FOOL
We’ll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee
there’s no labouring i’ the winter. All that follow
their noses are led by their eyes but blind men; and
there’s not a nose among twenty but can smell him
that’s stinking.

[King Lear, 2.4, 66-71]

This post consists of three parts, all on Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations five years ago about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. Please feel free to skip over any or all of it, as is your wont. Check out Day of Shame for more on this blogswarm. Thanks to VastLeft of Corrente for organizing this, and to Blue Gal for spreading the word.

I. Only a Frenchman Could Doubt Him

Despite a number of glaring problems with it, Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations earned widespread praise in the mainstream media at the time. Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber of the Center for Media and Democracy/PR Watch have a book, The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq (Sept. 2006), that offers a superb rundown of the reactions. From chapter three, “Big Impact”:
(more…)

By Sidney Blumenthal
from SALON.COM

Two former CIA officers say the president squelched top’secret intelligence, and a briefing by George Tenet, months before invading Iraq.

On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top’secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam’s inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

On April 23, 2006, CBS’s “60 Minutes” interviewed Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, who disclosed that the agency had received documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD. “We continued to validate him the whole way through,” said Drumheller. “The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.”

Now two former senior CIA officers have confirmed Drumheller’s account to me and provided the background to the story of how the information that might have stopped the invasion of Iraq was twisted in order to justify it. They described what Tenet said to Bush about the lack of WMD, and how Bush responded, and noted that Tenet never shared Sabri’s intelligence with then Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to the former officers, the intelligence was also never shared with the senior military planning the invasion, which required U.S. soldiers to receive medical shots against the ill effects of WMD and to wear protective uniforms in the desert.

Instead, said the former officials, the information was distorted in a report written to fit the preconception that Saddam did have WMD programs. That false and restructured report was passed to Richard Dearlove, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), who briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair on it as validation of the cause for war.

read more HERE

from YAHOO!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay for foreign terrorism suspects should be immediately closed and its inmates moved to the United States.

Powell, who in a 2003 speech to the U.N. Security Council made the case for war against
Iraq for possessing weapons of mass destruction that were never found, said the controversial prison in Cuba had become a “major problem” for the United States’ image abroad and done more harm than good.

“Guantanamo has become a major, major problem … in the way the world perceives America and if it were up to me I would close Guantanamo not tomorrow but this afternoon … and I would not let any of those people go. I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system,” Powell told NBC’s Meet the Press.

“Essentially, we have shaken the belief the world had in America’s justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like the military commission. We don’t need it and it is causing us far more damage than any good we get for it,” he added.

The United States is holding about 380 foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo.

Rights groups and foreign governments have called for the prison to be closed, saying holding prisoners there for years without trial violated legal standards. But Washington says the prison is legal and necessary to hold dangerous individuals.

“I would get rid of Guantanamo and the military commission system and use established procedures in federal law,” Powell said, saying some leaders around the world were using Guantanamo to hide their own misdeeds.

“It’s a more equitable way, and more understandable in constitutional terms,” he added.

Where was Colin Powell with his questions when it mattered??? Oh, that’s right….he was sitting before the UN lying.

“President Bush has not fired any of the architects of the Iraq war. In fact, a review of the key planners of the conflict reveals that they have been rewarded - not blamed - for their incompetence.”

With this heading and the catagories Role In Going To War, Where Is He/She Now, Key Quote, Think Progress provides excellent and concise information of those responsible for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq:
Paul Wolfowitz
Douglas Feith
Stephen Hadley
Richard perle
Elliot Abrams
David Wurmser
Andrew Natsios
Dan Bartlett
Mitch Daniels
George Tenet
Colin Powell
Donald Rumsfeld
Condoleezza Rice
Dick Cheney
George W. Bush

Lest we forget…

If this legislation is passed the consequences will be horrific. For the way our nation is viewed in the world’s eyes, for the harm it could cause our troops, and for the amnesty it will give the war criminals running this war. Call your Senators today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By Karen DeYoung and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 19, 2006; Page A04

Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell said yesterday that he decided to publicly oppose the Bush administration’s proposed rules for the treatment of terrorism suspects in part because the plan would add to growing doubts about whether the United States adheres to its own moral code.

“If you just look at how we are perceived in the world and the kind of criticism we have taken over Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and renditions,” Powell said in an interview, “whether we believe it or not, people are now starting to question whether we’re following our own high standards.”

Powell, elaborating on a position first expressed last week in a letter to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), also argued that the administration’s plan to “clarify” U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions would set a precedent for other nations that would endanger U.S. troops.

Full article here