Colin Powell: Iran Far From Nuclear Weapon

QueEx · Jan 5, 2008

<blockquote>
THE RECORD ON CURVEBALL
Declassified Documents and Key Participants Show the Importance of Phony Intelligence in the Origins of the Iraq War
National
Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 234 
Edited by John Prados
Posted
- November 5, 2007
For
more information contact: 
John Prados - 202/994-7000
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In the news
<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/01/60minutes/main3440577.shtml" target="_blank">"Faulty Intel Source 'Curve Ball' Revealed"</a> 
60 Minutes: Iraqi's Fabricated Story of Biological Weapons Aided U.S. Arguments for Invasion 
CBS News: 60 Minutes 
November 4, 2007
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Washington,
DC, November 5, 2007 - CBS News’ 60 Minutes exposure last night of the Iraqi agent known as CURVEBALL has put a major aspect of the Bush administration’s case for war against Iraq back under the spotlight.
Rafid Ahmed Alwan’s charges that Iraq possessed stockpiles of biological weapons and the mobile plants to produce them formed a critical part of the U.S. justification for the invasion in Spring 2003. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s celebrated and globally televised briefing to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003, relied on CURVEBALL as the main source of intelligence on the biological issue.
Today the National Security Archive posts the available public record on CURVEBALL’s information derived from declassified sources and former officials’ accounts.
While most of the documentary record on the issue remains classified, the materials published here today underscore the precarious nature of the intelligence gathering and analytical process, and point to the existence of doubts about CURVEBALL’s authenticity before his charges were featured in the Bush administration’s public claims about Iraq. 
 

<hr>
Electronic Briefing Book 
The CURVEBALL Affair 
by John Prados
 On February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell made a dramatic presentation before the United Nations Security Council, detailing a U.S. bill of particulars alleging that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that threatened not only the Middle East, but the rest of the world. Unbeknownst to the public at the time, a key part of the U.S. case—relating to biological weapons—was based on the direct knowledge of a single agent known as CURVEBALL, whose credibility had previously been cast in serious doubt.
CBS News’ 60 Minutes is now reporting the identity of the agent as one Rafid Ahmed Alwan, (<a href="#1">Note 1</a>) who appeared in a German refugee center in 1999 and brought himself to the attention of German intelligence.  CBS News describes Alwan as “a liar … a thief and a poor student instead of the chemical engineering whiz he claimed to be.” (<a href="#2">Note 2</a>) If accurate, the CBS report raises even more troubling questions about the basis for the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq, as well as more general considerations about the relationship between intelligence and the policy process.
By way of background to this latest revelation, the National Security Archive is reproducing the existing public record on CURVEBALL as derived from declassified records, official inquiries and former officials’ accounts. The documents below are a small fraction of the full record, which remains almost entirely classified. The National Security Archive has filed Freedom of Information Act requests for these still-secret materials and will post them as they become available. 
The public record as of this posting, while miniscule, nevertheless has an important story to tell, the centerpoint of which is Powell’s speech, which represented the Bush administration’s most powerful public argument leading to the decision to invade Iraq.  
<a href="Powell_slides.pdf" target="_blank"><img src="mobile_lab.jpg" width="310" height="251" border="0" align="right"></a>Powell’s address, modeled after Adlai Stevenson’s vivid appearance before the same body in 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis, was punctuated by a glossy slide presentation and show-and-tell devices including a vial of powder which he held up before his audience, declaring that if it were a biological weapon it would be enough to kill thousands of people. Saddam Hussein, Powell forcefully asserted, possessed stockpiles of such weapons and the infrastructure to produce them. (<a href="#3">Note 3</a>)
According to both of the major official U.S. investigations into Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs—by the so-called Silberman-Robb Commission and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (<a href="#4">Note 4</a>)—Powell based this particular claim on data gathered by the CIA, which in turn relied principally on information it had obtained indirectly from CURVEBALL. (See excerpts from both reports below.)  
Secretary Powell was concerned that in his Security Council briefing he use only completely authentic data. To ensure this, he conducted an extensive — and unprecedented—review of each data element that might be included in the U.N. speech. This process took days and was performed on a continuous basis in a conference room at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Powell relied upon his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, and a team from the State Department during this process. Participating CIA officers were provided by agency Director George J. Tenet or his deputy, John E. McLaughlin, with substantive specialists presenting relevant items in their fields of expertise. These meetings have usually been presented from the perspective of White House officials, especially vice-presidential aide I. Lewis (“Scooter&rdquo

Libby and Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, who were reported as being intent on inserting a particular menu of charges into the Powell speech.  But the decision to include the CURVEBALL information was also made here. (<a href="#5">Note 5</a>)
This process began on January 29, the day after President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address, which had also included the claim that Iraq possessed mobile biological weapons plants. Unknown to the State Department reviewers, CIA officers elsewhere were simultaneously in an uproar over the CURVEBALL material. (<a href="#6">Note 6</a>) In answer to queries from CIA manager Margaret Henoch, the German intelligence service, which had Alwan in their charge, refused to certify the CURVEBALL data and denied CIA access to the original transcripts recording the conversations. Thus, the agency never had direct contact with CURVEBALL, who in fact had only been seen once by an American, an official of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), who had harbored doubts about the man. The CIA was working strictly from DIA translations of German texts. Henoch feared using third-hand information that contained transliteration problems.  Her suspicions were further aroused after it became clear the German service itself doubted CURVEBALL’s reliability.
The intelligence backstory needs a brief sketch here because it bears on the question of CURVEBALL’s veracity. Alwan arrived in Munich from North Africa in November 1999, requesting political asylum. That automatically led to interviews with authorities and vetting by the German foreign intelligence service Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). It was the BND to whom he told his tale of Iraqi weapons plants.  That service in turn shared its reporting with the DIA in the Spring of 2000. The DIA subsequently shared the information with CIA. 
The CIA’s Directorate of Operations is responsible for all intelligence collection of this type, and the presence of this source in Germany placed responsibility with the European Division chief, Tyler Drumheller. In his memoir, Drumheller recounts that he first heard of CURVEBALL in the fall of 2002 and made inquiries with the German liaison representative in Washington, who privately warned him of doubts about the source. Both John McLaughlin and George Tenet, in statements made after publication of the Drumheller memoir, deny that anyone made them aware of BND doubts on CURVEBALL in late September or October, when the division chief asserts that this exchange took place. Tenet in his own memoir adds that the BND representative, asked several years later about his 2002 meeting with Drumheller, denied having called CURVEBALL a fabricator, simply warning that he was a single source whose information could not be verified. (<a href="#7">Note 7</a>)
According to various sources, by late December the CIA was making official inquiries of the BND as to whether the U.S.—and the White House—could use the material. Drumheller’s aide, Margaret Henoch, expressed her own concerns in an e-mail circulated within CIA headquarters. Deputy Director of Central Intelligence John McLaughlin ordered subordinates to meet and reconcile their positions on CURVEBALL and his information. Analysts at CIA’s prime analytical unit in this area, the Weapons, Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center (WINPAC) criticized the Directorate of Operations for questioning this information. WINPAC had already used it for its contributions to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi weapons programs and by now had a stake in CURVEBALL’s veracity. (<a href="#8">Note 8</a>) The meeting resulted in an impasse between CIA officers from the different units.    
On December 20 a cable from the CIA station chief in Berlin arrived at headquarters. It contained a letter to Director Tenet from BND President August Henning saying that CURVEBALL refused to go public himself, and reiterating that BND would not permit direct American access to the source. According to Tenet, the cable went to Drumheller and was never forwarded to the CIA director. The station chief’s requests for a reply went unanswered. Tenet writes, “I had never seen the German letter but had simply been told that the German BND had cleared our use of the Curve Ball material.” (<a href="#9">Note 9</a>)
Division chief Drumheller raised the CURVEBALL credibility issue again in January after seeing a draft of the Bush State of the Union address with its claim of Iraqi mobile weapons plants. According to his account, he spoke to colleagues at the CIA’s Counterproliferation Division, wondering what data other than the exile’s reporting WINPAC might have to back such a claim, only to be assured there was none. Drumheller had Henoch prepare an e-mail for McLaughlin’s executive assistant summarizing the problems with the CURVEBALL information, and notes that McLaughlin later queried WINPAC’s senior analyst on this subject about the questions raised. Drumheller indicates that the CIA deputy director received “robust assurances.” (<a href="#10">Note 10</a>) Drumheller also told the Silberman-Robb Commission that he had attempted to delete the passage about the mobile weapons plants from the State of the Union speech. 
According to Drumheller, he asked to see McLaughlin directly. “To my astonishment,” Drumheller recounts, “he appeared to have no idea that there were any problems with Curveball. ‘Oh my! I hope that’s not true,’ he said, after I outlined the issues and said the source was probably a fabricator.” (<a href="#11">Note 11</a>) McLaughlin, in his statement in response (see below), repeatedly declares that “no one stepped forward” to object, and that “I am equally at a loss to understand why they [CIA officers] passed up so many opportunities in the weeks prior to and after the Powell speech” to warn about CURVEBALL. McLaughlin did not say anything in his statement about a specific meeting with Drumheller, and he told the Silberman-Robb Commission that he was not aware of the CIA meeting that discussed CURVEBALL’S bona fides even though it was called by his own executive assistant, chaired by that officer, and though the executive assistant afterwards wrote a memorandum summarizing the meeting that was circulated to participants. McLaughlin says he never saw a meeting record. He also did not recall seeing Drumheller, and apparently no meeting with Drumheller was noted on McLaughlin’s daily calendar. Other CIA officials, however, recall hearing the result of the meeting at the time, and apparently exchanges of emails involved more than one of McLaughlin’s assistants. And McLaughlin told the Silberman-Robb Commission that he did meet the WINPAC analyst to hear her assurances. (<a href="#12">Note 12</a>)
The sessions at CIA headquarters where the Powell speech itself was vetted involved both John McLaughlin and George Tenet, as well as McLaughlin’s executive assistant, who is recorded at one point asking for more assurances from CIA’s Berlin station chief on the CURVEBALL material. Throughout the period, Berlin’s responses were instead cautionary.
Finally it all came down to the night before Powell’s speech. Powell and Tenet were already in New York engaging in final rehearsals. That night there was a phone call between Tenet and Drumheller. Both individuals at least agree that a conversation took place, though Tenet remembers an evening call where he merely asked for a phone number, while Drumheller says he specifically warned Tenet against using the CURVEBALL material and the director replied something like, “yeah, yeah.” (<a href="#13">Note 13</a>) The next day Powell went ahead with the allegations. Tenet had not taken any of CURVEBALL’s claims out of the speech.
At the CIA’s Counterproliferation Division, where officers sat rapt before the television watching Powell speak, with Tenet seated behind him, there was dismay on several counts. One of them was CURVEBALL. Valerie Plame Wilson recounts, “Although an official ‘burn notice’ . . . did not go out until June 2004, it was widely known that CURVEBALL was not a credible source and that there were serious problems with his reporting.” (<a href="#14">Note 14</a>) 
Whatever else may be the case, it is clear that questions were raised about CURVEBALL—and they surfaced before his information was used to buttress the case for war with Iraq. The statements by CIA senior officers Tenet and McLaughlin are difficult to reconcile with the other evidence. At a minimum they failed to resolve questions regarding CURVEBALL’s authenticity, and permitted Powell to step onto a world stage with flimsy evidence. 
Worse, more doubts about this intelligence were expressed immediately after the Powell speech that are also not reflected by the Tenet and McLaughlin statements in 2005.  Furthermore, Tenet presided over the publication of a “white paper” in May 2003, written jointly by the CIA and DIA, which claimed that mobile weapons laboratories had actually been found in Iraq. That paper was demonstrably false on the basis of purely technical observations, (<a href="#15">Note 15</a>) and the attribution to CURVEBALL and several other hearsay sources was the same as in Powell’s speech. Within days the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research objected to the characterization of the trailers found as weapons labs, and they would be proved right. Tenet specifically denies learning anything about the discrepancies in CURVEBALL’s claims until early 2004.
 

<hr>
Read
the Documents 
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<a href="20030205-Powell_UN.pdf" target="_blank">Document 1: Powell Speech</a> (See also <a href="Powell_slides.pdf" target="_blank">Powell slideshow presentation</a>) 
Source: <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/print/20030205-1.html" target="_blank">http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/print/20030205-1.html</a>
Secretary of State Colin Powell’s United Nations address in February 2003 is generally viewed as one of the Bush administration’s most effective public steps in winning media and public support for war. Discussing Iraq’s bio-weapons programs, he does not name CURVEBALL, but he cites an Iraqi defector whose “eye-witness account of these mobile production facilities has been corroborated by other sources.” Senior CIA officials, including then-Deputy Director for Operations James Pavitt and European operations chief Tyler Drumheller, reported later that they had previously raised objections to the use of CURVEBALL’s information, but were surprised to find, on the eve of Powell’s remarks, that the Iraqi source had resurfaced. (A case in point was that of Margaret Henoch, CIA’s Central Group Chief, who was mentioned in the 60 Minutes report.) 

<a href="SSCI_phaseI_excerpt.pdf" target="_blank">Document 2: SSCI report (1) July 7, 2004</a>
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence published this initial report in July 2004 focusing on what the U.S. knew about Iraq prior to the war. The heavily excised excerpt reproduced here illustrates how much information remains closed to outside scrutiny. What is accessible shows that some U.S. intelligence officials considered CURVEBALL’s information problematic from the beginning, at least in part because of translation issues (he spoke in English and Arabic, translated into German and then back into English), and other “reporting inconsistencies.” (Because of blacked out text, it is unclear whether analysts identified this as a problem at the time.) What’s more, the lone American official to meet CURVEBALL before the invasion worried that he might be an alcoholic—and was not even sure the source “was who he said he was.” 

