Powell Says Knowing True Iraqi WMD Capability Might Have Affected War Decision

In an interview with the Washington Post yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he did not know if he would have recommended the invasion of Iraq if he had known that it did not possess stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, Feb. 2).

Powell continued to defend the invasion, saying former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had the intent to acquire weapons of mass destruction. He also said, though, that the U.S. assessment that Iraq possessed such weapons made the threat more urgent.

When asked if he would have recommended the invasion knowing Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, Powell said, “I don’t know, because it was the stockpile that presented the final little piece that made it more of a real and present danger and threat to the region and to the world.”

“[The] absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus; it changes the answer you get,” Powell said.

Even though weapons of mass destruction have not been found in Iraq, the invasion has improved international security, Powell said.

“Saddam Hussein and his regime clearly had the intent — they never lost it —an intent that manifested itself many years ago when they actually used such horrible weapons against their enemies in Iran and against their own people,” he said.

Powell also said that while former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay has said that international sanctions severely constrained Hussein’s WMD ambitions, international support for such sanctions would have ultimately weakened.

“I think that the international community wouldn’t have kept them constrained,” Powell said. “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if Iraq had gotten free of the constraints and if we had gone through another year of desultory action on the part of the United Nations and when they were freed without threat … they would have gone to the next level and reproduced these weapons,” he said (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, Feb. 3).

Meanwhile, Kay briefed U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday on his analysis of the failures of prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Kay said that he and Bush met for 90 minutes and discussed his tenure as overseer of the Iraq Survey Group. Kay also said that they did not talk about the planned commission to investigate U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts and that he was not asked to be a member.

“The mandate, I hope, will be to look at what happened in Iraq, and why there were differences between the estimates and the reality,” said Kay. “And more broadly, why the system failed and what can be done to fix the problems,” he said.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that a schedule for the commission had not yet been set.

“In terms of the timeline, I would just stress that it is important that the commission’s work is done in a way that it doesn’t become embroiled in partisan politics,” he said.

In a letter to Bush, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), along with other top Democrats, called on Bush to allow congressional leaders to appoint the members of the commission.

“One of the major questions … is whether senior administration officials, including members of the Cabinet and senior White House officials, misled the Congress and the public about the nature of the threat from Iraq,” the letter says. “Even some of your own statements and those of Vice President (Dick) Cheney need independent scrutiny. A commission appointed and controlled by the White House will not have the independence or credibility necessary to investigate these issues,” it adds (Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 3).

In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Tony Blair confirmed today that an investigation would be conducted into prewar British intelligence on Iraq, according to CNN.com.

“It is right that we have a look at the intelligence that we received and whether it is accurate or not,” Blair said. “I simply say that whatever is discovered as a result of that inquiry, I do not accept it was wrong to remove Saddam Hussein and that the world is not a better or safer place,” he added (CNN.com, Feb. 3).

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the British Parliament today that the inquiry would report on its findings this summer, ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections. The inquiry will hear from witnesses in private and will investigate the accuracy of prewar British intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, he said.

Blair also rejected continued calls from opposition lawmakers for an investigation into the political decisions made to join the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

“We do not in my view need an inquiry into the political decision to go to war,” he said (Peacock/Baldwin, Reuters, Feb. 3).

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