bush administration's best case for invading Iraq. For days before his speech, Mr. Powell sat in a conference room at the C.I.A., examining the sources for each charge he planned to make.
But on Sunday, Mr. Powell argued that the C.I.A. itself was misled, and that in turn he was, too. "Unfortunately, that multiple sourcing over time has turned out not to be accurate," Mr. Powell said, going farther than he did on April 2 when he conceded that the intelligence was not "that solid."
On Sunday, Mr. Powell hinted at widespread reports of fabrications by an engineer who provided much of the most critical information about the labs. Intelligence officials have since found that the engineer was linked to the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group that was pressing President Bush to unseat Mr. Hussein.
"It turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading," Mr. Powell said in the interview, broadcast from Jordan. "And for that, I am disappointed and I regret it."
That was a sharp contrast to comments four months ago by Vice President Dick Cheney, who said the administration still believed that the trailers were part of a program of unconventional weapons, and added that he "would deem that conclusive evidence" that Mr. Hussein in fact had such programs.
Taken with past admissions of error by the administration or its intelligence agencies, Mr. Powell's statement on Sunday leaves little room for the administration to argue that Mr. Hussein's stockpiles of unconventional weapons posed any real and imminent threat.
"Basically, Powell now believes that the Iraqis had chemical weapons, and that was it," said an official close to him. "And he is out there publicly saying this now because he doesn't want a legacy as the man who made up stories to provide the president with cover to go to war."
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.
See tagline.
The VP and his office let Chalabi in the frontdoor, thats why.
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.
"Why is it our VP says one thing and the SoS says the opposite?Is Powell positioning himself for a different role somewhere else?"
It looks like the VP is positioning himself for a new role - outside government.
At this point, all I can think is that the Bush admin has concluded that until the election, Afghan/Iraq is all the nation will tolerate; and while we REALLY need to clean out Syria and Iran, there just isn't the public support there, even if we "discover" WMDs in Syria (courtesy of Saddam). It is a political reality.
Consider this: in 1942 we already had solid information that the Nazis were killing thousands of Jews in a systematic way. Imagine that the papers then were like they are now: in 1944, we go into France and Belgium . . . but no death camps; and in early 1945 we get into parts of Germany . . . but no murder camps. The public is saying, "Where are the camps?" In fact, most of the killing camps were not in the U.S. zone at all, but in the east, the Russian zone. Now, that didn't mean the camps didn't exist. It just meant they were in a zone other than where we thought we'd find them.
Good points. I agree.
The question of the missing WMDs has nothing to do with this article, but has much to do with those who let the Chalabi led INC subvert established intelligence gathering institutions in act of supreme anti-patriotism that some dare call treason.
Chalabi and the INC should be thrown to the wolves if what Powell is saying is true.
Was it really that consensual ? I remember the European press that echoed their respective governments was quite skeptical at that time, and I'm quite surprised every time it's said everybody thought he had mobile labs and hidden WMDs, etc.
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.
Will we discover Iraqi WMDs in Syria, I really wonder. I really can't shake the feeling it's downright strange Saddam didn't use them as a bargaining tool to gain asylum in another country.
Well, the cold and hard fact is, getting rid of Saddam was a perfectly valid political objective, WMDs or no WMDs. The hard part now is to organize some solid Iraqi power so as to not wake up in a few months and discover Al-Sadr or any other local tinpot dictator has established himself as a new Saddam.
When the only one in the room with eyes says the green room is brown, it's brown indeed....
Of course, where the WMDs went will be a mystery. My point is that there were too many different INTEL agencies---all of which did not rely on the same sources, and some of which (Israel and Iran) completely at odds with each other---all saying the same thing. Lincoln said you can't fool all the people all the time . . . so the WMDs were there.
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