Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post on Powell Says New Data May Have Affected War Decision:
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday that he does not know whether he would have recommended an invasion of Iraq if he had been told it had no stockpiles of banned weapons, even as he offered a broad defense of the Bush administration's decision to go to war.
Of couse you would have recommended war Mr. Secretary. After all, aren't the citizens of Iraq better off now? The coming decade of occupation, an overworked and overstretched military and the daily guerrilla warfare was all worth it. Wasn't it, Mr. Secretary? Will it still be worth it once our troops suffer a Beirut style bombing?
Of course, in the end, we just HAD to get the bad man before he nuked us with nukes he didn't have. And 500+ Americans are dead and 10,000 wounded with less than one year into this occupation. I shudder to think what the number will be once, if, we finally depart this sovereign nation's land.
Asked if he would have recommended an invasion knowing Iraq had no prohibited weapons, Powell replied: "I don't know, because it was the stockpile that presented the final little piece that made it more of a real and present danger and threat to the region and to the world." He said the "absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus; it changes the answer you get."
General, General, General, there was plenty of news coverage prior to the war and your endorsement of said war that indicated the intelligence was flawed. This is no sudden revelation. Ya'll knew or suspected, just like I did, that the intel was jacked-up. It wasn't a secret, so stop pretending. Stop taking arrows for your boss. Be a man about it and let the President suffer his own consequences.
Powell said, "Saddam Hussein and his regime clearly had the intent — they never lost it — an intent that manifested itself many years ago when they actually used such horrible weapons against their enemies in Iran and against their own people."
Yes, and the current Secretary of Defense was cozying up to Saddam shortly after he "actually used such horrible weapons" to slaughter his "own people." When Secretary Powell takes Rumsfeld and his former boss to task for that disgusting, public coddling of Saddam, then I'll believe he actually gives a damn about the fact that Saddam "actually used such horrible weapons." As long as Rumsfeld and Bush the First continue to get a free pass for associating with a dictator who used chemical weapons on his "own people" I'm not feeling swayed by Powell's excuses.
Powell noted that when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, U.S. troops expected to be hit with chemical weapons. "We weren't hit with chemical weapons but we found chemical weapons," he said. "So it wasn't as if this was a figment of someone's imagination."
Yes, Mr. Secretary, Iraq did possess those weapons. In 1991. When I was there. That's not breaking news. And if you remember, the frigging United States Army, in a fit of utter stupidity, blew up a cache of chemical weapons at Khamisiyah. This demolition exposed a large portion of the deployment force to sarin, cyclosarin and other toxins. A lot of troops died and many suffer still today from their exposures to chemical weapons, courtesy of the United States Army. I seem to remember you were the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when DoD began covering this incident up while troops were dying from mysterious illnesses. Care to comment, Mr. Secretary? How about a little consistency in your campaign to deal with chemical weapons? How about holding the DoD bureaucrats accountable for covering up this chemical weapons tragedy? How about showing as much compassion for the men and women who were exposed to chemical weapons as you do for protecting your boss?