Powell's Own Staff Discredited The "Evidence" Before His Speech

by Steve

Well, so much for Colin Powell trying any more to distance himself from his own tawdry role in misleading the country and the world about Saddam’s WMD capabilities. Up until now, Powell’s spin operation has been successful in putting out the story that the material he was given by the intelligence community for his now infamous February 5, 2003 was so flimsy that he threw the draft speech he got from Cheney’s office up into the air. Notwithstanding the complaints from State’s own intel experts like Greg Theilman and others about the Cheney/Chalabi allegations of Saddam’s capabilities, the Los Angeles Times reports today that much of the satellite and other evidence that Powell ended up presenting had been challenged by Powell’s own staff, yet Powell went with it anyway.

It’s one thing for Powell to push this debacle off onto the CIA and by inference the White House. It’s another thing for Powell to have known that his own people thought the satellite images and other pictures were suspect, and yet he went with them anyway. There’s a limit to being a good soldier General, and you have far exceeded it a long time ago. As a result of your complicity in this, you gave the White House a cover for an enterprise that has cost the lives of hundreds of the soldiers you claim to care about.