|
WAS COLIN POWELL PREPARED TO LIE TO THE UN?
Colin Powell’s Credibility Gap
21-July-2003
Surprise, surprise! Out of the blue, and in remarkably synchronized unity, the American media has awakened from a deep sleep to discover that the President of the United States lied to the nation in his State of the Union Speech. The pundits suddenly are astounded by what alternative sources on the Internet have known for months: documents proving uranium purchases by Iraq were known forgeries.
At the same time, and again in lock-step, the media was quick to reassure us that Secretary of State Colin Powell was nowhere as dishonorable as his superiors. The press repeatedly stated that Powell had refused to use the Niger document in his presentation to the U.N. because of what Condoleeza Rice described as long-standing concerns about its credibility.
The obvious conclusion was that Powell had too much integrity to present information to the UN that he knew to be bogus. After all, while the President might have been ‘misled’ by intelligence sources, the rest of the damning evidence against Saddam Hussein was totally credible, because Colin Powell is an honorable man. But, that’s not exactly what happened. Not by a long shot.
Speech #1: On February 6th, 2003, one week after the SOTU, Colin Powell made his dramatic presentation to the UN. The speech outlined the imminent danger we and the world faced from Saddam Hussein. After insisting on the existence of huge stockpiles of horrific chemical and biological weapons, Powell turned his attention to Iraq’s nuclear weapon capability.
Part seven of the presentation, was titled Nuclear Weapons. Here, Powell made no attempt to minimize the nuclear capability alluded to by George Bush in his ominous warning about the uranium purchase in Niger. In fact, in this segment Colin Powell used the word “nuclear’ TWENTY TWO times!
Among the chilling statements made by Powell are the following:
We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program. We have more than a decade of proof that he remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons. Saddam Hussein already possesses two out of the three key components needed to build a nuclear bomb. Since 1998, his efforts to reconstitute his nuclear program have been focused on acquiring the third and last component, sufficient fissile material to produce a nuclear explosion. Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb.
Next, came grave warnings about high specification aluminum tubes that would be used in centrifuges for enriching uranium. The nexus was clear, and the nation shuddered.
Enter, the Spoilers: On March 7th, 2003 Colin Powell, once again, came before the Security Council to prove to the world that an immediate war against Iraq was the only way to deal with Saddam Hussein! His speech was to follow reports by Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix and Mohammed El Baradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEI).
Dr. Blix spoke first. He informed the Council that substantial disarmament was taking place in Iraq, and asked for more time for inspections. Then it was Dr. Baradei’s turn. The cameras in the chamber captured Colin Powell’s growing concern as Dr, Baradei stated the following:
Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded with the concurrence of outside experts that these documents which formed the basis for the report of recent uranium transaction between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded. There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuge out of the aluminum tubes in question. Iraq's use of 81 mm aluminum tubes was for reverse engineering of imported rockets, not for use in centrifuges to enrich uranium
Dr, Baradei, in a hushed chamber, concluded with these words:
Speech #2 – the Ad Lib: Those who watched Colin Powell prepare to speak after Mohammed El Baradei rested his case, saw a very distressed man. They also saw an angry man. What they probably also were looking at was a worried man.
When it was time for Colin Powell to address the Security Council, he brusquely pushed his prepared speech aside, and made it clear he was about to speak sans notes or references. It was also evident that he could not use the speech after the revelations that had just been made.
Is there the remotest possibility that the Secretary of State of the United States had actually come before the Security Council without extensive documentation to make his case? Is it in any way plausible that Colin Powell would speak extemporaneously when making plea to embroil the nations of the world in a major war? Or, is it not far more reasonable to believe that everything that Colin Powell was about to say to the members of the SC had been totally discredited and nullified by the men who spoke before him?
And so, by lack of options, Colin Powell did not, once again repeat the allegations that supported the lies and distortions that had been repeated over and over by the President and others in his administration up to the time of and including the SOTU speech.
He then spoke to the Council in generalities, and he spoke in anticipated clichés. There was not an iota of evidence presented to support any previous accusations about the “imminent threat" posed by Saddam Hussein. Instead, Colin Powell, in his practiced eloquence, chose to ignore the conclusions of the inspectors. He continued to stress that Saddam Hussein was in no way in compliance with Resolution 1441, and closed with words that would soon be understood by people the world over: Colin Powell, carefully and dramatically, told the world:
The clock continues to tick and the consequences of Saddam Hussein's continued refusal to disarm will be very, very real. And so they were.
