Powell Refutes Think-Tank Report on Iraq

[cthrumatrix]

Powell Refutes Think-Tank Report on Iraq
1 hour, 44 minutes ago

By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) acknowledged Thursday that he had seen no "smoking gun, concrete evidence" of ties between Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and the al-Qaida terror network, but insisted that Iraq (news - web sites) had had dangerous weapons and needed to be disarmed by force.


At a State Department news conference, Powell disagreed with a private think tank report that maintained Iraq had not been an imminent threat to the United States. And the secretary defended the case he had made last February before the United Nations (news - web sites) for a U.S.-led war to force Saddam from power.


"My presentation ... made it clear that we had seen some links and connections to terrorist organizations over time," Powell said. "I have not seen smoking gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I think the possibility of such connections did exist and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did."

more

"It is unlikely that Iraq could have destroyed, hidden or sent out of the country the hundreds of tons of chemical and biological weapons, dozens of Scud missiles and facilities engaged in the ongoing production of chemical and biological weapons that officials claimed were present without the United States detecting some sign of this activity," said the report by Jessica T. Mathews, Joseph Cirincione and George Perkovich.

snip

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040108/ap_on_re_mi_ea/us_iraq_6

hmmm...I think you can see his nose growing.

[Ilsa]

1. Here goes:

"...but I think the possibility of such connections did exist and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did."

I think the possibility exists that Powell and the rest of this immoral POS Administration are a bunch of liars and murderers for self-promotion and greed and we should consider turning them out in November.

[papau]

23. Refute=The intelligence community isconfident of the material they gave me

The AP headline writer appears to be whoring for the GOP again.

[joeunderdog]

2. "We have found evidence of nearly 2 dozen sling shots..."

"...fully loaded water pistols and a stink bomb that could be ready to go within 30 minutes. These guys meant business," said a stoic COlin Powell.

[priller]

3. Just give it up, Colin

The UN presentation was a big stinking pile of doo doo, most of it debunked within days.

Notice how Bush also always says he based his decision on "sound intelligence", yet almost all that intel turned out to be wrong. How then was it sound?

[killbotfactory]

4. So we invaded based on "possibilities"?

What a bunch of shit!

There are no weapons. They would have used them if they had them. These people are insane.

[cthrumatrix]

6. Darn straight --- and the media goes "well...well...well" we couldn't do

anything...King George and our bosses said we had to go along with the lies that people on DU knew all along.

[mike_c]

5. ever the toadie, Colin defends his last shreds of honor....

eom

on edit: are Freepers and other republicans really dumb enough to believe this horse-hockey?

[beanball]

10. What honor?

the man is void of honor,just another lying,greedy boot licker.

[Malva Zebrina]

16. He has no shreds of honor

and probably does not care if he does or not.

Powell is simply a prop and a poster boy. He has no REAL reputation for anything at all. He is just waiting it out and I predict he will be the first to bolt out of the Bush regime if Bush is re-elected. He seems to have no shame in accepting his role as humble and black "messenger" rather than Sec'y of State.

This seems to be perfectly just fine with him, though, and in all of his photo ops he does , indeed, look most serious and look as though he has the weight of the world on his shoulders.

He actually knows he does not have any weight at all-but he accepts that because he is looking forward to his retirement soon in 2004. Powell has been playing a game here-a political game. I think he cannot wait to get out of it, and in his mind going along to get along is the way to do it. Certainly there is little thought to the condition of the country or it's citizens! That is NOT his job, Man!

I think, also, that he does not show much in the way of intellectual property, in the way, say that a General Clark does. Powell is rather inane and boring,probably his most sincere and honest postition, as intellectually he just does not have the IQ to go further. He tries hard to play the part, but actually he is rather a non person in the Bush administration. He is, in other words, a phoney putting on an act and tryin hard to look as though he is in "charge" of something, anything. Meanwhile it becomes increasingly clear that Powell is and has been used , much as our troops have been used andmuch as Bush has used Laura and Condi and others in order to bully the nation about. HE thinks that makes him look rather "smart" and that is really funny.

[damnraddem]

7. What are you going to believe:

the facts, or Administration spin? Colin argues for the latter.

But the Carnegie report got repeated play on NPR today.

[tom_paine]

8. Colon Foul has to be the most pathetic member of the Bush Cabal

So earnestly telling and retelling his lies. So willing to squander his credibility for some scraps (well, a whole lot of scraps and preferntial/aristocratic treatemnt for his offspring -- hell Michael Powell might well be the first African-Amerikan Marquis or Baron!) from his Bushevik Masters.

What is even funny is that he still stands behind the original lies while tell a half dozen more.