<a href="WMD_report_excerpt.pdf" target="_blank">Document 3: WMD Commission Report</a>
This excerpt of the so-called Silberman-Robb Commission, created by President Bush, focuses on Iraq’s biological warfare capabilities and places heavy blame on the intelligence community for having “seriously misjudged” that potential.  The “primary reason for this misjudgment” was an over-reliance on CURVEBALL.  Among other things, the excerpt cites CIA European operations division chief Tyler Drumheller’s account of meetings related to the issue that were held in January 2003 with CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy Director John McLaughlin, as well as e-mails and interviews from CIA officials aware of those meetings, and the dramatic February 4 phone call between the division chief and Tenet.  The sessions, according to Drumheller, took place after he brought up German concerns over CURVEBALL’s reliability.  Tenet and McLaughlin, however, denied any prior knowledge of these events a few days after the report was published.  In his book, On the Brink, Drumheller asserts “there is a pile of documents two feet high backing up my story” (p. 205).
<a href="McLaughlin_Statement.pdf" target="_blank">Document 4: McLaughlin Statement</a> 
Source: <a href="http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/wmd_mclaughlin.html" target="_blank">http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/wmd_mclaughlin.html</a> 

John McLaughlin, former Deputy Director of the CIA, issued this statement on April 1, 2005, denying he had any knowledge of CURVEBALL’s status as a potential fabricator until late 2003. However, European division chief Tyler Drumheller has contended that he notified his superiors in October 2002 of the German government’s suspicions concerning the source, and then contacted McLaughlin’s office directly on the matter in January 2003. 
 
<a href="20050104_Tenet_Statement.pdf" target="_blank">Document 5: Tenet Statement</a> 
CIA Director George Tenet’s April 1, 2005 statement is his official denial of any knowledge concerning the mental instability or unreliable nature of CURVEBALL and the untrustworthiness of the intelligence he provided.  He claims that he did not learn about any of these allegations until the publication of the Silberman-Robb Commission’s report on March 31, 2005.
<a href="SSCI_II_excerpt.pdf" target="_blank">Document 6: SSCI (2) September 8, 2006</a> 
This report, the second by the Senate intelligence committee on prewar Iraq intelligence, includes information not available to the committee during its preparation of the earlier, July 2004, report. In the section on biological weapons, the later report discusses the conclusions of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) at length, as well as the Silberman-Robb Commission report. Referring to CURVEBALL, the ISG, according to the Senate committee, “harbor[ed] severe doubts about the source’s credibility.” 
 

<hr>
Notes
<a name="1">1. </a>60 Minutes, scheduled for broadcastNovember 4, 2007, reported by Bob Simon. In Bob Drogin’s book Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War (New York: Random House, 2007), the identity of the source is reported as Ahmed Hassan Mohammed, but the author notes that is not his real name. This text uses the Alwan identity put forward by CBS. 
<a name="2">2. </a>“Faulty Intel Source ‘Curve Ball’ Revealed,” CBSNews.com, Downloaded 11/2/07, 4:15 p.m. from <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/01/60minutes/main3440577.shtml">www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/01/60minutes/main3440577.shtml</a>.
<a name="3">3. </a>Secretary Colin L. Powell, “Remarks to the United Nations Security Council,” February 5, 2003 (Document 1 below).
<a name="4">4. </a>“Report to the President of the United States” by The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, March 31, 2005; and “Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq” by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, September 8, 2006.
<a name="5">5. </a>The most recent account is in Karen DeYoung, Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell. (New York: Knopf, 2006), pp. 439-446.
<a name="6">6. </a>The following account draws from the memoir of CIA European division chief Tyler Drumheller with Elaine Monaghan, On the Brink: An Insider’s Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence. (New York: Carol & Graf, 2006), journalist Bob Drogin (Curveball), and my own book Hoodwinked: The Documents the Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War (New York: New Press, 2004).
<a name="7">7. </a>George J. Tenet with Bill Harlow, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA. (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), p. 379.
<a name="8">8. </a>WINPAC appears to have taken a position similar to that of the Defense Intelligence Agency, whose view is that analysts are solely responsible for judging the bona fides of a source — essentially that if the information tracks with other material then the source is judged to be valid.
<a name="9">9. </a>Tenet, op. cit., p. 379.
<a name="10">10. </a>Drumheller, p. 85.
<a name="11">11. </a>Ibid., p. 83.
<a name="12"></a>12. Silberman-Robb Commission, pp. 96-103.
<a name="13">13. </a>Ibid., quoted p. 104.
<a name="14">14. </a>Valerie Plame Wilson, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 128.
<a name="15">15. </a>Prados, Hoodwinked, pp. 283-286.
Additional detailed critiques on the mobile biological weapons
production capacity assertions have been made by Dr. Milton
Leitenberg and are available from the Federation of American
Scientists, in <a href="Leitenberg.pdf">'Unresolved Questions
Regarding US Government Attribution of a Mobile Biological
Production Capacity by Iraq,' </a>, <a href="Leitenberg.pdf"> </a><a href="Leitenberg2006.html">'Further
Information Regarding US Government Attribution of a Mobile
Biological Production Capacity by Iraq,' </a>and
<a href="Leitenberg32006.html">'Part III' of same. </a>
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thoughtone · Jan 6, 2008

Everyone was lambasting Obama for is comment about striking Pakistan if we knew were Bin Laden was. The biggest problem is Pervez Musharraf and his military fostering animosity in a nuclear country.

QueEx · Jan 6, 2008

<center>Falling on His Sword
Colin Powell's most significant moment turned out to be his lowest</center>

Washington Post
Sunday, October 1, 2006; Page W12

ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2004, eight days after the president he served was elected to a second term, Secretary of State Colin Powell received a telephone call from the White House at his State Department office. The caller was not President Bush but Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and he got right to the point.

"The president would like to make a change," Card said, using a time-honored formulation that avoided the words "resign" or "fire." He noted briskly that there had been some discussion of having Powell remain until after Iraqi elections scheduled for the end of January, but that the president had decided to take care of all Cabinet changes sooner rather than later. Bush wanted Powell's resignation letter dated two days hence, on Friday, November 12, Card said, although the White House expected him to stay at the State Department until his successor was confirmed by the Senate.

After four long years, Powell had anticipated the end of his service and sometimes even longed for it. He had never directly told the president but thought he had made clear to him during the summer of 2004 that he did not intend to stay into a second term.

There had been public speculation as the election drew near that the president might ask the secretary of state to reenlist, at least temporarily. Powell was still the most popular member of Bush's team, far more popular with the public than the president himself. Senior Powell aides were convinced that the secretary anticipated an invitation to stay, and they were equally certain that he intended to accept. The approaching elections in Iraq, hints of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the rumored departure of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a principal Powell nemesis, made the next six months look like a rare period of promise for diplomacy.

The president himself made no contact with Powell after Card's call. For two days, the only person at the State Department Powell told about it was his deputy and friend of decades, Richard Armitage. Powell dropped off his resignation letter, as instructed, after typing it himself on his home computer. (The White House later pointed out a typo and sent it back to be redone.) Loath to reveal either surprise or insult, he used the letter to claim the decision to leave as his own.

"Dear Mr. President:" he wrote. "As we have discussed in recent months, I believe that now that the election is over the time has come for me to step down as Secretary of State . . . effective at your pleasure."

He was pleased, Powell said, to "have been part of a team that launched the Global War Against Terror, liberated the Afghan and Iraqi people, brought the attention of the world to the problem of proliferation, reaffirmed our alliances, adjusted to the Post-Cold War World and undertook major initiatives to deal with the problem of poverty and disease in the developing world. In these and in so many other areas, your leadership was the driving force of our success."

AFTER HIS DEPARTURE FROM THE STATE DEPARTMENT IN JANUARY 2005, Powell traveled the lecture circuit, making paid speeches on leadership and U.S. foreign policy to corporate boards and industry conventions. He never spoke publicly about the specific circumstances of his resignation as secretary of state except to say, when asked, that Cabinet reshuffles were normal at the end of a four-year mandate, and that his departure had been a "mutual decision" between him and the president.

He artfully brushed aside inquiries about the many published accounts of deep ideological schisms that had rent Bush's national security team throughout the first term and the private humiliations he reportedly had endured at the hands of powerful colleagues.

Audiences often asked about his public role in promoting and defending what many now consider to be the most ill-advised act of Bush's presidency: the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Powell usually offered a tepid defense, allowing only that he wished there had been more troops committed to the war and its aftermath, and a better plan to rebuild the country.

Powell had thrown his considerable personal and professional reputation behind the administration's charges that Iraq possessed chemical, biological and perhaps even nuclear weapons, and posed an imminent threat to the United States. In a crucial speech to the United Nations Security Council six weeks before the invasion was launched, he had single-handedly convinced many skeptical Americans that the threat posed by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was real.

But the war had gone sour almost from the moment U.S. troops rolled triumphantly into Baghdad two months later. Powell's credibility had been seriously undermined when the weapons he cited as the main justification for invasion turned out not to exist.

No one in his legions of admirers wanted to believe that Powell had been duped by the White House -- or, worse yet, that he had knowingly betrayed the nation's trust. Many assumed that he had privately argued against such a clearly misguided adventure and been overruled.

In fact, Powell had never advised against the Iraq invasion, although he had warned Bush of the difficulties and counseled patience. He had no reason to resign over Iraq, he told questioners. But the larger mystery of his tenure as the nation's chief diplomat, fourth in line for succession to the presidency, remained.

When Bush selected Powell as his secretary of state in December 2000, it was seen as a stroke of political genius that instantly assuaged concerns at home and abroad about the president-elect's conspicuous lack of foreign policy experience. As national security adviser to one president and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under two more, Powell had helped guide the nation through the end of the Cold War and had brought the military to victory in the Persian Gulf War. By the time he retired from the Army as a four-star general in 1993, he was a national icon of wise leadership -- the "most trusted man in America," according to polls.

Yet Powell had constantly found himself on the losing side of regular ideological combat inside the Bush administration, particularly against Rumsfeld and the powerful vice president, Dick Cheney, over Iraq and a host of other foreign policy issues. Though Powell had scored some victories, the rumored humiliations had been real. He had been purposely cut out of major foreign policy decisions more than once, and his advice often had gone unheeded or been only grudgingly accepted by the president. Why hadn't he resigned?

The easy answer had the virtue of truth: Soldiers didn't quit when they disagreed with the decisions of their commanders. The fact that he had been out of uniform for nearly a decade was irrelevant to Powell; he would be a soldier until he drew his last breath.

AS TEXAS GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH BEGAN HIS CAMPAIGN FOR THE PRESIDENCY IN 1999, Powell's initial impression was that Bush was "still getting his sea legs" on foreign policy and national security issues. Powell knew "Sonny," as he referred to him, only in passing, and his private preference was for another Republican candidate: Arizona Sen. John McCain, a fellow military officer and Vietnam veteran.

But Powell had served in the administration of Bush's father and considered himself part of the extended Bush family, with the personal loyalty that kinship entailed. "It wasn't as if I was a stranger, or that anybody had to worry or could imagine that I would not be for Sonny when the time came," he later reflected. He wrote a $1,000 check to McCain and contributed an equal amount to Bush.

Worried that Powell would outshine their candidate and suspicious of his Republican credentials, Bush's handlers ignored him for most of the campaign -- even as they regularly implied to the media that the respected general was a behind-the-scenes member of the governor's brain trust. Once McCain was vanquished in the Republican primaries and Bush began a head-to-head battle against Democrat Al Gore, the campaign hinted that Powell would accompany Bush on fact-finding trips overseas and would become his secretary of state. But no one on the Bush team ever approached Powell about such a trip, and there was no substantive discussion of a Cabinet position.

Powell later recalled that the only conversations he and Bush had had about foreign affairs came just weeks before the election, in the back seats of cars between events on the four days they had campaigned together that fall. He had no memory of an explicit invitation from Bush to serve in his Cabinet. Once the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Florida recount officially over in early December, Powell later said, "It just sort of happened as it was assumed to happen."

On December 16, three days after Gore conceded defeat, Powell flew to Bush's ranch in Texas to be unveiled as his first Cabinet nominee.

Powell and Cheney stood on either side of the president-elect as he read from prepared remarks to reporters gathered in a Crawford school auditorium. Turning to Powell, Bush invoked Harry Truman's tribute to his own iconic secretary of state, retired Army general George Marshall: " ' He is a tower of strength and common sense. When you find somebody like that, you have to hang on to them.' I have found such a man." When reporters later asked Bush about tears they had seen in his eyes, he replied that it was an emotional moment because "I so admire Colin Powell -- I love his story."

THE SECRETARY OF STATE SAW THE PRESIDENT FREQUENTLY, THOUGH RARELY ALONE. Powell found Bush better-spoken and more thoughtful in private than his public posturing as a rough-hewn, plain-spoken Texan would indicate, although he found Bush's fidgety impatience irritating, along with his tendency to interrupt everyone, from his Cabinet officers to visiting heads of state. While the president publicly praised the secretary's abilities and stature, their relationship remained stiff and formal.

Powell insisted to disbelieving aides that Bush listened to, and even acted on, his advice. "The president has good instincts . . . an instinctual grasp" of issues, he often told them. But he usually followed with an acknowledgment that Bush "has got these rough edges -- his cowboy, Texan rough edges -- and when he gets them exposed, there are other people who know how to use them" to their advantage.

Time and time again during the administration's bumpy first year, Powell had seen Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney intervene to nudge a willing Bush away from moderation and diplomacy, and toward a hard line on foreign policy issues from North Korea to the Middle East. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda on New York and Washington, their attention turned sharply toward Iraq, and by the following summer it was clear that the administration was headed toward war with Saddam Hussein.

