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."
OOooooohhh. Well, that's different, although do we yet know with certainty what those "mobile labs" were for?
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.
I concur with the nefarious role of such dubious sources - but I'd like to get to the bottom of the sarin shell story.
Was it a leftover from the Iraqi army ? A shell taken out of a hidden stockpile ? Was the building a hidden factory for such devices ? And if genuine, as it seems to be, who is behind the explosion ? I really hope we get answers to these few questions real quick.
Indeed. I was, and right now still am, skeptical about the WMD story. Not that I doubt Iraq had some before the Gulf War, that is much documented. A few Chem mortar or artillery shells are certainly no big deal. A large stockpile, however disseminated throughout the country, or a factory able to produce thousands, or even hundreds of such shells would be quite a different matter to me.
What baffle me here are the initial reports, that said a small quantity of Sarin had been detected. Is "a small quantity" consistent with the explosion of a 155 mm Sarin shell ? I just hope further reports will make the whole thing crystal clear.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.