|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Colin Powell “Very Sore” About Having Made Case for Iraq Invasion Based on Faulty WMD Evidence
In his first major interview since leaving office, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed regret about his role in promoting faulty intelligence that prewar Iraq held WMD stockpiles, the London Daily Telegraph reported Saturday (see GSN, Feb. 8). “I’m very sore. I’m the one who made the television moment. I was mightily disappointed when the sourcing of it all became very suspect and everything started to fall apart,” Powell said, referring to his 2003 claims before the U.N. Security Council that Iraq possessed mobile biological weapons facilities and other WMD technology. “The problem was stockpiles. None have been found. I don’t think any will be found. There may not have been any at the time.” “It was the best judgment of the intelligence community, not something I made up. [Former U.S. President Bill] Clinton had been told the same thing,” he added. “I will forever be known as the one who made the case,” Powell said. He added that top U.S. intelligence officials screened all the information before his presentation, including evidence about Iraq’s purchase of aluminum tubes, purportedly for use in uranium enrichment centrifuges. “We sat down with a roomful of analysts. The director of central intelligence (George Tenet) — he’s essentially the referee on these occasions — sits down and says: ‘We have concluded that they’re not rocket bodies: it’s our judgment that these are for centrifuges.’ So that’s what I said, though I mentioned signs of differences of opinion. To this day, the CIA has not said that they aren’t for centrifuges,” said Powell. On the mobile biological facilities, Powell said: “I did not qualify that because they were very sure of their four sources, but the sources fell like straw men in seven months, including the famous German source (codenamed Curveball). I don’t think the CIA has disposed definitively of that either” (see GSN, July 13, 2004). When asked if intelligence officials were guilty of telling U.S. President George W. Bush what he wanted to hear, Powell replied, “I can’t say that. What I can say is that there was a little too much inferential judgment. Too much resting on assumptions and worst-case scenarios” (Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph, Feb. 26).
| ||||||||||
Back to top