Powell found little evidence to support thinly veiled White House suggestions that Hussein had had a hand in the September 11 attacks. But he saw no reason to doubt the CIA's assessment, fervidly promoted and expanded upon by Cheney and the Defense Department, that the Iraqi leader had stockpiles of chemical, biological and perhaps even nuclear weapons, which he was ready to hand over to terrorists bent on destruction of the United States.

Powell's own war to drive Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991 had been fought with half a million U.S. troops, broad foreign support and a U.N. mandate. He believed the decision to invade was Bush's to make, but that international backing was essential for both political and military success. In August 2002, he succeeded in convincing Bush -- for once, over Cheney's objections -- that there would be no multinational support unless the administration first visibly tried to tame Hussein without war.

It took five months for Powell's efforts at the U.N. Security Council to craft a solution short of war to reach the point of collapse, caught in the crossfire of administration intransigence, international mistrust of Bush's justification and motives, and Hussein's perfidy. As the Pentagon's war plans were completed and March 2003 was secretly set as the internal deadline for invasion, Bush still found himself with little foreign support and an uncertain American public.

The Origins of The Fateful Speech

"We've really got to make the case" against Hussein, Bush told Powell in an Oval Office meeting in late January, "and I want you to make it." Only Powell had the "credibility to do this," Bush said. "Maybe they'll believe you." It was a direct order from his commander in chief, and it never occurred to Powell to question it.

Already Written

He was told that the case had already been put together by the White House, and he assumed that with a little tweaking he could turn it into a speech that would fit his voice and style. He was taken aback on Tuesday, January 28, when he received the bulk of the document, a 48-page, single-spaced compilation of Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction program, replete with drama, rhetorical devices and a kitchen sink full of allegations. The most extreme version of every charge the administration had made about Hussein, the document had been written, Powell concluded, under the tutelage of Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who shared all of his boss's hard-line views and then some.

The Request for Additional Time

Delivery of the speech had been set for the following Wednesday, February 5. Bush planned to announce the date that very night in his State of the Union address to Congress. Acutely aware that he would be selling his own reputation as much as the specific facts, Powell picked up the telephone to tell Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, that he needed more time to get the speech into shape.

"Condi, please," Powell implored, "let's just tell the president that we're going to put in the State of the Union that Secretary Powell will be going to the U.N. next week. Don't put a date."

"She said, 'Right, right, of course,' " Powell recalled, "and she runs away to change the speech. Then runs back about five minutes later" to call him and say, " ' There's good news and bad news. The good news is we can change the speech.' " The bad news, she said, was that the White House had already told the media, in a preview of the State of the Union address, that Powell's presentation would be made on February 5.

"I could have gotten two more days," Powell later said wistfully. "Whether it would have made any difference or not, I don't know."

A Badly Written Novel

"HERE YOU GO," POWELL SAID, as he dropped the White House document on the desk of his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson. Wilkerson quickly agreed it read more like a badly written novel than something designed to persuade the world. That afternoon, he assembled a State Department team-- including speechwriter Lynne Davidson and Barry Lowenkron, a senior CIA officer before he joined Powell's policy planning staff -- to set up shop at CIA headquarters, across the Potomac River in Virginia. They would examine the evidence themselves and turn the document into what Wilkerson called "a Colin Powell speech." Cheney aide John Hannah and William Tobey, the counterproliferation director at the White House National Security Council, would meet them there to answer any questions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092700106.html

nyyyyce · Jan 6, 2008

"We've really got to make the case" against Hussein, Bush told Powell in an Oval Office meeting in late January, "and I want you to make it." Only Powell had the "credibility to do this," Bush said. "Maybe they'll believe you." It was a direct order from his commander in chief, and it never occurred to Powell to question it.[/COLOR] - ?!?!? :angry:

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This is such a horrible dishonest lie. He knew that Bush/Cheney had no clout. They/he mortgaged his credibility and the lives of our troops to promote the PNAC agenda. This bama and the whole administration should be brought up on charges 4real.

QueEx · Jan 6, 2008

Falling on His Sword
Part Two
__________________


"We were going out to the agency and live there until we got the presentation ready," Wilkerson later said.

Their job was to make the most convincing, evidence-backed case possible. Powell had little more than a cursory knowledge of the intelligence underlying some of the most damning charges, but in recent months, as pressure built inside the administration and his frustration with the United Nations grew, Powell's language on Iraq had become almost as loose as Cheney's. In a speech to an international economic conference just the week before, he had made charges that his own State Department analysts questioned, mentioning allegations that Iraq had attempted to import uranium and nuclear-related equipment, as well as the presumed ties between Hussein and al-Qaeda.

But that had been only an indictment; this would have to be a complete, trial-worthy prosecution, designed to convince a skeptical jury that capital punishment, in the form of decapitating the Iraqi regime, was warranted.

In addition to proving the charges against Iraq, Wilkerson believed, they had to protect Powell's integrity against those within the administration who had long been out to tarnish it. There was a widespread belief among the secretary's loyal aides -- privately shared by Powell himself, although he brushed it off as meaningless political gamesmanship in conversations with them -- that both White House political adviser Karl Rove and Cheney had actively plotted to undermine him for the past three years. Powell had laughed when he described to his aides how the vice president, after a discussion of the upcoming U.N. speech, had poked him jocularly in the chest and said, "You've got high poll ratings; you can afford to lose a few points." Cheney's idea of Powell's U.N. mission, Wilkerson thought, was to "go up there and sell it, and we'll have moved forward a peg or two. Fall on your damn sword and kill yourself, and I'll be happy, too."

Re-Writing the Speect

BY THE NEXT DAY, Wilkerson and his team were huddled in the CIA directo[/b]r's conference room, taking the document apart sentence by sentence. Things were not going well. Hannah had brought a clipboard with a three-inch stack of paper that he thumbed through to cite the origin of each allegation -- reports from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, foreign intelligence, the Iraqi National Congress and even newspaper articles.

CIA Director George Tenet and his deputy, John McLaughlin -- backed up by Robert Walpole, the chief CIA officer for nuclear programs; Lawrence Gershwin, the agency's top adviser on "technical" intelligence; and several other specialists -- were constantly dispatching aides to find the original source material.

In some instances, the "evidence" was, in fact, found in an official intelligence report, but only as unconfirmed information that did not appear in the report's conclusions. "They had left out all the caveats, all the qualifiers</u.," Wilkerson recalled. In a few instances, he thought, they had even changed the meaning of the intelligence. A Senate investigation of the speechwriting process conducted after the invasion would later conclude that the Powell team had had to eliminate "information that the White House had added . . . gathered from finished and raw intelligence," some of which had come from only a single source with no corroboration at all.

By late afternoon, Tenet and Wilkerson agreed to put the White House draft aside and start over, basing the speech on a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq that had been compiled by the CIA the previous fall.

That night, after the senior CIA and White House officials had left for the day, Wilkerson and his colleagues watched a film he had borrowed from the State Department archives of Adlai Stevenson's historic presentation to the Security Council at the height of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

The Soviet Union had angrily denied charges that it had deployed nuclear-armed missiles on the island 90 miles off the Florida coast. Stevenson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the time, had responded with irrefutable proof in the form of 26 grainy, poster-size black-and-white photographs of missile sites shot from a U-2 reconnaissance plane, displayed on easels at the front of the council chamber for all the world to see. That "Stevenson moment," Wilkerson told them, was the effect they were after.

Powell, Libby and Stephen Hadley, Rice's deputy, joined the process the next day.

Cheney had called Powell to say he hoped the secretary would "take a good look at Scooter's stuff." State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, who accompanied Powell to the CIA sessions, later recalled Libby himself appealing to Powell to look more carefully at the now-discarded White House material. "Powell said: 'I don't want to. I want to use what Larry's been working on.' "

They settled into a routine over the next few days. The CIA turned over the office suite of the National Intelligence Council -- the internal organization that coordinated with other members of the intelligence community to write National Intelligence Estimates -- to Wilkerson and the others engaged in the nitty-gritty of composing the speech and providing material to the graphic designers lodged in the agency's basement. At around 5 p.m., the writing and research team would move to Tenet's conference room with senior officials, eventually including Rice and Armitage, to spend hours going over the new text and verifying the sourcing for Powell.

Powell insisted that they eliminate any intelligence that had come from Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi exile favored by the Pentagon and the vice president's office, but widely mistrusted as a charlatan within the State Department. Powell was told by the CIA that evidence that Hussein had built mobile laboratories to conceal his biological weapons programs -- one of the most damning charges -- had been corroborated by four separate sources, including an Iraqi chemical engineer, a civil engineer and an Iraqi military defector. It was, Tenet said, "totally reliable information."

They argued over how to interpret intercepted communications about Iraq's weapons between Iraqi military officers. None seemed definitive, and Wilkerson was worried that they might not mean what the analysts said they meant. But amid the scant information the CIA officials were willing to declassify for public consumption, they said this was the best they had.

The team examined satellite imagery said to reveal prohibited items. Powell was shown, and rejected, a grainy picture of what analysts said was an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) site near Basra. It was impossible to tell where it was or even what it was, he argued. Instead, he approved a U.N. photograph of a generic Iraqi UAV, taken years earlier, to illustrate charges that Hussein was developing drones that could spray deadly weapons of mass destruction on population centers.

CIA analysts showed the team additional photographs they said conclusively revealed chemical weapons production and storage facilities, but then insisted that the pictures were too sensitive to be used in a public presentation. Those they were willing to release often appeared -- at least to the uninitiated in the room -- to illustrate nothing more than trucks parked beside buildings. "Don't you have a picture of chemical weapons canisters being moved around?" Boucher later recalled asking Tenet. "Something we can point to and say: 'That's a chemical weapon.' " Tenet replied that no country had left prohibited weapons "out on the lawn" since the Cuban missile crisis. "They know we're looking at them. So we have to go with other things that tell us what they're doing."

They spent hours discussing the aluminum tubes Hussein had tried to import. The Energy and State departments continued to disagree with the CIA's assessment that the tubes were designed for nuclear enrichment. McLaughlin, who had brought one of the intercepted tubes to the table and rolled it back and forth as they argued, insisted that the CIA analysis was correct. The agency, Powell later recalled, "pulled in their experts and swore on a stack of Bibles that they'd done every analysis imaginable, and [the tubes] simply were not for rockets, but for [uranium] centrifuges." The tubes stayed in the speech, although with a brief mention of the disagreement among U.S. government agencies as to their purpose. (U.S. investigators in Iraq after the war later concluded they were meant for rockets.)

Bush had referred in his State of the Union address to Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from Africa -- the same information the CIA had successfully argued should be excised from a speech he gave the previous October because of questionable sources. No one suggested that it be included in Powell's presentation.

The White House document detailing Hussein's ties to terrorism was, if anything, even more problematic than the portion on weapons of mass destruction.

Powell retreated with Tenet to the director's private office to talk through "what we really know" about the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Powell was shown the transcript of an interrogation of a captured Osama bin Laden aide who swore that al-Qaeda operatives had received biological and chemical weapons training from Iraq, and the charge became a lengthy portion of the speech. (A year after the invasion, the agency acknowledged that the information had come from a single source who had been branded a liar by U.S. intelligence officials long before Powell's presentation.)

Tempers began to fray as the sessions continued into the weekend. Tenet and McLaughlin became irritated with Hadley, who kept pressing to reinsert jettisoned White House language and information. Powell exploded at McLaughlin, who supplied tortured, five-minute answers to seemingly simple questions. Increasingly, the secretary looked to Tenet for reassurance. "George would give the kind of answers the secretary liked," Wilkerson recalled. "Whether you liked that 'slam-dunk' language or not, George, to his credit, would say, 'Absolutely, Mr. Secretary, I stand by that.' "

Powell later recalled that most of their time was spent "trimming the garbage" of the White House's overwrought verbiage and uncorroborated specifics from the speech. Once that was done, Wilkerson concluded long afterward, "what we were all involved in -- groupthink isn't the right word -- it was a process of putting the data to points in the speech rather than challenging the data itself." As they probed for proof of Hussein's lies, no one thought of looking for evidence that might have raised questions about their assumptions that the weapons existed.

WHEN HE ARRIVED IN NEW YORK ON MONDAY AFTERNOON, Powell was as nervous as Wilkerson had ever seen him. He was worried that the language in the speech was still too methodical and technical to win over an audience. Powell's best performances were modeled on what he had learned as a young instructor at Fort Benning and later at the Pentagon: Use a map or some slides, a rough outline or a few key phrases, and then speak naturally. He always knew his material cold, but it was technique that clinched a sale. This time, however, each sentence had been carefully crafted and debated ad nauseam, and he was going to have to read directly from the text.

On Tuesday night, the team had a final, full-dress rehearsal. The cafeteria on the top floor of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations had been reconfigured into a mock-up of the Security Council chamber. Powell used a stopwatch to check his timing, clicking it off every time someone interrupted with a question or comment. The speech was 75 minutes long.

When he finished, the tension of the last several days seemed to dissipate like the air escaping a balloon, leaving him calm and tired. He believed he had done everything he could do. Departing for his room at the Waldorf, where he hoped to get a good night's sleep, he reminded Tenet that "you're going to be there with me tomorrow." He expected the CIA director to sit in full view of the television cameras, just behind him at the Security Council table. Tenet replied, only half-jokingly, that he was the one who would have to face the intelligence committees in Congress if there were any mistakes. Powell told his executive assistant, Craig Kelly, and Boucher to make sure that Tenet was waiting in the side room they would pass through on their way into the Security Council chamber the next morning. Later, he changed his mind and called Tenet to tell him he would swing by the CIA director's hotel and pick him up on the way to the United Nations, just to make sure there were no glitches.

