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Powell Disappointed by Iraq Intelligence
Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the Bush administration did not learn of doubts on intelligence about prewar Iraq’s weapons programs prior to the March 2003 invasion, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 16). Powell told the BBC he was “deeply disappointed in what the intelligence community had presented to me and to the rest of us.” “What really upset me more than anything else was that there were people in the intelligence community that had doubts about some of this sourcing, but those doubts never surfaced to us,” he added. “What we were right about is that [former Iraqi leader] Saddam Hussein had the intention of having such weapons. What we got wrong was the actual existence of stockpiles of chemical weapons or biological weapons,” Powell said. “As we looked into it further we found that some of the sources for the information ... were not accurate and they should not have been believed,” he said. Powell said he was displeased “when I started to receive word from the intelligence community that said ‘Oops, this source was not good. But we still have three other sources,’ and then suddenly the three other sources turned out not to be good” (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Dec. 18). In a speech last night, President George W. Bush also conceded that the intelligence used to partly justify the war was faulty. “Our coalition confronted a regime that defied United Nations Security Council resolutions, violated a cease-fire agreement, sponsored terrorism, and possessed, we believed, weapons of mass destruction,” the president said. “After the swift fall of Baghdad, we found mass graves filled by a dictator, we found some capacity to restart programs to produce weapons of mass destruction, but we did not find those weapons.” He continued: “It is true that Saddam Hussein had a history of pursuing and using weapons of mass destruction. It is true that he systematically concealed those programs, and blocked the work of U.N. weapons inspectors. It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. And as your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq” (White House release, Dec. 18).
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