Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War
By Joby Warrick for The Washington Post via t r u t h o u t
(Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.)

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq - not made public until now - had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.

The authors of the reports were nine U.S. and British civilian experts - scientists and engineers with extensive experience in all the technical fields involved in making bioweapons - who were dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency for an analysis of the trailers. Their actions and findings were described to a Washington Post reporter in interviews with six government officials and weapons experts who participated in the mission or had direct knowledge of it.

None would consent to being identified by name because of fear that their jobs would be jeopardized. Their accounts were verified by other current and former government officials knowledgeable about the mission. The contents of the final report, "Final Technical Engineering Exploitation Report on Iraqi Suspected Biological Weapons-Associated Trailers," remains classified. But interviews reveal that the technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. Those interviewed took care not to discuss the classified portions of their work.

"There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers. Another recalled an epithet that came to be associated with the trailers: "the biggest sand toilets in the world."
Primary Piece of Evidence

The story of the technical team and its reports adds a new dimension to the debate over the U.S. government's handling of intelligence related to banned Iraqi weapons programs. The trailers - along with aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq for what was believed to be a nuclear weapons program - were primary pieces of evidence offered by the Bush administration before the war to support its contention that Iraq was making weapons of mass destruction...

Even before the trailers were seized in spring 2003, the mobile labs had achieved mythic stature. As early as the mid-1990s, weapons inspectors from the United Nations chased ph?ntom mobile labs that were said to be mounted on trucks or rail cars, churning out tons of anthrax by night and moving to new locations each day. No such labs were found, but many officials believed the stories, thanks in large part to elaborate tales told by Iraqi defectors.

The CIA's star informant, an Iraqi with the code name Curveball, was a self-proclaimed chemical engineer who defected to Germany in 1999 and requested asylum. For four years, the Baghdad native passed secrets about alleged Iraqi banned weapons to the CIA indirectly, through Germany's intelligence service. Curveball provided descriptions of mobile labs and said he had supervised work in one of them. He even described a catastrophic 1998 accident in one lab that left 12 Iraqis dead.

Curveball's detailed descriptions - which were officially discredited in 2004 - helped CIA artists create color diagrams of the labs, which Powell later used to argue the case for military intervention in Iraq before the U.N. Security Council.

"We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails," Powell said in the Feb. 5, 2003, speech. Thanks to those descriptions, he said, "We know what the fermenters look like. We know what the tanks, pumps, compressors and other parts look like."

The trailers discovered in the Iraqi desert resembled the drawings well enough, at least from a distance. One of them, a flat-bed trailer covered by tarps, was found in April by Kurdish fighters near the northern city of Irbil. The second was captured by U.S. forces near Mosul. Both were painted military green and outfitted with a suspicious array of gear: large metal tanks, motors, compressors, pipes and valves.

Photos of the trailers were quickly circulated, and many weapons experts were convinced that the long-sought mobile labs had been found...

The technical team was assembled in Kuwait and then flown to Baghdad to begin their work early on May 25, 2003. By that date, the two trailers had been moved to a military base on the grounds of one of deposed president Saddam Hussein's Baghdad palaces. When members of the technical team arrived, they found the trailers parked in an open lot, covered with camouflage netting.

The technical team went to work under a blistering sun in 110-degree temperatures. Using tools from home, they peered into vats, turned valves, tapped gauges and measured pipes. They reconstructed a flow-path through feed tanks and reactor vessels, past cooling chambers and drain valves, and into discharge tanks and exhaust pipes. They took hundreds of photographs.

By the end of their first day, team members still had differing views about what the trailers were. But they agreed about what the trailers were not.

"Within the first four hours," said one team member, who like the others spoke on the condition he not be named, "it was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs."

News of the team's early impressions leaped across the Atlantic well ahead of the technical report. Over the next two days, a stream of anxious e-mails and phone calls from Washington pressed for details and clarifications.

The reason for th? nervousness was soon obvious: In Washington, a CIA analyst had written a draft white paper on the trailers, an official assessment that would also reflect the views of the DIA. The white paper described the trailers as "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program." It also explicitly rejected an explanation by Iraqi officials, described in a New York Times article a few days earlier, that the trailers might be mobile units for producing hydrogen.

But the technical team's preliminary report, written in a tent in Baghdad and approved by each team member, reached a conclusion opposite from that of the white paper.
Crucial Components Lacking

Team members and other sources intimately familiar with the mission declined to discuss technical details of the team's findings because the report remains classified. But they cited the Iraqi Survey Group's nonclassified, final report to Congress in September 2004 as reflecting the same conclusions.

That report said the trailers were "impractical for biological agent production," lacking 11 components that would be crucial for making bioweapons. Instead, the trailers were "almost certainly designed and built for the generation of hydrogen," the survey group reported.

The group's report and members of the technical team also dismissed the notion that the trailers could be easily modified to produce weapons.

"It would be easier to start all over with just a bucket," said Rod Barton, an Australian biological weapons expert and former member of the survey group.