On Wednesday, February 5, Powell entered the chamber just before 10:30 a.m., smiling and stopping to shake hands as he made his way across the floor. With war hanging in the balance, and the power and prestige of the United States on full display, it was a moment of high drama that owed as much to the player as to the play. A nationwide poll released just that morning had found that "when it comes to U.S. policy toward Iraq," Americans trusted Powell more than Bush by 63 to 24 percent.

"I cannot tell you everything that we know," he began after a brief introduction. "But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling." The facts and Iraq's behavior "demonstrate that Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort -- no effort -- to disarm as required by the international community."

"My colleagues," Powell said, "every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

The next day, opinion polls indicated that national opinion had shifted literally overnight; most Americans surveyed said they believed an invasion was justified to protect the nation. Those closest to Powell were relieved, but worried about both him and the nation. His wife, Alma, had a sense of foreboding; her husband, she thought, was being used by the White House. Powell's daughter Linda, who had listened to the speech on the radio, had found his performance unsettling. His voice was strained, she thought, as if he were trying to inject passion into the dry words through the sheer force of his will.

Wilkerson, who had left the United Nations immediately after the speech and returned to his hotel room to fall into a deep sleep, awoke depressed. Later, when it became clear that much of the speech on which he had worked so hard was based on lies, he would come to think of that week as "the lowest moment of my life." Back in Washington, he ordered special plaques with Powell's signature made up for the State Department aides who had worked so hard to make the presentation happen.

When they were handed out, Powell asked Wilkerson why he hadn't ordered one for himself. Wilkerson replied that he didn't want one.

AS 2004 BEGAN, U.S. TROOPS WERE HEADED TOWARD A SECOND YEAR IN THE IRAQI QUAGMIRE. No weapons of mass destruction had yet been found, and each day's news brought fresh indications that the administration had exaggerated its case against Hussein. Powell's own prominent role came under increasing question. It was now clear that "a lot of probables, a lot of maybes" had been left out of the assessment of Iraq's capabilities, a reporter confronted him. Given a second chance, would he have "rephrased" his U.N. speech?

"No," Powell replied firmly. "I knew exactly the circumstances under which I was presenting that speech . . . The whole world would be watching, and there would be those who would applaud every word, and there would be those who were going to be skeptical of every word." Whatever doubts were now being raised, he said, the basic conclusions had been solid. "I am confident of what I presented last year. The intelligence community is confident of the material they gave me; I was representing them . . . they stand behind it."

But on Friday, January 23, the CIA announced without explanation that David Kay, the head of its Iraq Survey Group hunting for weapons of mass destruction, was being replaced. Later that day, Kay told reporters he doubted the weapons existed. When Congress demanded answers, Kay said the same thing.

As Powell flew the next day to attend a presidential inauguration in the Republic of Georgia, journalists aboard his plane asked him to reconcile his U.N. speech with Kay's conclusions. "You said a year ago that you thought there was between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons [in Iraq]," one reporter said. "Who's right?"

"I think the answer to the question is I don't know yet," Powell replied.

"What is 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 thought there was no sense denying the obvious questions Kay had raised. But it was the first doubt that any senior administration official had publicly expressed about the central justification for the war. The story made headlines around the world, and an agitated Condoleezza Rice called him the next morning in Georgia. Powell was not surprised; it was not the first time that the White House had blown up at him over what he considered honest comment. Rice, he later recalled, was usually the one to make the call. "She'd say, 'Oh, we've got a problem, what are we going to do about this? How are we going to fix this?' "

On this issue, he thought, there was little to be done. "The fact of the matter is, you can't ignore the possibility, since the guy we sent there for eight months as our guy says there's nothing there," he later recalled telling Rice with exasperation. "So, to say there's got to be something there when he, who has been there for eight months, says there's nothing there . . . You can't do that. You've got to at least accept the possibility."

The White House, he advised, should "just be quiet" for now.

ON HIS RETURN, POWELL SPENT THE WEEKEND carefully reading Kay's congressional testimony, highlighting portions with a yellow marker and scribbling notes in the margins. With the first anniversary of his U.N. speech just days away, the Sunday newspapers and television talk shows were filled with comparisons between the charges he had made and Kay's conclusions.

On Monday, February 2, he arrived for an interview at The Washington Post carrying a blue folder with the marked-up testimony inside. He was "absolutely convinced" that the invasion had been the right thing to do, Powell emphatically told the two dozen reporters and editors crowded around a conference table in the newspaper's eighth-floor boardroom.

Would he still have "recommended the invasion" if Tenet had told him a year before "that there are no stockpiles?" one reporter asked.

"I don't know, because it was the stockpiles 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," Powell replied. But there was no point discussing hypotheticals, he said, because "the fact of the matter" was that the CIA, as well as intelligence agencies in Britain and elsewhere, had "suggested the stockpiles were there."

But what if he had known they weren't there? the reporter pressed.

"The absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus," Powell acknowledged. "It changes the answer you get with the little formula I laid out."

To a White House already reeling from the one-two punch of Kay's conclusions and Powell's comments en route to Georgia, it was another worrisome example of the secretary of state's unwillingness to stay "on message." When his remarks appeared in The Post the next morning, "I think the whole White House operation was mad . . . the NSC, the president -- everybody was annoyed," Powell recalled. "White Houses do not respond well to immediate problems in the morning . . . all the white corpuscles race to the source of the infection, so all the white corpuscles raced to me."

After Rice's inevitable irate telephone call, presidential aides quickly began contacting the media to counteract the secretary's remarks. Annoyed but not surprised, Powell issued a White House-requested "clarification" insisting that Hussein had had the "capability and intent" to produce the weapons even if none had yet been found. Bush, he repeated, had been right to invade.

Still mulling over the situation a week later with a visitor in his dimly lit office, he criticized a persistent White House machismo that took aim at "anything . . . that suggests any weakness in the [administration's] position," regardless of common sense. That, and what he saw as a never-ending effort to humble him personally.

"There are people who would like to take me down," he said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the White House. "It's been the case since I was appointed. By take down, I mean 'keep him in his place'. . . And there are those who, whether it was me or anyone else, just love somebody getting in trouble, because it's usually to the detriment of the person getting in trouble and to the advantage of someone else."

The episode reinforced his already deep-seated disdain for politics and its practitioners. Political thought and decision-making were often polluted by ideology and the exigencies of the election cycle; soldiers breathed a purer, more rational air. "I was not trained as a politician or a think tank guy or anything else," Powell insisted. "I was trained to consider all possibilities."

"I mean, if you're attacking and suddenly you get attacked from the flank," he continued, using his hands to illustrate a military maneuver, "you don't say, 'I'm going to keep attacking straight ahead [and] ignore this new threat coming at my flank.' " He had been asked whether different information would have changed his assessment of the Iraq situation, and "all of my instincts and all of my background and training at that point said the answer to the question is, 'I'd have to reconsider.' "

He shrugged and brought his hands to rest. "But that's the way it goes."

Powell's irritation at the White House was coupled with a growing anger at the CIA. Right or wrong, at least Bush had willingly shouldered the ultimate responsibility for the decision to go to war. Powell felt he had done his own duty by privately voicing caution even as he gave the president his full support. But it was increasingly apparent that the intelligence community had been careless with the truth and hence with Powell's most precious commodity -- his credibility with the American people.

For a week after Kay's report, the CIA had continued publicly to stand by its prewar weapons assessment. But in a hastily arranged speech at Georgetown University on February 5, Tenet finally admitted the possibility of error. His "provisional bottom line," he said, was that the intelligence community had been "generally on target" in its warnings that Hussein was developing long-range missiles. But the CIA "may have overestimated the progress Hussein was making" on nuclear weapons.

As for biological weapons stockpiles and mobile laboratories, he said, "we are finding discrepancies in some claims made by human sources" to whom the agency "lacked direct access." The CIA, Tenet said, "did not ourselves penetrate the inner sanctum" of Hussein's programs but had "access to emigres and defectors" along with high-level information from "a trusted foreign partner." They were now in the process of "evaluating" questions such as, "Did we clearly tell policymakers what we knew, what we didn't know, what was not clear, and identify the gaps in our knowledge?"

Although Powell had been advised in recent months of problems with some of the intelligence sourcing, Tenet's speech was "the first time I heard that the CIA was no longer sticking behind its story" in public, he later recalled. He had been given no advance copy of the CIA director's remarks and listened in his office to a broadcast of Tenet's acknowledgment of "discrepancies" and uncertainties.

Powell stared silently at Wilkerson after Tenet finished speaking. "But the question is," Wilkerson said, reaching for a joke, "are you still friends?"

"I don't think so," Powell replied.

As the evidence continued to unravel, some in the media suggested that Powell should apologize publicly for peddling false information that had pushed the nation toward war. "Is everyone else going to apologize?" he railed within the four walls of his office. "It's not [just] me getting had. I'm not the only one who was using that intelligence . . . they all stood up in the Senate. The president stood up on this material. [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair stood up on this material . . . The whole global intelligence community bears responsibility."

But there was no denying that he had been the most visible and effective salesman. He already knew that the label would follow him around forever. "I'm the guy who will always be known as the 'Powell Briefing' . . . I'm not being defensive, because I did it. But Powell wasn't the only one."

PRESENTATION WAS NEARLY AS IMPORTANT TO POWELL AS SUBSTANCE, and after his inelegant dismissal as secretary of state, he wanted at least to control the way his departure was announced. After submitting his letter on Friday, he spent the weekend putting together a plan: He would inform his inner-office staff at exactly 8:20 a.m. the following Monday, November 15. He would tell his senior aides at their regular 8:30 staff meeting. At 10:15, he would send an e-mail to his friends and extended family. He called Card and told him he expected the White House would then publicly announce his resignation.

At midmorning Monday, the White House released five separate statements under Bush's name, reporting the resignations of the secretaries of agriculture, energy, education and state, and the head of the Republican National Committee. Each statement was three paragraphs long and titled "President Thanks [official's name]." When White House spokesman Scott McClellan briefed the media shortly after noon, all but one of the resignation questions were about Powell. Had Bush tried to persuade him to stay? Had Powell offered? If so, had the president turned him down? McClellan avoided a direct answer. "I think you saw from Secretary Powell's letter that this is a discussion that they've had for some months now, or over recent months at least . . . And Secretary Powell made a decision for his own reasons that this was now the time to leave."

The next morning, Bush nominated Rice as his new secretary of state.

Powell saw Bush regularly over the next two months, passing through the Oval Office for routine meetings that took place as if nothing had transpired. Eventually, the White House contacted his office to schedule what it described as a "farewell call" with the president. Such calls were being arranged for each departing Cabinet secretary.

When Powell saw the January 13 appointment on his calendar, his staff told him they assumed it was a goodbye photo opportunity with Bush. They suggested that perhaps he should bring his family.

"We've got a houseful of pictures," Powell replied dryly. Was he supposed to talk to the president? Or was the president supposed to talk to him?

"Am I supposed to say: 'This is what I think?' Or what?"

He didn't have to say anything, he was told. It was just a "farewell call."

As the meeting approached, the White House -- which had scheduled it in the first place -- inexplicably called the State Department to ask for "talking points" that aides could use to brief the president.

The appointed time found Powell already in the Oval Office for a routine meeting; when it concluded, he lingered as the others left. As Powell later remembered it, Bush seemed puzzled and called after his departing chief of staff, "Where you going, Andy?"

"Mr. President, I think this is supposed to be our farewell call," Powell prompted.

"Is that why Condi ain't here?" he recalled the president asking.

That was probably the reason, Powell replied.

Card walked back inside, and the three men sat down. Powell had already decided to use the opportunity -- likely his last as secretary of state -- to unload.

The war in Iraq was going south, he said after a few moments of small talk, and the president had little time left to turn it around. The administration's hope was that the upcoming election there would change the dynamics on the ground, and the Iraqi people would finally be ready and able to begin standing up to the insurgents on their own.

But the administration, he pointed out, had entertained such hopes before over the past two years -- when it had set up a new legal framework for Iraq, when it had first turned a modicum of government power over to handpicked Iraqis and when ousted dictator Saddam Hussein had been captured -- and those hopes had been dashed every time. There would be a window of about two months after the election "to start to see progress," he told Bush. "If by the first of April this insurgency is not starting to ameliorate in some way, then I think you really have a problem."

Elections, and talking about democracy, were unlikely to stop the insurgency, he said. Only the fledgling Iraqi army could do that, and it was unclear whether it would ever succeed. Its competence was not just a matter of training, Powell said; it was a question of whether the troops believed in what they were fighting for.

Powell warned about serious internal problems in Bush's own administration, saying that the power he had given the Pentagon to meddle in diplomacy on issues as widespread as North Korea, Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict, along with poisoned personal relations between his State and Defense departments, were seriously undermining the president's diplomacy. Bush dismissed his concern. It wasn't any worse, he said, than the legendary battles between State and Defense during the Reagan administration.

The session ended with a cordial handshake, and the secretary returned to the State Department. "That was really strange," he reported to Wilkerson. "The president didn't know why I was there."

Karen DeYoung is an associate editor of The Post. This article is excerpted from Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell, being published October 10 by Knopf. She will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at noon at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.

`

QueEx · Jan 6, 2008

nyyyyce said:
"We've really got to make the case" against Hussein, Bush told Powell in an Oval Office meeting in late January, "and I want you to make it." Only Powell had the "credibility to do this," Bush said. "Maybe they'll believe you." It was a direct order from his commander in chief, and it never occurred to Powell to question it.[/[/UCOLOR] - ?!?!?
------------------------------------------------------------------

This is such a horrible dishonest lie. He knew that Bush/Cheney had no clout. They/he mortgaged his credibility and the lives of our troops to promote the PNAC agenda. This bama and the whole administration should be brought up on charges 4real.

