And, in smashing, he looses his
last shred of decency and proves that the Bush Administration has turned him into nothing more than a mouthpiece.
Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged Thursday that he had seen no "smoking gun, concrete evidence" of ties between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaida terror network, but insisted that Iraq had had dangerous weapons and needed to be disarmed by force.
At a State Department news conference, Powell disagreed with a private think tank report that maintained Iraq had not been an imminent threat to the United States. And the secretary defended the case he had made last February before the United Nations for a U.S.-led war to force Saddam from power.
"My presentation ... made it clear that we had seen some links and connections to terrorist organizations over time," Powell said. "I have not seen smoking gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I think the possibility of such connections did exist and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did."
A synopsis of the rest of the article: Powell says we went to war because Saddam Hussein merely wanted to have weapons, not because he actually posed any kind of threat at the time.
Powell's words are his own undoing. He mentions his presentation at the U.N., that presentation which convinced so many that Iraq was a threat to us, that presentation where he cited specific examples of what the U.S. believed Saddam had, that presentation which skewed the TRUTH so that America would BELIEVE that Saddam Hussein actually possessed all of these things that the Bush Administration said he did. What was that but deception?
Powell tries to downplay that the Bushies intentionally fabricated or stretched the truth to convince the public, trying to make it seem like naught but a little white lie. I'm sorry, but there's a difference between telling your wife or girlfriend, "No, that dress doesn't make you look fat," and...
"If Iraq had disarmed itself, gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction over the past 12 years, or over the last several months since (UN Resolution) 1441 was enacted, we would not be facing the crisis that we now have before us . . . But the suggestion that we are doing this because we want to go to every country in the Middle East and rearrange all of its pieces is not correct."
...or...
"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more."
...or...
"So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? . . . I think our judgment has to be clearly not."
...or...
"I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now."
Those are all statements which Powell made before and during the war in Iraq. Source: Billmon.
All that Powell has done is to remind the public that he was complicit in a massive scheme to dupe the public into going to war. For that reason, he deserves to go just as much as the rest of them.