The technical team's preliminary report was transmitted in the early hours of May 27, just before its members began boarding planes to return home. Within 24 hours, the CIA published its white paper, "Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants," on its Web site.

After team members returned to Washington, they began work on a final report. At several points, members were questioned about revising their conclusions, according to sources knowledgeable about the conversations. The questioners generally wanted to know the same thing: Could the report's conclusions be softened, to leave open a possibility that the trailers might have been intended for weapons?

In the end, the final report - 19 pages plus a 103-page appendix - remained unequivocal in declaring the trailers unsuitable for weapons production.

"It was very assertive," said one weapons expert familiar with the report's contents.

Then, their mission completed, the team members returned to their jobs and watched as their work appeared to vanish.

"I went home and fully expected that our findings would be publicly stated," one member recalled. "It never happened. And I just had to live with it."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/11/AR2006041101888_pf.html

Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War
By Joby Warrick
The Washington Post

Wednesday 12 April 2006

Administration pushed notion of banned Iraqi weapons despite evidence to contrary.

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq - not made public until now - had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.

The authors of the reports were nine U.S. and British civilian experts - scientists and engineers with extensive experience in all the technical fields involved in making bioweapons - who were dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency for an analysis of the trailers. Their actions and findings were described to a Washington Post reporter in interviews with six government officials and weapons experts who participated in the mission or had direct knowledge of it.

None would consent to being identified by name because of fear that their jobs would be jeopardized. Their accounts were verified by other current and former government officials knowledgeable about the mission. The contents of the final report, "Final Technical Engineering Exploitation Report on Iraqi Suspected Biological Weapons-Associated Trailers," remains classified. But interviews reveal that the technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. Those interviewed took care not to discuss the classified portions of their work.

"There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers. Another recalled an epithet that came to be associated with the trailers: "the biggest sand toilets in the world."
Primary Piece of Evidence

The story of the technical team and its reports adds a new dimension to the debate over the U.S. government's handling of intelligence related to banned Iraqi weapons programs. The trailers - along with aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq for what was believed to be a nuclear weapons program - were primary pieces of evidence offered by the Bush administration before the war to support its contention that Iraq was making weapons of mass destruction.

Intelligence officials and the White House have repeatedly denied allegations that intelligence was hyped or manipulated in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. But officials familiar with the technical team's reports are questioning anew whether intelligence agencies played down or dismissed postwar evidence that contradicted the administration's public views about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Last year, a presidential commission on intelligence failures criticized U.S. spy agencies for discounting evidence that contradicted the official line about banned weapons in Iraq, both before and after the invasion.

Spokesmen for the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency both declined to comment on the specific findings of the technical report because it remains classified. A spokesman for the DIA asserted that the team's findings were neither ignored nor suppressed, but were incorporated in the work of the Iraqi Survey Group, which led the official search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The survey group's final report in September 2004 - 15 months after the technical report was written - said the trailers were "impractical" for biological weapons production and were "almost certainly intended" for manufacturing hydrogen for weather balloons.

"Whether the information was offered to others in the political realm I cannot say," said the DIA official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

Intelligence analysts involved in high-level discussions about the trailers noted that the technical team was among several groups that analyzed the suspected mobile labs throughout the spring and summer of 2003. Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs, a finding that strongly influenced views of intelligence officials in Washington, the analysts said. "It was hotly debated, and there were experts making arguments on both sides," said one former senior official who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

The technical team's findings had no apparent impact on the intelligence agencies' public statements on the trailers. A day after the team's report was transmitted to Washington - May 28, 2003 - the CIA publicly released its first formal assessment of the trailers, reflecting the views of its Washington analysts. That white paper, which also bore the DIA seal, contended that U.S. officials were "confident" that the trailers were used for "mobile biological weapons production."

Throughout the summer and fall of 2003, the trailers became simply "mobile biological laboratories" in speeches and press statements by administration officials. In late June, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared that the "confidence level is increasing" that the trailers were intended for biowarfare. In September, Vice President Cheney pronounced the trailers to be "mobile biological facilities," and said they could have been used to produce anthrax or smallpox.

By autumn, leaders of the Iraqi Survey Group were publicly expressing doubts about the trailers in news reports. David Kay, the group's first leader, told Congress on Oct. 2 that he had found no banned weapons in Iraq and was unable to verify the claim that the disputed trailers were weapons labs. Still, as late as February 2004, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet continued to assert that the mobile-labs theory remained plausible. Although there was "no consensus" among intelligence officials, the trailers "could be made to work" as weapons labs, he said in a speech Feb. 5.

Tenet, now a faculty member at Georgetown's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, declined to comment for this story.

Kay, in an interview, said senior CIA officials had advised him upon accepting the survey group's leadership in June 2003 that some experts in the DIA were "backsliding" on whether the trailers were weapons labs. But Kay said he was not apprised of the technical team's findings until late 2003, near the end of his time as the group's leader.