And you're telling us that YOU are qualified to read Colin Powell's mind, right ???

You're telling us that you're qualified to tell us what Mr. Colin Powell knew or didn't know or what he is thinking or not thinking -- by reading his mind, right ???

GTFOH

If you're not reading his mind, or through clairvoyancy you can tell us what Mr. Powell's mental operations and impressions are -- then YOU MUST have some OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE (something other than your mere suppo-fucking-sitions), right ???

Show em

QueEx

QueEx · Jan 6, 2008

BTW, I've stated above my position on whether Colin "lied" (in the sense that he knew better and made statements to mislead the American public), however, my mind remains open and I can be convinced otherwise -- BUT -- I want to see the evidence. Not your or anyone else's unsupported opinion. Facts and objective evidence, please.

QueEx

QueEx · Jan 6, 2008

nyyyyce said:
This bama and . . . .

What is a "bama" ???
Please be specific.

QueEx

nyyyyce · Jan 6, 2008

Quote:
Originally Posted by nyyyyce View Post
"We've really got to make the case" against Hussein, Bush told Powell in an Oval Office meeting in late January, "and I want you to make it." Only Powell had the "credibility to do this," Bush said. "Maybe they'll believe you." It was a direct order from his commander in chief, and it never occurred to Powell to question it.[/[/UCOLOR] - ?!?!?
------------------------------------------------------------------

This is such a horrible dishonest lie. He knew that Bush/Cheney had no clout. They/he mortgaged his credibility and the lives of our troops to promote the PNAC agenda. This bama and the whole administration should be brought up on charges 4real.
And you're telling us that YOU are qualified to read Colin Powell's mind, right ???

You're telling us that you're qualified to tell us what Mr. Colin Powell knew or didn't know or what he is thinking or not thinking -- by reading his mind, right ???

GTFOH

If you're not reading his mind, or through clairvoyancy you can tell us what Mr. Powell's mental operations and impressions are -- then YOU MUST have some OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE (something other than your mere suppo-fucking-sitions), right ???

Show em

QueEx
Reply With Quote

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

4real. I get up for S*** like this. Facts vs. facts matching stats for stats. You bring some good info but you have just exposed yourself to be more O'Reily than real.

A LOT of the posts I get into, and you post in, you still ask questions that have already been answered. At first I thought you were trying to be thought provoking, but you seem to be selectively permeable intentionally. Cats keep telling you facts that should lead an OPEN-MINDED and rational person to the same conclusion. There are more but here is one example not from me:

--------------------------------------------------------------

Quote:
Originally Posted by QueEx View Post
Muckraker,

What do you have in your research on what happened between 2005 and now that caused the conclusions in the estimate to change? Are the conclusions in the 2007 estimate based on the same or new evidence? I haven't been able to find what 'new' evidence there might be that caused the estimate to change.

QueEx

What’s stunning Q is that nothing changed between 2005 – 2007.

There was NO NEW information uncovered about Iran from 2005 - 2007.
Cheney and the neo-con cabal didn’t like the ‘facts’ and ‘best estimates’ that the coordinated 16 US intelligence agencies were uncovering that said that “Iran WAS NOT an immediate, eminent or current threat” to produce a nuclear bomb.

Cheney has blocked the NIE report and its conclusions that was released last week from becoming public FOR MORE THAN 18 months.

Remember who had the Director of National Intelligence job in 2005? John Negroponte.
Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who was the US leader of American trained & funded 1980’s Latin American death squads, angered Cheney & the Neo-Cons by telling the press in April 2006 that the intelligence community believed that it would still be "a number of years off" before Iran would be "likely to have enough fissile material to assemble into or to put into a nuclear weapon, perhaps into the next decade."

..…Neoconservatives immediately attacked Negroponte for the statement, which merely reflected the existing NIE on Iran issued in spring 2005…..

Negroponte was essentially fired by Cheney and moved to the State Department and replaced by the current Director of National Intelligence Vice Admiral John Michael "Mike" McConnell.

….. "McConnell will go along with whatever [Cheney tells him to do] and make sure that no objective NIE comes out," one former senior intelligence officer said…..

Use the story links below to read all the sordid details about the Machiavellian skullduggery lies & malfeasance of the bush crime family as it pertains to the NIE.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/In...hose_0108.html

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39978
http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2007/12...wing-blowback/
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/1...l#When:04:35PM
http://seesdifferent.wordpress.com/2...nell-over-nie/

---------------------------------------------------------------------

You either don't read (which you do) or you just don't choose to accept information that does not line up with what you want to believe. again another example (from the "Colin Powell: Iran Far From Nuclear Weapon" post:

QueEx said:
Is it ??? Exactly what was that "Lie" ???

QueEx

You can watch the whole thing, which I advise or...skip to the 1:40 mark. Those words were uttered by Powel in the Spring of 2001 - BEFORE the 9/11 attack.

This should help...

Funny, how a year 1/2 later he all of a sudden finds concrete evidence. :hmm:

He is lame and so is that sell out Condi.

[FLASH]http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/OjFrezxIMAQ[/FLASH]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

What was said @ the 1:40 mark, by Colin Powell,in February 2201 was:

"He (Saddam) has NOT developed any significant capabilities with respect to Weapons of Mass Destruction. He is unable to project

nyyyyce · Jan 6, 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by nyyyyce View Post
"We've really got to make the case" against Hussein, Bush told Powell in an Oval Office meeting in late January, "and I want you to make it." Only Powell had the "credibility to do this," Bush said. "Maybe they'll believe you." It was a direct order from his commander in chief, and it never occurred to Powell to question it. - ?!?!?
------------------------------------------------------------------

This is such a horrible dishonest lie. He knew that Bush/Cheney had no clout. They/he mortgaged his credibility and the lives of our troops to promote the PNAC agenda. This bama and the whole administration should be brought up on charges 4real.
And you're telling us that YOU are qualified to read Colin Powell's mind, right ???

You're telling us that you're qualified to tell us what Mr. Colin Powell knew or didn't know or what he is thinking or not thinking -- by reading his mind, right ???

GTFOH

If you're not reading his mind, or through clairvoyancy you can tell us what Mr. Powell's mental operations and impressions are -- then YOU MUST have some OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE (something other than your mere suppo-fucking-sitions), right ???

Show em

QueEx
Reply With Quote

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

4real. I used to get up for S*** like this. Facts vs. facts matching stats for stats. You bring some good info but you have just exposed yourself to be more O'Reily than real.

A LOT of the posts I get into, and you post in, you still ask questions that have already been answered. At first I thought you were trying to be thought provoking, but you seem to be selectively permeable intentionally. Cats keep telling you facts that should lead an OPEN-MINDED and rational person to the same conclusion. There are more but here is one example not from me:

--------------------------------------------------------------

Quote:
Originally Posted by QueEx View Post
Muckraker,

What do you have in your research on what happened between 2005 and now that caused the conclusions in the estimate to change? Are the conclusions in the 2007 estimate based on the same or new evidence? I haven't been able to find what 'new' evidence there might be that caused the estimate to change.

QueEx

What’s stunning Q is that nothing changed between 2005 – 2007.

There was NO NEW information uncovered about Iran from 2005 - 2007.
Cheney and the neo-con cabal didn’t like the ‘facts’ and ‘best estimates’ that the coordinated 16 US intelligence agencies were uncovering that said that “Iran WAS NOT an immediate, eminent or current threat” to produce a nuclear bomb.

Cheney has blocked the NIE report and its conclusions that was released last week from becoming public FOR MORE THAN 18 months.

Remember who had the Director of National Intelligence job in 2005? John Negroponte.
Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who was the US leader of American trained & funded 1980’s Latin American death squads, angered Cheney & the Neo-Cons by telling the press in April 2006 that the intelligence community believed that it would still be "a number of years off" before Iran would be "likely to have enough fissile material to assemble into or to put into a nuclear weapon, perhaps into the next decade."

..…Neoconservatives immediately attacked Negroponte for the statement, which merely reflected the existing NIE on Iran issued in spring 2005…..

Negroponte was essentially fired by Cheney and moved to the State Department and replaced by the current Director of National Intelligence Vice Admiral John Michael "Mike" McConnell.

….. "McConnell will go along with whatever [Cheney tells him to do] and make sure that no objective NIE comes out," one former senior intelligence officer said…..

Use the story links below to read all the sordid details about the Machiavellian skullduggery lies & malfeasance of the bush crime family as it pertains to the NIE.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/In...hose_0108.html

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39978
http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2007/12...wing-blowback/
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/1...l#When:04:35PM
http://seesdifferent.wordpress.com/2...nell-over-nie/

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Muckraker broke you off THE facts 4real. I did not see a public reply to this ^^^^ at all. Not an acknowledgment or a "Hmmm, I did ask a question and got credible sources and responses to back it up. This makes sense" NO NOTHING public. You either don't read (which you do) or you just don't choose to accept information that does not line up with what you want to believe. Again another example (from this very post on the first page - from me):

Quote:
Originally Posted by QueEx View Post
Is it ??? Exactly what was that "Lie" ???

QueEx
You can watch the whole thing, which I advise or...skip to the 1:40 mark. Those words were uttered by Powel in the Spring of 2001 - BEFORE the 9/11 attack.

This should help...

[FLASH]http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/OjFrezxIMAQ[/FLASH]

Funny, how a year 1/2 later he all of a sudden finds concrete evidence. He is lame and so is that sell out Condi.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

What was said @ the 1:40 mark, by Colin Powell,in February 2001 was:

"He (Saddam) has NOT developed any significant capabilities with respect to Weapons of Mass Destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."

That is what Powell said quite convincingly 2 years before the drumbeat to war.

Are you telling me that we, the great US of A, slept for 2 years and allowed this emasculated and contained despot to build up munitions enough so that he could actually be a threat to us?!?!? F*** NO! Nothing changed in two years. HE knowingly and (maybe against his better judgment), willingly LIED - period. If you would have actually watched the video you would have seen numerous people comment on Iraq's lack of nuclear capabilities well before and during the lead up to this bogus occupation. You probably would have come to this conclusion yourself...nah.(BTW you never responded back to this video - WITH FACTS included - either).

Though you write "my mind remains open and I can be convinced otherwise" I find that highly suspect.

Therefore, all I have to say to you is you can now

until you are ready to cease being disingenuous. When you are confronted with facts that you can't accept or refuse to comprehend hold your position playa. Don't waste people's time by asking a question and failing the answers because they don't meet your litmus test standards. The facts, videos, articles that people give to you speak for themselves. You can, and do, choose to ignore the facts quite regularly. It's cool though...I was warned your tactics, and now I've seen them up close so I'm not hot wit' cha.

peace.

nyyyyce · Jan 6, 2008

Quote:
Originally Posted by nyyyyce View Post

This bama and . . . .
What is a "bama" ???
Please be specific.

QueEx

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bama -

1. Bama
356 up, 81 down

"Bama"
Originated from Black youth in Washington DC.
1. Original meaning was "cant dress well" or "fashion misfit"

2. Now the word has a more general use meaning "person", as how Whites use "Dude"

1. That bama wearing a coat in the summer

2. Tell bama to meet me at the store.
by Shortie Tim Jul 2, 2003 email it
permalink: del.icio.us
Send to a friend
your email:
their email:
send me the word of the day (it's free)

2. bama
217 up, 83 down

a bama is a wack ass person is a busta every one in DC knows what this word means but its hard to put a definiton on it

damn you look like a straight bama is that outfit
by becky Feb 23, 2004 email it
3. Bama
137 up, 39 down

one who is out of style ie fashion, speech, or behavior,

That bama got on high waters
by anonymous May 23, 2003 email it

4. Bama
149 up, 51 down

Originally, a Bama was a southerner (from Alabama, for instance) trying to blend in up north, but was so obviously country that it didn't work.
Now it's more general and just means something funny-looking, unsophisticated or country as hell.

"Why is dude still wearing BUM Equipment? That's some Bama shit!"

------------------------------------------------------------------

Since you supposedly don't know what this word means I would hate for you to, again, think I made something up. I don't know if this is acceptable to you since it is a slang dictionary and not Webster's. Hope this is specific enough. You know how you are with facts...

peace.

to validate my source:
(http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bama)

QueEx · Jan 7, 2008

`

If you like matching facts, you should have brought some.

I asked way back in this thread, what was the lie Colin Powell told to the American people. I said way back when that I don’t believe that he did, however, I clearly pointed out that, in this case, I believe a “lie” means not only that he uttered a falsehood, but that the he uttered the falsehood knowing it to be false with the intent to mislead the American people.

(People make statements everyday that are not true though they may believe them to be true; and some times people make statements that they just don’t know any better. They are all false statements, however, unless the statements were made knowing they are untrue they don’t really amount to a lie; just false statements).

To argue that Colin in fact lied, you stated:

nyyyyyce said:
. . . in February 2001 [Colin Powell stated:] “He (Saddam) has NOT developed any significant capabilities with respect to Weapons of Mass Destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.” [1]

To show the contradictory statement to set up your so-called lie, you cited a discussion between Muckraker and I regarding the [2007 b]NIE[/b] report. I asked rhetorically whether anything had changed between 2005 and 2007 which caused the writers of the NIE to change their conclusion that Iran has not been active at making a nuclear bomb.

Of course, I knew the answer (nothing) and so did Muckraker. Thinking that you had hit upon something, like a lil boy gotta pee, you jumped in. You wrongfully assumed, however, that I didn’t know there had been no changes. What you also didn’t know, [2] was that I was setting up another post/thread/theory [3] and using that “no change” as a jumping off point. Had you not had a hair up your ass, with a little patience you would have seen where I was going (but you totally missed it with Muckraker. Also, I will bet that the veteran poster Muckraker didn’t flake out as you did over my question.

