Powell: Arms Doubts Might Have Affected View on War

[Sticky]

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 3, 2004; Page A01


Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday that he does not know whether he would have recommended an invasion of Iraq if he had been told it had no stockpiles of banned weapons, even as he offered a broad defense of the Bush administration's decision to go to war.
Even without possessing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein intended to acquire them and tried to maintain the capability of producing them in case international sanctions were lifted, Powell said in an interview. But he conceded that the administration's conviction that Hussein already had such weapons had made the case for war more urgent.

Asked if he would have recommended an invasion knowing Iraq had no prohibited weapons, Powell replied: "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." He said the "absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus; it changes the answer you get."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6995-2004Feb2.html

[SlavesandBulldozers]

1. or, in this case

the answer you'll never get.