"If I had known that we had such a team in Iraq," Kay said, "I would certainly have given their findings more weight."
A Defector's Tales

Even before the trailers were seized in spring 2003, the mobile labs had achieved mythic stature. As early as the mid-1990s, weapons inspectors from the United Nations chased ph?ntom mobile labs that were said to be mounted on trucks or rail cars, churning out tons of anthrax by night and moving to new locations each day. No such labs were found, but many officials believed the stories, thanks in large part to elaborate tales told by Iraqi defectors.

The CIA's star informant, an Iraqi with the code name Curveball, was a self-proclaimed chemical engineer who defected to Germany in 1999 and requested asylum. For four years, the Baghdad native passed secrets about alleged Iraqi banned weapons to the CIA indirectly, through Germany's intelligence service. Curveball provided descriptions of mobile labs and said he had supervised work in one of them. He even described a catastrophic 1998 accident in one lab that left 12 Iraqis dead.

Curveball's detailed descriptions - which were officially discredited in 2004 - helped CIA artists create color diagrams of the labs, which Powell later used to argue the case for military intervention in Iraq before the U.N. Security Council.

"We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails," Powell said in the Feb. 5, 2003, speech. Thanks to those descriptions, he said, "We know what the fermenters look like. We know what the tanks, pumps, compressors and other parts look like."

The trailers discovered in the Iraqi desert resembled the drawings well enough, at least from a distance. One of them, a flat-bed trailer covered by tarps, was found in April by Kurdish fighters near the northern city of Irbil. The second was captured by U.S. forces near Mosul. Both were painted military green and outfitted with a suspicious array of gear: large metal tanks, motors, compressors, pipes and valves.

Photos of the trailers were quickly circulated, and many weapons experts were convinced that the long-sought mobile labs had been found.

Yet reaction from Iraqi sources was troublingly inconsistent. Curveball, shown photos of the trailers, confirmed they were mobile labs and even pointed out key features. But other Iraqi informants in internal reports disputed Curveball's story and claimed the trailers had a benign purpose: producing hydrogen for weather balloons.

Back at the Pentagon, DIA officials attempted a quick resolution of the dispute. The task fell to the "Jefferson Project," a DIA-led initiative made up of government and civilian technical experts who specialize in analyzing and countering biological threats. Project leaders put together a team of volunteers, eight Americans and a Briton, each with at least a decade of experience in one of the essential technical skills needed for bioweapons production. All were nongovernment employees working for defense contractors or the Energy Department's national labs.

The technical team was assembled in Kuwait and then flown to Baghdad to begin their work early on May 25, 2003. By that date, the two trailers had been moved to a military base on the grounds of one of deposed president Saddam Hussein's Baghdad palaces. When members of the technical team arrived, they found the trailers parked in an open lot, covered with camouflage netting.

The technical team went to work under a blistering sun in 110-degree temperatures. Using tools from home, they peered into vats, turned valves, tapped gauges and measured pipes. They reconstructed a flow-path through feed tanks and reactor vessels, past cooling chambers and drain valves, and into discharge tanks and exhaust pipes. They took hundreds of photographs.

By the end of their first day, team members still had differing views about what the trailers were. But they agreed about what the trailers were not.

"Within the first four hours," said one team member, who like the others spoke on the condition he not be named, "it was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs."

News of the team's early impressions leaped across the Atlantic well ahead of the technical report. Over the next two days, a stream of anxious e-mails and phone calls from Washington pressed for details and clarifications.

The reason for th? nervousness was soon obvious: In Washington, a CIA analyst had written a draft white paper on the trailers, an official assessment that would also reflect the views of the DIA. The white paper described the trailers as "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program." It also explicitly rejected an explanation by Iraqi officials, described in a New York Times article a few days earlier, that the trailers might be mobile units for producing hydrogen.

But the technical team's preliminary report, written in a tent in Baghdad and approved by each team member, reached a conclusion opposite from that of the white paper.
Crucial Components Lacking

Team members and other sources intimately familiar with the mission declined to discuss technical details of the team's findings because the report remains classified. But they cited the Iraqi Survey Group's nonclassified, final report to Congress in September 2004 as reflecting the same conclusions.

That report said the trailers were "impractical for biological agent production," lacking 11 components that would be crucial for making bioweapons. Instead, the trailers were "almost certainly designed and built for the generation of hydrogen," the survey group reported.

The group's report and members of the technical team also dismissed the notion that the trailers could be easily modified to produce weapons.

"It would be easier to start all over with just a bucket," said Rod Barton, an Australian biological weapons expert and former member of the survey group.

The technical team's preliminary report was transmitted in the early hours of May 27, just before its members began boarding planes to return home. Within 24 hours, the CIA published its white paper, "Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants," on its Web site.

After team members returned to Washington, they began work on a final report. At several points, members were questioned about revising their conclusions, according to sources knowledgeable about the conversations. The questioners generally wanted to know the same thing: Could the report's conclusions be softened, to leave open a possibility that the trailers might have been intended for weapons?