Of course, that is standard Impewrial Doctrine and Colon Foul is merely doing his job as Traitor to Everything America Once Stood For.

[kitkatrose]

27. Personally, I think Condi is the worst.

Powell knows he's selling a crock of shit to the American people, but Condi acts as if she believes what she spews. I really detest those two. :grr:

[el_gato]

9. his "presentation" was full of bullshit

what a chump

[NeoConsSuck]

11. If Iraq didn't have the second largest oil reserves in the world..

would Americans have been so eager to invade and "liberate"? And lose close to 500 soldiers?

The war was about liberating Iraq oilfields for the PNAC bast*rds. The problem goes a lot deeper than voting out Bush. You still have a corporate media whose idea of "Freedom of the Press" is to give the corporate slant on every news story.

I pity the Americans that lost their lives. I have more pity for the thousands of Iraqi citizens who lost their lives and loved ones. Their only crime was being born in an oil rich country.

[newyawker99]

20. Hi NeoConsSuck!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[leesa]

30. You got that right. Welcome.

[stopbush]

12. Powell the liar. So easy to prove he's lying it's pathetic.

This from the Yahoo.com article

Powell noted that Saddam obviously had, and used, destructive weapons in the late 1980s, then refused for a decade to assure the world he'd gotten rid of them.

"In terms of intention, he always had it," Powell said. Of Carnegie's finding that Iraq posed no imminent threat, Powell said: "They did not say it wasn't there."

Oh, really? How about this?:

March 17, 2003, 9:27AM
Saddam says Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction
Reuters News Service

BAGHDAD, Iraq - President Saddam Hussein said today Iraq no longer had any weapons of mass destruction.

"We are not collectors of weapons, but we had these weapons to defend ourselves when we were at war with Iran for eight years and when the Zionist entity was threatening us," Iraq's state television quoted him as telling a Tunisian envoy.

"Saddam Hussein cannot say that we don't have banned weapons if we have such weapons. I confirm here that we do not have weapons of mass destruction."

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/special/iraq/1821806

[Sagan]

13. That's not refutation.. that's misdirection

He's not answering the question. And I'm not surprised.

[louis-t]

14. sorry, but Colin Powell was the last one

with a shred of decency in this admin. That ended about a year ago when he did a 180 on Iraq and began to tow the neocon line. I wonder what made him change his mind? on edit: I am real surprised he hasn't stepped down to 'spend more time with his family'. I speculated last year that he would be out by September, 2003!

[leesa]

31. I think his role is to con the moderates into thinking there might

possibly be hope that these creatures are not the criminals and murderers they really are. He's a valuable tool to create an illusion of credibility where there is none. Everyone in the world knows he lied to the UN...they knew within days when everything was debunked, sometimes for the second or third time. This is one evil man.

[Devil Dog Dem]

15. LIAR!

What a lying SoS!

[truthisfreedom]

17. reject, refute, blast, attack, dismiss as irrelevant... bushco never uses

the real word anymore:

DENY

but in this case, on the trolley to the land of make-believe, the proper word is:

PRETEND

[hatrack]

18. How about "Powell stutters and sputters in absence of WMD"?

That would seem to sum it up more neatly!

[treepig]

19. what powell said on february 24, 2001

as quoted on the department of state website:

We will always try to consult with our friends in the region so that they are not surprised and do everything we can to explain the purpose of our responses. We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place, but we are always willing to review them to make sure that they are being carried out in a way that does not affect the Iraqi people but does affect the Iraqi regime's ambitions and the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and we had a good conversation on this issue.


http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2001/933.htm

so were you lying then, or now, mr. powell??

[GregW]

21. Headline should be: "Powell My Lai's Think-Tank Report on Iraq"

"Just move along folks ... nothing to see here".

[Guaranteed]

22. LOL- it was only prudent to start a war.

Yeah...the ULTIMATE prudence.

[young_at_heart]

24. Harry Belafonte was right about Powell

He is a "house slave" for Bush........why doesn't he realize this?

[DoYouEverWonder]

26. But I didn't know he could tap dance too?

The Carnegie report is quiet damning. He's gonna need to do a little more than tap dance to get out of this bucket of lies.

[Manix]

25. Would you buy a used car from this man?

nt

[kitkatrose]

28. No, but it seems America is. n/t

[markses]

29. I always thought a refutation was a successful

disputation. Or maybe that's just the connotation? ;-)

The headline, obviously, should read "Powell Disputes Think Tank Report on Iraq." "Refutes" suggest that his answer comprehensively dismantles the Think Tank report, where in fact his answer does nothing of the sort.