And now Powell.


Quote:

Powell: It's 'Open Question' Whether Iraq Had WMD

TBILISI (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said on Saturday it was an "open question" whether stocks of weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq (news - web sites) and conceded it was possible Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had none.


Powell made the comments one day after David Kay, the leader of the U.S. hunt for banned weapons in Iraq, stepped down and said he did not believe there were any large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons in the country.


"The open question is how many stocks they had, if any, and if they had any, where did they go. And if they didn't have any, then why wasn't that known beforehand?" Powell said to reporters as he flew to Tbilisi to attend Sunday's inauguration of Georgian President-elect Mikhail Saakashvili.


The Bush administration's central argument for going to war against Iraq last year was that Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction that could threaten the United States and its allies.


No banned arms have been found in Iraq since the United States invaded and toppled Saddam.


Kay told Reuters on Friday he did not believe the country had any large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons produced after the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites). Its nuclear activities had not resumed in any significant way, he said.


The comments dented the credibility of the administration's case for the war, which was presented most extensively by Powell at the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003.


Asked which was right -- Kay's statements or Powell's argument then that Iraq had failed to account for vast quantities of chemical weapons -- Powell replied: "I think the answer to the question is, I don't know yet.


"Last year when I made my presentation it was based on the best intelligence that we had at the time," Powell added.


"It was consistent with the views of other intelligence agencies and other governments and it was consistent with a body of reporting over the years... that there were large, unanswered questions about what they had or did not have."



Which is a flat out lie. They didn't present "large unanswered questions". They presented certainty about WMD's and that they knew where they were. It's an "Open Question" now, but in January of 2003 in front of the cameras and the UN Security Council it was an "Open and Shut" question.

Now that Powell and Kay have said No WMD's, I'm eager to see what Cheney says. It looks as if he's becoming a sort of embarassment to the Administration with his blustering assertions despite evidence coming from everywhere to the contrary.


I guess now begins the scramble to save face.

Once more, a reminder of why this is so important.

Quote:

.......To govern is to choose, almost always on the basis of very imperfect information. But preemption presupposes the ability to know things -- to know about threats with a degree of certainty not requisite for decisions less momentous than those for waging war.

Some say the war was justified even if WMD are not found nor their destruction explained, because the world is "better off" without Saddam Hussein. Of course it is better off. But unless one is prepared to postulate a U.S. right, perhaps even a duty, to militarily dismantle any tyranny -- on to Burma? -- it is unacceptable to argue that Hussein's mass graves and torture chambers suffice as retrospective justifications for preemptive war. Americans seem sanguine about the failure -- so far -- to validate the war's premise about the threat posed by Hussein's WMD, but a long-term failure would unravel much of this president's policy and rhetoric. .....

.....For the president, the missing weapons are not a political problem. Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, says Americans are happily focused on Iraqis liberated rather than WMD not found, so we "feel good about ourselves."

But unless America's foreign policy is New Age therapy to make the public feel mellow, feeling good about the consequences of an action does not obviate the need to assess the original rationale for the action.

Until WMD are found, or their absence accounted for, there is urgent explaining to be done. - George Will


Last edited by whomod; 2004-01-24 8:43 PM.