In the end, the final report - 19 pages plus a 103-page appendix - remained unequivocal in declaring the trailers unsuitable for weapons production.

"It was very assertive," said one weapons expert familiar with the report's contents.

Then, their mission completed, the team members returned to their jobs and watched as their work appeared to vanish.

"I went home and fully expected that our findings would be publicly stated," one member recalled. "It never happened. And I just had to live with it."

--------

Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Update: So I just pulled this track from the cc mixter website because I used samples from PBS NOW that I did not create myself. And although I believe that it is my fair use to use them, and for others to use them, it is an indisputably gray area, and therefore does not belong on CC Mixter, where everyone knows that reuse is free and clear. Fair enough :-)

Here's the new link:
Borrow and Take2 - Colin Powell WMD Hoax Remix

This adds a "vocal" track from Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson and David Brancaccio (PBS-NOW) over the top of Ashwan's Borrow and Take2

The Colin Powell WMD Hoax Remix part comes from a PBS NOW show located here:
http://video.lisarein.com/pbs/now/feb2006/02-03-06/

The sound clips are from this episode of NOW on PBS: http://www.pbs.org/now/thisweek/index_020306.html

software/hardware: TIVO, Canon GL-2, dual G4 mac, itunes, protools

samples i used:
I believe it was my fair use to use the sound samples from the PBS Now program detailing Larry Wilkerson's recount of the day's events during Powell's speech to the United Nations Security Council.

The video clips and MP3s are here:
http://video.lisarein.com/pbs/now/feb2006/02-03-06/

I used my tivo to capture NOW and then my camera to capture the video from my tivo via the analog hole. Then I used itunes to generate an mp3 from the .mov file, and imported that into protools, along with ASHWAN's track, to create the first part of this track, which is my remix. (The rest of the track after Colin Powell stops talking is the same as the ASHWAN version.)

More:

The sound clips are from this episode of NOW on PBS.

This uses the clips from NOW with David Brancaccio that interviews Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's ex Chief of Staff, about how he and Colin played into the hands of the Shrub Administration when they unwittingly "participated in a hoax on the American People, the International Community, and the United Nations Security Council."

Finally finished my latest
Songs From The Commons #11.

This one includes a Colin Powell WMD Hoax remix of Ashwan's
Borrow and Take 2, courtesy of yours truly. It's not available yet as a single on CC Mixter, but it will be soon.

It also has a cool remix by MC Jack In The Box of the Brad Sucks source files for "Work Out Fine."

I'm really starting to dig doing these shows.

I'm also writing a lot of my own music lately, and can't wait to finish my Masters in April, so I can get on with recording it...

The Colin Powell WMD Hoax files are from a NOW show that aired 2/3/06 - Video files and MP3s are located here.
A proper blog post is forthcoming...

This is the kind of thing that really frustrates me about Colin Powell. Just like his coming out with what's wrong with the Shrub War after the election, instead of during the election, when it could have really helped.

Now he's talking to senators in private about what a loose cannon John Bolton is.

Why can't he come out and say what he knows publicly? He could blow this guy out of the water with two sentances. He could save us from the horrible fate of letting this war monger lead the nation into
WW III.

Some of you will think I'm overreacting, but I truly believe that I am calmly stating one likely possibility. Granted, it's already a possibility, with this administration in power, but it's a far more likely possibility with Bolton as our UN Ambassador.

Powell Plays Behind the Scenes Role in Bolton Debate
By Jim VandeHei and Robin Wright for the Washington Post.
(via
t r u t h o u t)

Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell is emerging as a behind the scenes player in the battle over John Bolton's nomination to the United Nations, privately telling at least two key Republican lawmakers that Bolton is smart, but a very problematic government official, according to Republican sources.

Powell spoke in recent days with Sens. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), two of three GOP members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who have raised concerns about Bolton's confirmation, the sources said. Powell did not advise the senators to oppose Bolton, but offered a frank assessment of the nominee as a man who was challenging to work with on personnel and policy matters, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

"General Powell has returned calls from senators who wanted to discuss specific questions that have been raised," said Margaret Cifrino, a Powell spokeswoman. "He has not reached out to senators" and considers the discussions private. A Chafee spokesman confirmed that at least two conversations took place. Bolton served under Powell as his undersecretary of state for arms control, and the two were known to have serious clashes.

Powell has stayed out of the confirmation fight in public, but influenced it in direct and indirect ways, according to several Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill. It is not Powell's style to weigh in strongly against a former colleague, but rather direct people to what he sees as flaws and potential problems, they say. Powell's views are highly influential with many Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Those who know Powell best said two recent events provide insight into his thinking. Powell did not sign a letter from seven former US secretaries of state and defense supporting Bolton, and his former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson recently told the New York Times that Bolton would be an "abysmal ambassador."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7420-2005Apr21.html

Powell Plays Behind the Scenes Role in Bolton Debate
By Jim VandeHei and Robin Wright
The Washington Post

Friday 22 April 2005

Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell is emerging as a behind the scenes player in the battle over John Bolton's nomination to the United Nations, privately telling at least two key Republican lawmakers that Bolton is smart, but a very problematic government official, according to Republican sources.

