Left I on the News

Appearing on Meet the Press yesterday, Colin Powell continues to defend this statement:

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

He even asserts that "I went to the UN having dumped a lot of stuff on the side of the road because it wasn’t multiple source" (Quite a bit milder than the "I'm not reading this, this is bullshit" quote that's been attributed to him, I might add!).

But that's simply not true. As noted here, one of the most ominous and dramatic claims, the mobile biological weapons labs (a.k.a. "Winnebagoes of death"), came from a single source (Curveball), and now it turns out that Powell was being told by the CIA as recently as the night before the speech to leave that point out.

But in the end, it's all nonsense. Because, to repeat a series of excerpts I posted here, here are some of the "facts" presented by Powell at the U.N.:

"While we were here in this Council chamber debating Resolution 1441 last fall, we know, we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was dispersing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agent to various locations, distributing them to various locations in western Iraq.

"Most of the launchers and warheads had been hidden in large groves of palm trees and were to be moved every one to four weeks to escape detection.

"We know that Iraq has at least seven of these mobile, biological agent factories.

"There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction.

"Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons." [Emphasis added]

In his Meet the Press interview, Powell makes a big point how, with respect to the famous aluminum tubes, he made a point of saying (emphasis added), "Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium." Not that even that was true, by the way, but at least he allowed in that sentence as to some doubt. As far as the other claims, they were assertions, contrary to Powell's claim, and presented as facts, not as "conclusions based on solid intelligence." When you have a "conclusion based on solid intelligence," you say "we think that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons," not "there can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons."

Colin Powell was lying then, and when he says this on Meet the Press, he's lying still:

"The information was faulty, but it wasn’t faulty because people in the intelligence community were lying or trying to deceive. It was faulty because intelligence sometimes can be faulty, and it wasn’t managed properly, it wasn’t processed properly and we should have realized the inadequacy of some of our sourcing earlier. But it wasn’t venal behavior on the part of the intelligence community."

In a word, bullshit.

And, just a reminder - the man who told the truth to Powell's lies, Iraqi General Amer al-Saadi, continues to rot in jail to this day, and still has not been charged with any crime.