So, the evidence that you have offered (Muckraker’s response to my question) doesn’t have Jack Shitt to do with what Powell said in 2001. Powell didn’t write either of the NIE’s and you haven’t shown where Powell was relying upon or quoting an NIE in 2001.

What did the articles I posted above show ???

National Security Archive Briefing Book No. 234 above shows that Colin’s speech was vetted by the CIA; the CIA relied upon uncorroborated evidence (Curveball) for a lot of the wrong assumptions in made; the CIA did not do due diligence with the Germans who advised that they had problems with Curveball’s reliability; that the CIA never told Colin Powell about the “reliability problem” it had; the CIA did not take the false “Curveball” conclusions out of Colin’s Speech; the CIA foolishly allowed Powell to make representations based on the faulty Curveball information; and George Tenet later denied that he even knew about a Curveball problem. Did you even read the report ???

Falling on the Sword, above, shows much of the same as the Briefing Book No. 234; that Colin Powell sought additional time to straighten out the fucked up CIA speech, which he didn’t get; and that all of the intelligence came from the CIA.

If the articles show that the intelligence upon which Powell’s speech was based came from the CIA; and that the speech was written by the CIA, who was responsible for the accuracy of the data ??? Reasonable people would conclude the CIA. People who want to talk out the side of their necks would say, Powell.

Finally, whatever Colin Powell’s opinion was in 2001, if he was brief by the CIA in 2003 who said matters were now different; what was Powell to do? Reasonable people would conclude he was to rely upon the CIA. People who want to talk out of the side of their necks would say he should have said Fuck the CIA, I (Powell) believe there are now apes on the moon, though I have no proof of the same.

If you want to continue this, please do a couple of things for me: (1) respond with evidence or writings to support your points; (2) refrain from writing long drawn out bullshit that does not relate to the issues we are trying to discuss; (3) try to stay on point; and (4) leave out your unsupported, unsubstantiated opinion,

QueEx

Notes:

[1] You’re not the first to raise this issue, please see: Liberal Media?, White-Out of bush’s Impeachable Offense!!! at posts 57, 58, 64, et seq at http://www.bgol.us/board/showthread.php?t=36440&highlight=liberal+media+iraq&page=2

[2] Unfortunately, as usual, I am quite busy towards the end of the year. Makkonen bumped this thread a couple of times to remind me that he was awaiting a reply and I advised that I would. I am serious about whether Colin just lied and I wanted to do some research to see if I had missed something, especially as Makk pointed out, a lot happened in the aftermath of Katrina in which I had a bit of a hiatus. Therefore, between closing out the year; working current cases; preparing for the holidays and researching matters related to Colin and Iraq, I didn’t get around to “The Theory”.

[3] The NIE Report: Solving a Geopolitical Problem with Iran
By George Friedman
December 3, 2007

The United States released a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Dec. 3. It said, "We judge with high confidence that in the fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." It went on to say, "Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005." It further said, "Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs."

With this announcement, the dynamics of the Middle Eastern region, Iraq and U.S.-Iranian relations shift dramatically. For one thing, the probability of a unilateral strike against Iranian nuclear targets is gone. Since there is no Iranian nuclear weapons program, there is no rationale for a strike. Moreover, if Iran is not engaged in weapons production, then a broader air campaign designed to destabilize the Iranian regime has no foundation either.

The NIE release represents a transformation of U.S. policy toward Iran. The Bush administration made Iran's nuclear weapons program the main reason for its attempt to create an international coalition against Iran, on the premise that a nuclear-armed Iran was unacceptable. If there is no Iranian nuclear program, then what is the rationale for the coalition? Moreover, what is the logic of resisting Iran's efforts in Iraq, rather than cooperating?

In looking at the report, a number of obvious questions come up. First, how did the intelligence community reach the wrong conclusion in the spring of 2005, when it last released an NIE on Iran, and what changed by 2007? Also, why did the United States reach the wrong conclusions on Iran three years after its program was halted? There are two possible answers.

One is intelligence failure and the other is political redefinition.Both must be explored. Let's begin with intelligence failure. Intelligence is not an easy task. Knowing what is going on inside of a building is harder than it might seem. Regardless of all the technical capabilities -- from imagery in all spectra to sensing radiation leakage at a distance -- huge uncertainties always remain. Failing to get a positive reading does not mean the facility is not up and running. It might just have been obscured, or the technical means to discover it are insufficient. The default setting in technical intelligence is that, while things can be ruled in, they cannot simply be ruled out by lack of evidence.

You need to go into the building. Indeed, you need to go into many buildings, look around, see what is happening and report back. Getting into highly secure buildings may be easy in the movies. It is not easy in real life. Getting someone into the building who knows what he is seeing is even harder. Getting him out alive to report back, and then repeating the process in other buildings, is even harder. It can be done -- though not easily or repeatedly.
Recruiting someone who works in the building is an option, but at the end of the day you have to rely on his word as to what he saw. That too, is a risk. He might well be a double agent who is inventing information to make money, or he could just be wrong. There is an endless number of ways that recruiting on-site sources can lead you to the wrong conclusion.

Source-based intelligence would appear to be the only way to go. Obviously, it is better to glean information from someone who knows what is going on, rather than to guess. But the problem with source-based intelligence is that, when all is said and done, you can still be just as confused -- or more confused -- than you were at the beginning. You could wind up with a mass of intelligence that can be read either way. It is altogether possible to have so many sources, human and technical, that you have no idea what the truth is. That is when an intelligence organization is most subject to political pressure. When the intelligence could go either way, politics can tilt the system. We do not know what caused the NIE to change its analysis. It could be the result of new, definitive intelligence, or existing intelligence could have been reread from a new political standpoint.

Consider the politics. The assumption was that Iran wanted to develop nuclear weapons -- though its motivations for wanting to do so were never clear to us. First, the Iranians had to assume that, well before they had an operational system, the United States or Israel would destroy it. In other words, it would be a huge effort for little profit. Second, assume that it developed one or two weapons and attacked Israel, for example. Israel might well have been destroyed, but Iran would probably be devastated by an Israeli or U.S. counterstrike. What would be the point?

For Iran to be developing nuclear weapons, it would have to have been prepared to take extraordinary risks. A madman theory, centered around the behavior of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was essential. But as the NIE points out, Iran was "guided by a cost-benefit approach." In simple terms, the Iranians weren't nuts. That is why they didn't build a nuclear program.

That is not to say Iran did not benefit from having the world believe it was building nuclear weapons. The United States is obsessed with nuclear weapons in the hands of states it regards as irrational. By appearing to be irrational and developing nuclear weapons, the Iranians created a valuable asset to use in negotiating with the Americans. The notion of a nuclear weapon in Iranian hands appeared so threatening that the United States might well negotiate away other things -- particularly in Iraq -- in exchange for a halt of the program. Or so the Iranians hoped. Therefore, while they halted development on their weapons program, they were not eager to let the Americans relax. They swung back and forth between asserting their right to operate the program and denying they had one. Moreover, they pushed hard for a civilian power program, which theoretically worried the world less. It drove the Americans up a wall -- precisely where the Iranians wanted them.

As we have argued, the central issue for Iran is not nuclear weapons. It is the future of Iraq. The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 was the defining moment in modern Iranian history. It not only devastated Iran, but also weakened the revolution internally. Above all, Tehran never wants to face another Iraqi regime that has the means and motivation to wage war against Iran. That means the Iranians cannot tolerate a Sunni-dominated government that is heavily armed and backed by the United States. Nor, for that matter, does Tehran completely trust Iraq's fractured Shiite bloc with Iran's national security. Iran wants to play a critical role in defining the nature, policies and capabilities of the Iraqi regime.

The recent U.S. successes in Iraq, however limited and transitory they might be, may have caused the Iranians to rethink their view on dealing with the Americans on Iraq. The Americans, regardless of progress, cannot easily suppress all of the Shiite militias. The Iranians cannot impose a regime on Iraq, though they can destabilize the process. A successful outcome requires a degree of cooperation -- and recent indications suggest that Iran is prepared to provide that cooperation.

That puts the United States in an incredibly difficult position. On the one hand, it needs Iran for the endgame in Iraq. On the other, negotiating with Iran while it is developing nuclear weapons runs counter to fundamental U.S. policies and the coalition it was trying to construct. As long as Iran was building nuclear weapons, working with Iran on Iraq was impossible.

The NIE solves a geopolitical problem for the United States. Washington cannot impose a unilateral settlement on Iraq, nor can it sustain forever the level of military commitment it has made to Iraq. There are other fires starting to burn around the world. At the same time, Washington cannot work with Tehran while it is building nuclear weapons. Hence, the NIE: While Iran does have a nuclear power program, it is not building nuclear weapons.

Perhaps there was a spectacular and definitive intelligence breakthrough that demonstrated categorically that the prior assessments were wrong. Proving a negative is tough, and getting a definitive piece of intelligence is hard. Certainly, no matter how definitive the latest intelligence might have been, a lot of people want Iran to be building a nuclear weapon, so the debate over the meaning of this intelligence would have roared throughout the intelligence community and the White House. Keeping such debate this quiet and orderly is not Washington's style.

Perhaps the Iranians are ready to deal, and so decided to open up their facility for the Americans to see. Still, regardless of what the Iranians opened up, some would have argued that the United States was given a tour only of what the Iranians wanted them to see. There is a mention in the report that any Iranian program would be covert rather than overt, and that might reflect such concerns. However, all serious nuclear programs are always covert until they succeed. Nothing is more vulnerable than an incomplete nuclear program.

We are struck by the suddenness of the NIE report. Explosive new intelligence would have been more hotly contested. We suspect two things. First, the intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program consisted of a great number of pieces, many of which were inherently ambiguous and could be interpreted in multiple ways. Second, the weight of evidence for there being an Iranian nuclear program was shaded by the political proclivities of the administration, which saw the threat of a U.S. strike as intimidating Iran, and the weapons program discussion as justifying it. Third, the change in political requirements on both sides made a new assessment useful. This last has certainly been the case in all things Middle Eastern these past few days on issues ranging from the Palestinians to Syria to U.S. forces in Iraq -- so why should this issue be any different?

If this thesis is correct, then we should start seeing some movement on Iraq between the United States and Iran. Certainly the major blocker from the U.S. side has been removed and the success of U.S. policies of late should motivate the Iranians. In any case, the entire framework for U.S.-Iranian relations would appear to have shifted, and with it the structure of geopolitical relations throughout the region.

Intelligence is rarely as important as when it is proven wrong.

`

nyyyyce · Jan 7, 2008

Bush Began to Plan War Three Months After 9/11
Book Says President Called Secrecy Vital

By William Hamilton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 17, 2004; Page A01

Beginning in late December 2001, President Bush met repeatedly with Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his war cabinet to plan the U.S. attack on Iraq even as he and administration spokesmen insisted they were pursuing a diplomatic solution, according to a new book on the origins of the war.

The intensive war planning throughout 2002 created its own momentum, according to "Plan of Attack" by Bob Woodward, fueled in part by the CIA's conclusion that Saddam Hussein could not be removed from power except through a war and CIA Director George J. Tenet's assurance to the president that it was a "slam dunk" case that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Vice President Cheney is described as "steamrolling force" who had developed what some colleagues felt was a "fever" about removing the Iraqi leader by force. (Mark Humphrey -- AP)

In 3 1/2 hours of interviews with Woodward, an assistant managing editor at The Washington Post, Bush said that the secret planning was necessary to avoid "enormous international angst and domestic speculation" and that "war is my absolute last option."

Adding to the momentum, Woodward writes, was the pressure from advocates of war inside the administration. Vice President Cheney, whom Woodward describes as a "powerful, steamrolling force," led that group and had developed what some of his colleagues felt was a "fever" about removing Hussein by force.

By early January 2003, Bush had made up his mind to take military action against Iraq, according to the book. But Bush was so concerned that the government of his closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, might fall because of his support for Bush that he delayed the war's start until March 19 here (March 20 in Iraq) because Blair asked him to seek a second resolution from the United Nations. Bush later gave Blair the option of withholding British troops from combat, which Blair rejected. "I said I'm with you. I mean it," Blair replied.

Woodward describes a relationship between Cheney and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that became so strained Cheney and Powell are barely on speaking terms. Cheney engaged in a bitter and eventually winning struggle over Iraq with Powell, an opponent of war who believed Cheney was obsessively trying to establish a connection between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network and treated ambiguous intelligence as fact.

Powell felt Cheney and his allies -- his chief aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz; and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell called Feith's "Gestapo" office -- had established what amounted to a separate government. The vice president, for his part, believed Powell was mainly concerned with his own popularity and told friends at a dinner he hosted a year ago celebrating the outcome of the war that Powell was a problem and "always had major reservations about what we were trying to do."

Before the war with Iraq, Powell bluntly told Bush that if he sent U.S. troops there "you're going to be owning this place." Powell and his deputy and closest friend, Richard L. Armitage, used to refer to what they called "the Pottery Barn rule" on Iraq: "You break it, you own it," according to Woodward.

But, when asked personally by the president, Powell agreed to make the U.S. case against Hussein at the United Nations in February 2003, a presentation described by White House communications director Dan Bartlett as "the Powell buy-in." Bush wanted someone with Powell's credibility to present the evidence that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, a case the president had initially found less than convincing when presented to him by CIA Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin at a White House meeting on Dec. 21, 2002.

McLaughlin's version used communications intercepts, satellite photos, diagrams and other intelligence. "Nice try," Bush said when the CIA official was finished, according to the book. "I don't think this quite -- it's not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from."

He then turned to Tenet, McLaughlin's boss, and said, "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD, and this is the best we've got?"

"It's a slam-dunk case," Tenet replied, throwing his arms in the air. Bush pressed him again. "George, how confident are you?"

"Don't worry, it's a slam dunk," Tenet repeated.