Powell spoke in recent days with Sens. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), two of three GOP members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who have raised concerns about Bolton's confirmation, the sources said. Powell did not advise the senators to oppose Bolton, but offered a frank assessment of the nominee as a man who was challenging to work with on personnel and policy matters, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

"General Powell has returned calls from senators who wanted to discuss specific questions that have been raised," said Margaret Cifrino, a Powell spokeswoman. "He has not reached out to senators" and considers the discussions private. A Chafee spokesman confirmed that at least two conversations took place. Bolton served under Powell as his undersecretary of state for arms control, and the two were known to have serious clashes.

Powell has stayed out of the confirmation fight in public, but influenced it in direct and indirect ways, according to several Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill. It is not Powell's style to weigh in strongly against a former colleague, but rather direct people to what he sees as flaws and potential problems, they say. Powell's views are highly influential with many Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Those who know Powell best said two recent events provide insight into his thinking. Powell did not sign a letter from seven former US secretaries of state and defense supporting Bolton, and his former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson recently told the New York Times that Bolton would be an "abysmal ambassador."

"On two occasions he has let it be known that the Bolton nomination is a bad one, to put it mildly," said a Democratic congressional aide. "It would be great to have Powell on the record speaking for himself, but he's unlikely to do it.

With a final committee vote delayed until next month, Chafee is studying Bolton's record and withholding judgment, his spokesman said. Chafee told reporters Wednesday he is "much less likely" to support Bolton because of questions about his credibility.

President Bush yesterday accused Democrats of blocking Bolton's nomination to the United Nations for political reasons, as the White House intensified its campaign to confirm Bolton and discredit his critics.

"John's distinguished career and service to our nation demonstrates that he is the right man at the right time for this important assignment," Bush said in a speech to insurance agents. "I urge the Senate to put aside politics and confirm John Bolton to the United Nations."

Yet it was Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) who prevented a final vote in the Senate Foreign Relations committee this week and called for more time to study Bolton's past. "The senator's motives are to do what is best for the American people," said Marcie Ridgway, Voinovich's spokesman. Chafee and Hagel share Voinovich's concerns. Powell called Hagel asking the Nebraska Republican if he should return Chafee's call. Hagel said he should, according to the sources, and be frank.

"I think it's being held up because Democrats oppose John Bolton, oppose him with passion," said Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), when asked if politics were to blame for the delay.

Bush entered the increasingly tense showdown over Bolton's nomination, as both sides are digging in for a tough fight over the confirmation of the next ambassador to the United Nations. Democrats are charging Bolton is an out-of-control bully with a history of berating people he works with and seeking to remove those who disagree with him. The White House is accusing Democrats of using "trumped up" charges to prevent a highly qualified Republican from shaking up the U.N. The committee yesterday failed to agree on whether Bolton should be called before the committee again to answer more questions.

Bolton, who has a reputation as a smart, but gruff, Bush ally, has been accused of mistreating subordinates throughout his career, threatening a female government contractor and misleading members about the handling of classified materials. Initially, Democrats opposed Bolton because of his harsh comments about the UN in the past. But their attack now centers on Bolton's character and tempermant. "I do not believe that's a convincing case," said Lugar.

Former State Department official Carl Ford last week told the committee that in 2002 Bolton sought to remove two intelligence analysts who refused to endorse a speech he was preparing on Cuba's weapons capability.

Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), the ranking minority member on the committee, last week also released a letter from Melody Townsel, a subcontractor for the US Agency for International Development in Kyrgyzstan, charging Bolton harassed her over work-related matters more than a decade ago. Since then, at least two people have denied Townsel's charges.

Democratic committee sources said Biden and others are opening new lines of inquiry, including looking into a report posted on yesterday's Newsweek website that Bolton twice clashed angrily with former US Ambassador to South Korea Thomas Hubbard. Hubbard, who appointed by Bush, has discussed his concerns about Bolton's credibility with committee members. In addition, Hubbard challenged Bolton's testimony to the committee that he had praised Bolton for a 2003 speech denouncing Kim Jong Il, the leader of North Korea, as a "tyrannical dictator."

Democrats are also trying to corroborate Townsel's testimony, and look into a report posted on the "Washington Note" blog that Bolton may have sought to force out members of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, on which he served, the sources said.

White House officials are moving quickly to address concerns among Republicans. Matt Kirk, the president's liaison to the Senate, grabbed Voinovich shortly after this week's hearing to tell him the White House stood ready to provide him any information he wanted, and the administration followed up with a call to Voinovich's legislative director, according to Republican sources. The White House also helped organize Republicans to speak out in favor of Bolton yesterday and get people who have worked with Bolton in the past to do the same.