Editor - TvNewsLies.org - 21-July-2003
Warnings on WMD 'Fabricator' Were Ignored, Ex-CIA Aide Says - In late January 2003, as Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to argue the Bush administration's case against Iraq at the United Nations, veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller sat down with a classified draft of Powell's speech to look for errors. He found a whopper: a claim about mobile biological labs built by Iraq for germ warfare. - Drumheller instantly recognized the source, an Iraqi defector suspected of being mentally unstable and a liar. The CIA officer took his pen, he recounted in an interview, and crossed out the whole paragraph. - A few days later, the lines were back in the speech. Powell stood before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 and said: "We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails." Now Powell Tells Us - On Monday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told me that he and his department's top experts never believed that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, but that the President followed the misleading advice of Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA in making the claim. Now he tells us. - The harsh truth is that this President cherry-picked the intelligence data in making his case for invading Iraq and deliberately kept the public in the dark as to the countervailing analysis at the highest level of the intelligence community. - Mr. Powell, Please Resign
MAYBE POWELL GOT YOUR E-MAIL!!! LOOK:
State Dept. Changes Seen if Bush Reelected - Powell and Armitage Intend to Step Down - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, have signaled to the White House that they intend to step down even if President Bush is reelected, setting the stage for a substantial reshaping of the administration's national security team that has remained unchanged through the September 2001 terrorist attacks, two wars and numerous other crises. - Armitage recently told national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that he and Powell will leave on Jan. 21, 2005, the day after the next presidential inauguration, sources familiar with the conversation said. Powell has indicated to associates that a commitment made to his wife, rather than any dismay at the administration's foreign policy, is a key factor in his desire to limit his tenure to one presidential term. Bush Team Kept Airing Iraq Allegation - Officials Made Uranium Assertions Before and After President's Speech - By the time the president gave the speech, on Jan. 28, that same allegation was already part of a public administration campaign to win domestic and international support for invading Iraq. In January alone, it was included in two official documents sent out by the White House and in speeches and writings by the president's four most senior national security officials. Powell's battle cry fails test of time - Six months after his case swung opinion toward attacking Iraq, - But in Baghdad, when the satellite broadcast ended, Lt. Gen. Amer al-Saadi, science adviser to Saddam Hussein, appeared before the audience and dismissed the U.S. case as "stunts" aimed at swaying the uninformed. AP Staffer Fact-Checks Powell's UN Speech - E&P Editor Greg Mitchell calls this speech the single most important moment in the march to war -- and charges that the media's unquestioning endorsement of Powell's assertions made invasion inevitable. PILGER FILM REVEALS COLIN POWELL SAID IRAQ WAS NO THREAT - In Cairo, on February 24 2001, Powell said: "He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours." - This is the very opposite of what Bush and Blair said in public. Bush, Powell Defend Remark On Iraq's Weapons Capability - President Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell defended yesterday a statement made by Powell early in 2001 that Iraq's Saddam Hussein did not have "any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction." - Powell offered a different explanation yesterday, saying that more information was obtained later. "What I said was, at that time, three weeks into the administration, when I was trying to get sanctions retained -- and we did succeed in getting sanctions retained -- I made that observation," he said. "You'll note that I did not say that he didn't have weapons of mass destruction. . . . He was a threat then. The extent of his holdings were yet to be determined. It was early in the administration and, fact of the matter, it was long before 9/11." Ex-Aide: Powell Misled Americans - ON 60 Minutes II - The person responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat for Colin Powell says the Secretary of State misinformed Americans during his speech at the U.N. last winter. - Greg Thielmann tells Correspondent Scott Pelley that at the time of Powell’s speech, Iraq didn’t pose an imminent threat to anyone – not even its own neighbors. “…I think my conclusion [about Powell’s speech] now is that it’s probably one of the low points in his long distinguished service to the nation,� says Thielmann. - Steve Allinson and a dozen other U.N. inspectors in Iraq also watched Powell’s speech. “Various people would laugh at various times [during Powell’s speech] because the information he was presenting was just, you know, didn't mean anything -- had no meaning,� TRANSCRIPT: 60 Minutes II - In this interview, Greg Thielmann, a former director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office at the State Department's Intelligence Bureau, accuses the White House of "systematic, across-the-board exaggeration" of intelligence as it made its case that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the U.S. - TVNL Comment: VIDEO Powell's shrinking credibility on Iraq - SECRETARY OF State Colin Powell was a huge loser in last week's report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that said Saddam Hussein's weapons program was not an immediate threat to the United States or even his neighbors. The report said Saddam's nuclear program had been dismantled, his large-scale chemical weapons capabilities had been destroyed, and "there was no solid evidence of a cooperative relationship between Saddam's government and Al Qaeda." Powell's Case, a Year Later: Gaps in Picture of Iraq Arms - After several lengthy sessions, he appeared in New York on Feb. 5, with Mr. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, seated behind him, to tell the United Nations Security Council that the evidence added up to "facts" and "not assertions" that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and that it was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program and building a fleet of advanced missiles. - TVNL Comment: The media, including the NY Times is just now picking this up? TvNewsLies was the first organization to point out the flaws and the out right lies in Powell’s presentation. Powell Says New Data May Have Affected War Decision - 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. Powell: Some Iraq testimony not 'solid' - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said his pre-war testimony to the U.N. Security Council about Iraq's alleged mobile, biological weapons labs was based on information that appears not to be "solid." Germans Say They Warned Powell's Data On Iraq Arms Was Tainted - Two German government sources close to the issue said German intelligence had told the CIA prior to Powell's February 2003 speech that detailed information on so-called mobile germ factories in Iraq was coming from an Iraqi defector with a questionable reputation. - "We gave the Americans all the information — including the possible problems — well in advance of Powell's speech," a German intelligence official told the Forward. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the issue.
|