Tenet later told associates he should have said the evidence on weapons was not ironclad, according to Woodward. After the CIA director made a rare public speech in February defending the CIA's handling of intelligence about Iraq, Bush called him to say he had done "a great job."

In his previous book, "Bush at War," Woodward described the administration's response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001: its decision to attack the Taliban government in Afghanistan and its increasing focus on Iraq. His new book is a narrative history of how Bush and his administration launched the war on Iraq. It is based on interviews with more than 75 people, including Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

On Nov. 21, 2001, 72 days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush directed Rumsfeld to begin planning for war with Iraq. "Let's get started on this," Bush recalled saying. "And get Tommy Franks looking at what it would take to protect America by removing Saddam Hussein if we have to." He also asked: Could this be done on a basis that would not be terribly noticeable?

Bush received his first detailed briefing on Iraq war plans five weeks later, on Dec. 28, when Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the head of the U.S. Central Command, visited Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Tex. Bush told reporters afterward that they had discussed Afghanistan.

While it has been previously reported that Bush directed the Pentagon to begin considering options for an invasion of Iraq immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush's order to Rumsfeld began an intensive process in which Franks worked in secret with a small staff, talked almost daily with the defense secretary and met about once a month with Bush.

This week, the president acknowledged that the violent uprising against U.S. troops in Iraq has resulted in "a tough, tough series of weeks for the American people." But he insisted that his course of action in Iraq has been the correct one in language that echoed what he told Woodward more than four months ago.

In two interviews with Woodward in December, Bush minimized the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction, expressed no doubts about his decision to invade Iraq, and enunciated an activist role for the United States based on it being "the beacon for freedom in the world."

"I believe we have a duty to free people," Bush told Woodward. "I would hope we wouldn't have to do it militarily, but we have a duty."

The president described praying as he walked outside the Oval Office after giving the order to begin combat operations against Iraq, and the powerful role his religious beliefs played throughout that time.

"Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. . . . I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible. And then, of course, I pray for personal strength and for forgiveness."

The president told Woodward: "I am prepared to risk my presidency to do what I think is right. I was going to act. And if it could cost the presidency, I fully realized that. But I felt so strongly that it was the right thing to do that I was prepared to do so."

Asked by Woodward how history would judge the war, Bush replied: "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."

The president told Woodward he was cooperating on his book because he wanted the story of how the United States had gone to war in Iraq to be told. He said it would be a blueprint of historical significance that "will enable other leaders, if they feel like they have to go to war, to spare innocent citizens and their lives."

"But the news of this, in my judgment," Bush added, "the big news out of this isn't how George W. makes decisions. To me the big news is America has changed how you fight and win war, and therefore makes it easier to keep the peace in the long run. And that's the historical significance of this book, as far as I'm concerned."

Bush's critics have questioned whether he and his administration were focused on Iraq rather than terrorism when they took office early in 2001 and even after the Sept. 11 attacks. Former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill and former White House counterterrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke have made that charge in recently published memoirs.

According to "Plan of Attack," it was Cheney who was particularly focused on Iraq before the terrorist attacks. Before Bush's inauguration, Cheney sent word to departing Defense Secretary William S. Cohen that he wanted the traditional briefing given an incoming president to be a serious "discussion about Iraq and different options." Bush specifically assigned Cheney to focus as vice president on intelligence scenarios, particularly the possibility that terrorists would obtain nuclear or biological weapons.

Early discussions among the administration's national security "principals" -- Cheney, Powell, Tenet and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice -- and their deputies focused on how to weaken Hussein diplomatically. But Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz proposed sending in the military to seize Iraq's southern oil fields and establish the area as a foothold from which opposition groups could overthrow Hussein.

Powell dismissed the plan as "lunacy," according to Woodward, and told Bush what he thought. "You don't have to be bullied into this," Powell said.

Bush told Woodward he never saw a formal plan for a quick strike. "The idea may have floated around as an interesting nugget to chew on," he said.

White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., according to Woodward, compared Bush to a circus rider with one foot on a "diplomacy" steed and the other on a "war" steed, both heading toward the same destination: regime change in Iraq. When it was clear that diplomacy would not get him to his goal, Card said, Bush let go of that horse and rode the one called war.

But as the planning proceeded, the administration began taking steps that Woodward describes as helping to make war inevitable. On Feb. 16, 2002, Bush signed an intelligence finding that directed the CIA to help the military overthrow Hussein and conduct operations within Iraq. At the time, according to "Plan of Attack," the CIA had only four informants in Iraq and told Bush that it would be impossible to overthrow Hussein through a coup.

In July, a CIA team entered northern Iraq and began to lay the groundwork for covert action, eventually recruiting an extensive network of 87 Iraqi informants code-named ROCKSTARS who gave the U.S. detailed information on Iraqi forces, including a CD-ROM containing the personnel files of the Iraq Special Security Organization (SSO).

Woodward writes that the CIA essentially became an advocate for war first by asserting that covert action would be ineffective, and later by saying that its new network of spies would be endangered if the United States did not attack Iraq. Another factor in the gathering momentum were the forces the military began shifting to Kuwait, the pre-positioning that was a key component of Franks's planning.

In the summer of 2002, Bush approved $700 million worth of "preparatory tasks" in the Persian Gulf region such as upgrading airfields, bases, fuel pipelines and munitions storage depots to accommodate a massive U.S. troop deployment. The Bush administration funded the projects from a supplemental appropriations bill for the war in Afghanistan and old appropriations, keeping Congress unaware of the reprogramming of money and the eventual cost.

During that summer, Powell and Cheney engaged in some of their sharpest debates. Powell argued that the United States should take its case to the United Nations, which Cheney said was a waste of time. Woodward had described some of that conflict in "Bush at War."

Among Powell's allies was Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Bush's father, who wrote an op-ed piece against the war for the Wall Street Journal. After it was published in August 2002, Powell thanked Scowcroft for giving him "some running room." But Rice called Scowcroft to tell her former boss that it looked as if he was speaking for Bush's father and that the article was a slap at the incumbent president.

Despite Powell's admonitions to the president, "Plan of Attack" suggests it was Blair who may have played a more critical role in persuading Bush to seek a resolution from the United Nations. At a meeting with the president at Camp David in early September, Blair backed Bush on Iraq but said he needed to show he had tried U.N. diplomacy. Bush agreed, and later referred to the Camp David session with Blair as "the cojones meeting," using a colloquial Spanish term for courage.

After the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution authorizing the resumption of weapons inspections in Iraq, Bush became increasingly impatient with their effectiveness and the role of chief weapons inspector Hans Blix. Shortly after New Year's 2003, he told Rice at his Texas ranch: "We're not winning. Time is not on our side here. Probably going to have to, we're going to have to go to war."

Bush said much the same thing to White House political adviser Karl Rove, who had gone to Crawford to brief him on plans for his reelection campaign. In the next 10 days, Bush also made his decision known to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Bandar, who helped arrange Saudi cooperation with the U.S. military, feared Saudi interests would be damaged if Bush did not follow through on attacking Hussein, and became another advocate for war.

According to "Plan of Attack," Bush asked Rice and his longtime communications adviser, Karen Hughes, whether he should attack Iraq, but he did not specifically ask Powell or Rumsfeld. "I could tell what they thought," the president said. "I didn't need to ask their opinion about Saddam Hussein or how to deal with Saddam Hussein. If you were sitting where I sit, you could be pretty clear."

Rumsfeld, whom Woodward interviewed for three hours, is portrayed in the book as a "defense technocrat" intimately involved with details of the war planning but not focused on the need to attack Iraq in the same way that Cheney and some of Rumsfeld's subordinates such as Wolfowitz and Feith were.

Bush told Powell of his decision in a brief meeting in the White House. Evidently concerned about Powell's reaction, he said, "Are you with me on this? I think I have to do this. I want you with me."

"I'll do the best I can," Powell answered. "Yes, sir, I will support you. I'm with you, Mr. President."

Bush said he did not remember asking the question of his father, former president George H.W. Bush, who fought Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But, he added that the two had discussed developments in Iraq.

"You know he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to," Bush said.

Describing what the 41st president said to him about Iraq, the 43rd president told Woodward:

"It was less 'Here's how you have to take care of the guy [Hussein]' and more 'I've been through what you've been through and I know what's happening and therefore I love you' would be a more accurate way to describe it."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17347-2004Apr16.html
----------------------------------------------------------------

"Finally, whatever Colin Powell’s opinion was in 2001, if he was brief by the CIA in 2003 who said matters were now different; what was Powell to do? Reasonable people would conclude he was to rely upon the CIA. People who want to talk out of the side of their necks would say he should have said Fuck the CIA, I (Powell) believe there are now apes on the moon, though I have no proof of the same."

Since you have to be spoon fed here we go:

1. If Powell said that Saddam was no threat in Feb 2001 (as my video clip stated) and Bush had plans to attack Iraq in Dec. 2001 then that is not 2003 when the decision was "officially" made to go to war right?

Then that means that NOTHING F-N changed in a 9 month period as far as Saddam's WMD and munitions capabilities were concerned.

Therefore, there was no case for war, but there was a CASE TO BE MADE to sell the war later. Powell knew it.

2. Powell and Cheney were bitter rivals. Powell was distrustful of Cheney. Most or damn near all of the CIA's information on Iraq had Cheney's seal of approval. Your lengthy article on the "fracas" cause over the information in the report is a not- so- clever ruse that most sheeple use to defend Powell and this administration.

Powell KNEW that Iraq was in no way a threat in Feb. 2001 and he also knew that there were plans to attack Iraq in Dec. 2001. Powell, just like those in the White House knew, as the article states: "Vice President Cheney, whom Woodward describes as a "powerful, steamrolling force," led that group and had developed what some of his colleagues felt was a "fever" about removing Hussein by force."

Since this is FACT, Powell in 2003, before the UN, would not be making a sincere or LEGITIMATE argument on Saddam's WMD's. However, he would be arguing to embroil the US in an occupation that was hatched nearly 2 years prior. I know you won't see that. That's why I have the spoon and you are wearing the bib.

3. Lastly: "Powell agreed to make the U.S. case against Hussein at the United Nations in February 2003, a presentation described by White House communications director Dan Bartlett as "the Powell buy-in." Bush wanted someone with Powell's credibility to present the evidence that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, a case the president had initially found less than convincing when presented to him by CIA Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin at a White House meeting on Dec. 21, 2002.

Powell was not convinced nor did he want to make the case, but he did. "I'll do the best I can," Powell answered. "Yes, sir, I will support you. I'm with you, Mr. President." No integrity, no conviction, no nohing. He did so intentionally knowing that his credibility was necessary to sell the deal. He did so knowing that the information was less than credible even though he was told it was a slam dunk. He did so KNOWING the consequences of "breaking" Iraq. He did so KNOWING that even though it was roughly 2years after his speech about Iraq's inept military capabilities a decision was made to go to war less than 9 months after he assured the world that Iraq was harmless.

You want to know what "specific" lie Powell told? Everything he said - period. It was disproved when we got there, but there was nothing to actually find because they were INTENTIONAL lies. It was also his presence and credibility he lent to all the misleading and ultimately false statements he made at the UN that help persuade the sheepish masses back the Bush war fiasco. You somehow disconnect the fact that just because when we went into Iraq that what he said was found to be false ALSO could mean that he did not know, before hand, that his entire case was wrong when he went to the UN. Only in Karl Rove's world, and yours, would that convoluted logic be linear.

Now that I have fed you "the facts" let me ask you your own question. Do you think he uttered the falsehood knowing it to be false with the intent to mislead the American people?

I know what the answer is. I knew it when I responded months ago. I just did not think you were seriously asking what lie he told. That you seem to need a "paint by numbers deception coloring book" is disheartening, but acceptable from you.

mcboob · Jan 7, 2008

QueEx said:
I agree in toto that he had George Tenet sit behind at that appearance before the U.N. because the was relying, primarily, upon information supplied by the CIA. But whats your evidence that Powell knew the information supplied by the CIA to be bogus ???

QueEx

Yo, my man knew he was lying-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,967548,00.html

QueEx · Jan 7, 2008

mcboob said:
Yo, my man knew he was lying-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,967548,00.html

If you would be so kind to point exactly which portion of the article that you are relying upon, I would appreciate it.

Thanks in advance,

QueEx

QueEx · Jan 7, 2008

nyyyyce said:
Since you have to be spoon fed here we go:

1. If Powell said that Saddam was no threat in Feb 2001 (as my video clip stated) and Bush had plans to attack Iraq in Dec. 2001 then that is not 2003 when the decision was "officially" made to go to war right?

Then that means that NOTHING F-N changed in a 9 month period as far as Saddam's WMD and munitions capabilities were concerned.

Therefore, there was no case for war, but there was a CASE TO BE MADE to sell the war later. Powell knew it.

WRONG. Whatever Powell said in 2001, both the articles that I posted and the ones that you posted clearly show that Powell was briefed in late January - early February 2003 by the CIA for the February 5, 2003 U.N. speech and that the speech was written by the CIA.

To say that nothing happened between 01 and 03 (the CIA briefing) is ludicrous. You cannot simply overlook the 2003 intelligence briefing.

2. Powell and Cheney were bitter rivals.

Irrelevant; except its been shown that Cheney's boy Scooter Libby tried to get uncorroborated information inserted into Colin's speech but that was caught by Powell's boy, Wilkerson.

Powell was distrustful of Cheney.

Irrelevant; except it goes to show why Powell had to watch his back.

Most or damn near all of the CIA's information on Iraq had Cheney's seal of approval.

The articles point out that Cheney (via Scooter Libby) were trying to influence the speech with a bunch of bullslhit.

Your lengthy article on the "fracas" cause over the information in the report is a not- so- clever ruse that most sheeple use to defend Powell and this administration.