Hey Colin! You've got one more day to save face and come clean with us. Just say you're sorry, and that you were just hanging out to try to keep things from getting crazy and out of control, but they just got crazy and out of control anyway, and now your just real sorry and you're not going to cover for this guy anymore.

Say it before the election, and we just might forgive you.
(Though, it'll still be tough.)

Anyway, here's the latest story where "Colin privately tells "X" how he really feels." It's only a couple paragraphs long:

Colin Powell believes U.S. is losing Iraq war

Secretary of State Colin Powell has privately confided to friends in recent weeks that the Iraqi insurgents are winning the war, according to Newsweek. The insurgents have succeeded in infiltrating Iraqi forces "from top to bottom," a senior Iraqi official tells Newsweek in tomorrow�s issue of the magazine, "from decision making to the lower levels."

This is a particularly troubling development for the U.S. military, as it prepares to launch an all-out assault on the insurgent strongholds of Fallujah and Ramadi, since U.S. Marines were counting on the newly trained Iraqi forces to assist in the assault. Newsweek reports that "American military trainers have been frantically trying to assemble sufficient Iraqi troops" to fight alongside them and that they are "praying that the soldiers perform better than last April, when two battalions of poorly trained Iraqi Army soldiers refused to fight."

If the Fallujah offensive fails, Newsweek grimly predicts, "then the American president will find himself in a deepening quagmire on Inauguration Day."

-- David Talbot, Salon.

This is from the June 14, 2004 program.

Colin Powell was on Meet the Press apologizing for this last weekend -- the Shrub Administration released a War On Terror update report that had 8 pages of errors and retractions and lots of other questionable material throughout.

(Colin said he wasn't a "happy camper" having to apologize for it.)

The Shrub's Bogus Terror Report (Small - 9 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

Here's
a bit torrent file of the clip where Powell answers some heavy WMD questions and gets into a fight with his press aide.

Here are the bit torrent files for the other two clips:

Part One

Part Two

If you don't have a bit torrent client,
get one here.

Powell scolds aide after interview interrupted
By The Associated Press (as published on MSNBC).

Secretary of State Colin Powell chastised a press aide for trying to cut short the taping of a television interview Sunday.

Powell, speaking from a Dead Sea resort in Jordan, was listening to a final question from moderator Tim Russert, who was in the Washington studio of NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

In the broadcast, aired several hours after the interview was conducted, Powell abruptly disappears from view. Briefly seen are swaying palm trees and the water, backdrops for the interview.

Powell can be heard saying to the aide, “He’s still asking a question.” The secretary then told Russert, “Tim, I’m sorry I lost you.”

NBC identified the aide as Emily Miller, a deputy press secretary.

Russert responded: “I don’t know who did that. I think that was one of your staff, Mr. Secretary.” The host added: “I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

With the cameras still on the water, Powell snapped, “Emily get out of the way.” He then instructed the crew to “bring the camera back,” and told Russert to go ahead with the last question.

After Powell answered, Russert thanked the secretary for his “willingness to overrule his press aide’s attempt to abruptly cut off our discussion.”

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4992866/

Powell scolds aide after interview interrupted
‘I don’t think that’s appropriate,’ host Tim Russert says
The Associated Press
Updated: 3:29 p.m. ET May 16, 2004

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell chastised a press aide for trying to cut short the taping of a television interview Sunday.

Powell, speaking from a Dead Sea resort in Jordan, was listening to a final question from moderator Tim Russert, who was in the Washington studio of NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

In the broadcast, aired several hours after the interview was conducted, Powell abruptly disappears from view. Briefly seen are swaying palm trees and the water, backdrops for the interview.

Powell can be heard saying to the aide, “He’s still asking a question.” The secretary then told Russert, “Tim, I’m sorry I lost you.”

NBC identified the aide as Emily Miller, a deputy press secretary.

Russert responded: “I don’t know who did that. I think that was one of your staff, Mr. Secretary.” The host added: “I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

With the cameras still on the water, Powell snapped, “Emily get out of the way.” He then instructed the crew to “bring the camera back,” and told Russert to go ahead with the last question.

After Powell answered, Russert thanked the secretary for his “willingness to overrule his press aide’s attempt to abruptly cut off our discussion.”

Five interviews scheduled
State Department spokeswoman Julie Reside said Powell had scheduled five interviews, one after another, and that NBC went over the agreed upon time limit. She said every effort was made to get NBC to finish up, but that other networks had booked satellite time for interviews with Powell.

The executive producer of “Meet the Press,” Betsy Fischer, said Powell was 45 minutes late for the interview and that “everyone’s satellite schedules already had to be rescheduled” anyway.

She said the exchange was not edited out because most taped interviews are not altered before airing.

Fischer said Miller called right after the taping to “express her displeasure” that the interview ran long. Fischer also said Powell called Russert a few hours later to apologize.

The State Department would not confirm either call or that Miller was the aide addressed by Powell.

This is from the May 16, 2004 program of
Meet the Press.

This is pretty unbelievable. Colin Powell's press aide attempted to put an early end to the interview by suddenly moving the camera away from Powell (right after Powell addresses the torture situation and right before Russert asks a hard-hitting question about the fake nigerian yellow cake WMD evidence he cited within his U.N. speech). Powell gets her out of the way somehow, manages to get the camera pointed in the right direction, and resumes the interview. You can hear him say "Emily, get out of the way."

Here's the clip that contains what I mention above (happens about half way through):

Colin Powell Clip - Meet The Press (12 MB)
It happens about half way through, right after Powell's admission that he and numerous top officials, including Condi Rice and Rummy, were made aware of the torture situation via a report from the Red Cross they all received way back in mid-February 2004.

Update 4:49 pm: Use one of the three mirrors below:

Here's the first mirror (of the interview parts one and two):

http://synthesize.us/~leif/weblog/mirror/05-16-04-colin.html

Thanks Leif!

Here's a complete mirror (of all three clips):

Colin Powell On Meet The Press - Part 1 of 2

Colin Powell On Meet The Press - Part 2 of 2

Colin Powell On Meet The Press - Apology for Bogus WMD Evidence and Press Aide Interruption Highlights

Thanks Dave!

Here's a second mirror (of all three clips):

Colin Powell On Meet The Press - Part 1 of 2

Colin Powell On Meet The Press - Part 2 of 2

Colin Powell On Meet The Press - Apology for Bogus WMD Evidence and Press Aide Interruption Highlights

Thanks Reid!

Third mirror of all three clips:

Colin Powell On Meet The Press - Part 1 of 2

Colin Powell On Meet The Press - Part 2 of 2

Colin Powell On Meet The Press - Apology for Bogus WMD Evidence and Press Aide Interruption Highlights

Thanks Steve!

Here's a Fourth mirror (woo hoo!):

All three clips are located here.

Thanks Richard!

Who Lost the WMD?
As the weapons hunt intensifies, so does the finger pointing. A preview of the coming battle
By Massimo Calabresi and Timothy J. Burger for Time.

What Was Cheney's Role?
Lawmakers who once saluted every Bush claim and command are beginning to express doubts. Two congressional panels are opening new rounds of investigations into the Administration's prewar claims about WMD. One of their immediate inquiries, sources tell Time, involves Vice President Dick Cheney's role in reviewing the intelligence before the bombing started. Cheney made repeated visits to the CIA in the prelude to the war, going over intelligence assessments with the analysts who produced them. Some Democrats say Cheney's visits may have amounted to pressure on the normally cautious agency. Cheney's defenders insist that his visits merely showed the importance of the issue and that an honest analyst wouldn't feel pressure to twist intelligence. The House intelligence committee (and possibly its Senate counterpart, sources say) plans to question the CIA analysts who briefed Cheney, and that could lead to calling Cheney's hard-line aides and perhaps the Veep himself to testify.

Is Powell Trying To Have It Both Ways?
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who staked his reputation on his February declaration at the U.N. about Saddam Hussein's arms program, is also feeling the heat. Powell's aides fanned out after that performance to say the Secretary had gone to the CIA and scrubbed every piece of intelligence to make certain it was solid. But since then, little of Powell's presentation has been proved by evidence on the ground, and last week his aides were on the defensive over a memo from the State Department's intelligence bureau that questioned whether two Iraqi trailers discovered in April were mobile bioweapons labs, as Powell has asserted. Questionable intelligence that made it into Powell's February speech leaves him particularly vulnerable. Expect a push by Democrats, and perhaps some Republicans, to seek Powell's testimony too.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030707-461781,00.html

Who Lost the WMD?
As the weapons hunt intensifies, so does the finger pointing. A preview of the coming battle
By MASSIMO CALABRESI AND TIMOTHY J. BURGER

ERIC DRAPER/THE WHITE HOUSE/AP
QUESTION TIME: Bush huddles with Bremer and Franks in Doha, Qatar

Sunday, Jun. 29, 2003
Meeting last month at a sweltering U.S. base outside Doha, Qatar, with his top Iraq commanders, President Bush skipped quickly past the niceties and went straight to his chief political obsession: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Turning to his Baghdad proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, "Are you in charge of finding WMD?" Bremer said no, he was not. Bush then put the same question to his military commander, General Tommy Franks. But Franks said it wasn't his job either. A little exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in charge of finding WMD? After aides conferred for a moment, someone volunteered the name of Stephen Cambone, a little-known deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, back in Washington. Pause. "Who?" Bush asked.