Man stop tripping or we'll need to stop this discourse. The articles stand on their own. They aren't mine; I didn't write them. If you can stand any one of them on their heads, be my guess; hopefully then we will get closer to truth. If you can't attack the articles, please stop trying to attack me instead.

Powell KNEW that Iraq was in no way a threat in Feb. 2001 and he also knew that there were plans to attack Iraq in Dec. 2001. Powell, just like those in the White House knew, as the article states:[/B][/COLOR] "Vice President Cheney, whom Woodward describes as a "powerful, steamrolling force," led that group and had developed what some of his colleagues felt was a "fever" about removing Hussein by force."
[/B]

I can agree with most of what you just said. Now, look at the quantum leap you're about to make:

Since this is FACT, Powell in 2003, before the UN, would not be making a sincere or LEGITIMATE argument on Saddam's WMD's.

Really??? The paragraph just above doesn't say that. In fact, the only way that you can say this is to TOTALLY IGNORE the CIA briefing in late January early February 2003.

However, he would be arguing to embroil the US in an occupation that was hatched nearly 2 years prior. I know you won't see that. That's why I have the spoon and you are wearing the bib.

He didn't have to be a part of a plan hatched 2 years before; he didn't have to have been a part of plan hatched 2 minutes before he was asked to make the case before the U.N. or 2 minutes before the time he was brief by the CIA. Why? Because the CIA gave to Powell what it claimed was (1) the latest and (2) the truth. From that moment forward, that changed everything.

3. Lastly:

[/B] "Powell agreed to make the U.S. case against Hussein at the United Nations in February 2003, a presentation described by White House communications director Dan Bartlett as "the Powell buy-in." Bush wanted someone with Powell's credibility to present the evidence that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, a case the president had initially found less than convincing when presented to him by CIA Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin at a White House meeting on Dec. 21, 2002.

I don't disagree with anything in this paragraph. The articles that we've posted all tend to agree with this statement.

Powell was not convinced nor did he want to make the case, but he did. "I'll do the best I can," Powell answered. "Yes, sir, I will support you. I'm with you, Mr. President."

Click to expand...

So, he didn't want to do it. But you still have not pointed out that Powell knewthat what the CIA had just told him was, wrong. Still, you make the next "factless" assertion:

No integrity, no conviction, no nohing.

Click to expand...

All your opinion and not based on fact. The man did his damn job. He was brief by what is supposed to be one of the best intelligtence agencies in the world. He relied upon it; and he made the case to the U.N. in relianced upon the CIA.

What more should he have done ???

He did so intentionally knowing that his credibility was necessary to sell the deal.

Click to expand...

Okay.

He did so knowing that the information was less than credible even though he was told it was a slam dunk.

Click to expand...

Perhaps. The articles point out that he was skeptical, hence, the several meetings with George Tenet before the speech. Also recall, at each meeting with Tenet, Tenet reasserted that the information was good. This is the got damn CIA Chief; not somebody on BGOL guessing out their ass. If you can't rely on the CIA CHIEF for the damn truth, we're all in trouble. As it turns out, we're in trouble.

He did so KNOWING the consequences of "breaking" Iraq.

Click to expand...

Can't argue with you there.

He did so KNOWING that even though it was roughly 2years after his speech about Iraq's inept military capabilities a decision was made to go to war less than 9 months after he assured the world that Iraq was harmless.

Click to expand...

NO. He made the damn speech KNOWING that the CIA had advised him that matters had changed. Why do you keep ignoring this?

QueEx

nyyyyce · Jan 7, 2008

"He didn't have to be a part of a plan hatched 2 years before; he didn't have to have been a part of plan hatched 2 minutes before he was asked to make the case before the U.N. or 2 minutes before the time he was brief by the CIA. Why? Because the CIA gave to Powell what it claimed was (1) the latest and (2) the truth. From that moment forward, that changed everything."

Que,

I can see there is no amount of evidence, logical deduction or material that will change your view. Therefore I will leave you with this. Powell knew about the plan in Dec 2001. Top White House/administration people knew. If you are going to attempt to tell me that because the exact line "Powell knew full well too in 2001" was not inserted into the article then not only would I be spoon feeding you but I would be helping you chew. That would be insane.

Again, Powell was adamant that Iraq was NOT a threat in early 2001, but plans to invade Iraq were on the table in December of that same year . When Colin said: “He (Saddam) has NOT developed any significant capabilities with respect to Weapons of Mass Destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.” he was firm and resolute. Therefore, you interject the lag time between 2001 and 2003 as the appropriate interval of time watch the administration change their view on Iraq. IT WAS NOT A 2 YEAR WINDOW - IT WAS 9 MONTHS from when Powell gave his speech. Powell was NOT making a case against Iraq's WMD's, at the UN, based on NEW conclusive evidence. Why this fact eludes you is mystifying?!?!?!? He was INTENTIONALLY lying and misleading the public at the behest of the president - period.

He was going to sell the war and change his stance to be on board with what the administration wanted.. HE LIED. Bush LIED. Cheney LIED. Libbey LIED, got caught, and was F-N commuted. If you want to delude yourself that my statements - backed by facts - are only conjecture and speculation then so be it. Then there is a heap of missing WMD's, aluminum tubes and yellow cake out there still yet to be found isn't there... Oooops, no there isn't, right Que? "Powell was given faulty information that he fought over before he addressed the UN that's why we have not found blah, blah, blah..." BS.

NO, If he was a man of integrity he would have resigned. If he was that wary of Cheney and his intentions, and knew all the information he was receiving was coming from the CIA (via Cheney), he "should" have walked away from the speech altogether. He would not have endorsed the makeshift "evidence". He would not have given the lie a face...His.

I respectfully agree to disagree with your assessment of Colin Powell's culpability and dubious complicity in the selling of debacle that is the Iraq occupation. That is all.

Peace.

QueEx · Jan 7, 2008

nyyyyce said:
"He didn't have to be a part of a plan hatched 2 years before; he didn't have to have been a part of plan hatched 2 minutes before he was asked to make the case before the U.N. or 2 minutes before the time he was brief by the CIA. Why? Because the CIA gave to Powell what it claimed was (1) the latest and (2) the truth. From that moment forward, that changed everything."

Face it, that 2003 briefing ruins your argument, hence, you chose to act as if it didn't happen or, if it did, it didn't make a difference. What convenience.

Que,

I can see there is no amount of evidence, logical deduction or material that will change your view. Therefore I will leave you with this. Powell knew about the plan in Dec 2001. Top White House/administration people knew. If you are going to attempt to tell me that because the exact line "Powell knew full well too in 2001" was not inserted into the article then not only would I be spoon feeding you but I would be helping you chew. That would be insane.

Yada, yada fukkinYada. You can't fukkin show it -- but you keep telling us what "YOU BELIEVE". Fuck whatcha believe, its just your opinion. What you can't do is expand your opinion into credible fact. Don't worry, it happens all the time when people step waaaay over their heads and refuse to acknowledge when they are wrong.

Why do I give a shit either way???? Because we need to know the truth. Blaming someone because you don't like them doesn't do anyone an iota of good. Hell, if Colin knew the real deal and lied to mislead us, dammit I want to know. I try not to make allegations unless I've got a reasonable factual basis to do so.

Again, Powell was adamant that Iraq was NOT a threat in early 2001, but plans to invade Iraq were on the table in December of that same year .

When Colin said: “He (Saddam) has NOT developed any significant capabilities with respect to Weapons of Mass Destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.” he was firm and resolute.

Therefore, you interject the lag time between 2001 and 2003 as the appropriate interval of time watch the administration change their view on Iraq. IT WAS NOT A 2 YEAR WINDOW - IT WAS 9 MONTHS from when Powell gave his speech.

Click to expand...

9 months, 9 minutes. 9 seconds. Did the CIA not brief Colin Powell after he was selected by Bush to make the U.N. presentation ???? Was that not after Coliin had made whatever statements in 2001 or at any time prior to the CIA briefing ??? Did Colin make any of the statements that you're talking about AFTER THE CIA BRIEFING ???

Powell was NOT making a case against Iraq's WMD's, at the UN, based on NEW conclusive evidence. Why this fact eludes you is mystifying?!?!?!? He was INTENTIONALLY lying and misleading the public at the behest of the president - period.

Click to expand...

Bro, you're making me think you're fukkin delusional. He made the got damn case after the CIA late January/early Feburary 2003 briefing; and the speech was first put together by the CIA. Is that not the fucking truth ???

I respectfully agree to disagree with your assessment of Colin Powell's culpability and dubious complicity in the selling of debacle that is the Iraq occupation. That is all.

Click to expand...

And I respectfully agree to disagree with your factless assessment, as well. If you would have had something to rely upon, other than your guess and surmise, you would have done so, hence, its best we just leave this alone.

BTW, you've wrongfully assumed my position on the invasion. But, you wrongfully assume a lot of shit.

QueEx

nyyyyce · Jan 7, 2008

Powell was NOT making a case against Iraq's WMD's, at the UN, based on NEW conclusive evidence. Why this fact eludes you is mystifying?!?!?!? He was INTENTIONALLY lying and misleading the public at the behest of the president - period.

"Bro, you're making me think you're fukkin delusional. He made the got damn case after the CIA late January/early Feburary 2003 briefing; and the speech was first put together by the CIA. Is that not the fucking truth ???"

If the plans to invade Iraq were already in motion in 2001, and the fact that CurveBall was a sham, the Niger yellow cake hoax was actually a thesis paper by a grad student and there was never a hint of nuclear materials then why the F*** am I delusional?!? POWELL STATED THAT IRAQ WAS CONTAINED EARLIER IN THAT SAME YEAR! Why does not ONE thing reported in the report not hold water after we invade - BECAUSE IT DIDN'T HOLD WATER WHEN IT WAS MANUFACTURED! It was all lies from the beginning and thrown together by a collection of liars and opportunist. (insert "that's your 'unfounded' assumption again" in 5...4...3...2...)

Yes, the speech was put together by the CIA (aka Cheney). He is the one who released the hounds on Valerie and her husband as Joe tried to expose the F-N truth. He is also a PNAC disciple. Yes, the CIA wrote the info, but they had been cooking it since 2001! They were not going to tell the American public: "We are going to invade Iraq in two years. We have to make up S*** that won't pan out later, but it has to make sense now. We have absolutely NO credible evidence to validate the invasion" Are you F-N insane?!? Again, I agree to disagree.

BTW, you were right. I assumed a lot of S***. My most erroneous conclusion was that I was interacting with an objective person capable of using basic deductive powers to process information. I was sorely wrong.

Peace

QueEx · Jan 7, 2008

nyyyyce said:
Powell was NOT making a case against Iraq's WMD's, at the UN, based on NEW conclusive evidence. Why this fact eludes you is mystifying?!?!?!? He was INTENTIONALLY lying and misleading the public at the behest of the president - period.

I agree (though neither of us know what Colin knew at the time: (1) because we weren't in his head; and (2) those thoughts as related by Powell haven't been printed yet). He made the case based on whatever evidence (old, new, or none) that the CIA presented to him in the 03 briefing and speech.

Agree ______

Disagree ______

QueEx said:
"Bro, you're making me think you're fukkin delusional. He made the got damn case after the CIA late January/early Feburary 2003 briefing; and the speech was first put together by the CIA. Is that not the fucking truth ???"

Agree _____

Disagree _____

If the plans to invade Iraq were already in motion in 2001, and the fact that CurveBall was a sham, the Niger yellow cake hoax was actually a thesis paper by a grad student and there was never a hint of nuclear materials then why the F*** am I delusional?!? POWELL STATED THAT IRAQ WAS CONTAINED EARLIER IN THAT SAME YEAR!

(1) Where did Powell say he knew that Curveball was a sham ???

Response: _________________________________________

(2) What evidence do you have that Powell knew of the yellow cake fiasco?

Response: __________________________________________

(3) Does the fact that Colin said Iraq was contained earlier in the year also mean that Colin was aware on February 5, 2003 that Curveball didn't know what the fuck he was talking about?

Yes ____

No ____

If yes, please state in detail every fact or reason to support your conclusion (and please omit your guesses, surmise, opinion, etc.).

Why does not ONE thing reported in the report not hold water after we invade - BECAUSE IT DIDN'T HOLD WATER WHEN IT WAS MANUFACTURED! It was all lies from the beginning and thrown together by a collection of liars and opportunist. (insert "that's your 'unfounded' assumption again" in 5...4...3...2...)

Click to expand...

HUH ??? I would presume that whatever didn't hold water later didn't hold because it was, wrong. We're not talking here about what was merely said at one point that didn't turn out to be true later. What we're talking about here is did Powelll "Know" it was wrong at the earlier point. If, as you say so, he did, what do you base that upon, other than your mere conjecture, speculation and guess ????

_______________________________________

_______________________________________

_______________________________________.

(No conjecture, speculation and guess please)

Yes, the speech was put together by the CIA (aka Cheney). He is the one who released the hounds on Valerie and her husband as Joe tried to expose the F-N truth. He is also a PNAC disciple. Yes, the CIA wrote the info,

Click to expand...

Finally (after damn near having to pull your teeth, you admit the obvious).

but

Click to expand...

Oh shit, lol, I knew it wouldn't last

they had been cooking it since 2001! They were not going to tell the American public: "We are going to invade Iraq in two years. We have to make up S*** that won't pan out later, but it has to make sense now. We have absolutely NO credible evidence to validate the invasion"

Click to expand...

I probably don't disagree with much you've said here. However, none of it goes to prove the one damn thing where talking about here: that Colin Powell knew, at the time he made that bloody speech, that the information the CIA gave him was just damn wrong.

QueEx

Colin Powell: Iran Far From Nuclear Weapon

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