It seems as if just about everyone has questions these days about the missing WMD. Did U.S. intelligence officials—or their civilian bosses—overstate the evidence of weapons before the war? And if some intelligence officials expressed skepticism about WMD, who ignored them? For the past several weeks, the usually lockstep Bush Administration has done its best to maintain a unified front in the face of these queries. Whenever asked, Administration officials have replied that the weapons will turn up eventually. But as the search drags on through its third largely futile month, the blame game in Washington has gone into high gear. And as Bush's allies and enemies alike on Capitol Hill begin to pick apart some 19 volumes of prewar intelligence and examine them one document at a time, the cohesive Bush team is starting to come apart. "This is a cloud hanging over their credibility, their word," Republican Senate Intelligence Committee member Chuck Hagel told abc News. Here are key questions Congress wants answered:

What Was Cheney's Role?
Lawmakers who once saluted every Bush claim and command are beginning to express doubts. Two congressional panels are opening new rounds of investigations into the Administration's prewar claims about WMD. One of their immediate inquiries, sources tell Time, involves Vice President Dick Cheney's role in reviewing the intelligence before the bombing started. Cheney made repeated visits to the CIA in the prelude to the war, going over intelligence assessments with the analysts who produced them. Some Democrats say Cheney's visits may have amounted to pressure on the normally cautious agency. Cheney's defenders insist that his visits merely showed the importance of the issue and that an honest analyst wouldn't feel pressure to twist intelligence. The House intelligence committee (and possibly its Senate counterpart, sources say) plans to question the CIA analysts who briefed Cheney, and that could lead to calling Cheney's hard-line aides and perhaps the Veep himself to testify.

Is Powell Trying To Have It Both Ways?
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who staked his reputation on his February declaration at the U.N. about Saddam Hussein's arms program, is also feeling the heat. Powell's aides fanned out after that performance to say the Secretary had gone to the CIA and scrubbed every piece of intelligence to make certain it was solid. But since then, little of Powell's presentation has been proved by evidence on the ground, and last week his aides were on the defensive over a memo from the State Department's intelligence bureau that questioned whether two Iraqi trailers discovered in April were mobile bioweapons labs, as Powell has asserted. Questionable intelligence that made it into Powell's February speech leaves him particularly vulnerable. Expect a push by Democrats, and perhaps some Republicans, to seek Powell's testimony too.

Will Tenet Be Left Holding the Bag?
CIA Director George Tenet is faring a bit better. The House committee's top Democrat, Jane Harman, noted last week that "caveats and qualifiers" Tenet raised in prewar intelligence about Iraq's weapons were "rarely included" in Administration arguments for war. After the awkward Q&A in Doha, Bush put Tenet in charge of the WMD hunt. Tenet in turn hired a former U.N. weapons inspector, David Kay, to run the search, but Tenet and Kay have a lot of ground to make up fast. Tenet, sources say, recently conceded to the House panel that the CIA should have done more to warn that finding WMD could be a drawn-out process. Tenet got a reprieve last week when an Iraqi scientist who had hidden parts and documents for nuclear-weapons production in his backyard for 12 years came forward. Tenet's usually behind-the-scenes CIA suddenly became very public in trumpeting the importance of the discovery, if only to remind people how hard illicit weapons would be to find. But Tenet's hot zone isn't Baghdad; it's Capitol Hill. He canceled testimony before the Senate committee last week, citing a schedule conflict. If he doesn't find any weapons, he needs to find a way not to be blamed.

Bush officials believe that time and history are on their side. They argue that now that Saddam is gone, Americans don't care very much about finding WMD. They also say it is only a matter of time before more evidence of weapons materials and programs emerges. And when that occurs, they contend, all their opponents will look as silly as they did when they argued that the war was going badly in its second week. "The Dems are looking for an issue, but I think they're making a mistake," says a senior Administration official.

Democrats do sense a possibly potent campaign theme, but they run the risk of appearing to politicize a sensitive national-security issue as they try to prove the Administration has a credibility gap. But Democrats are not alone in feeling as though they may have been sandbagged on the evidence before the war began. Sources say g.o.p. Senate Intelligence Committee members Olympia Snowe and Hagel have privately questioned the Administration's handling of prewar intelligence. The Republican-held House voted last week to order the CIA to report back on "lessons learned" from the buildup to war in Iraq. The House and Senate intelligence-committee leaders have agreed to coordinate their probes loosely to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort. In a rare move, the House panel quietly voted on June 12 to grant all 435 Representatives access to the Iraq intelligence, although a Capitol Hill source said fewer than 10 members outside the committee had reviewed the material.

Administration officials have a further concern about where all these questions are leading. They fear that any problem with the prewar intelligence could undermine Bush's ability to continue his muscular campaign against terrorism overseas. The Administration has argued that to counter new kinds of threats posed by terrorists, rogue states and WMD, it has to be able to act pre-emptively. But pre-emption requires excellent intelligence, and the whole doctrine is undermined if the intelligence is wrong—or confected. "Intelligence takes on an even more important role than in the past because you can't wait until you see an enemy army massing anymore," says former Clinton Deputy National Security Adviser James Steinberg. But if WMD don't turn up and the Administration wants to act elsewhere, it may find that the enemy massing against it is public opinion at home.

From the Jul. 07, 2003 issue of TIME magazine

This clip is also from June 9th and provides a great recap of the fast talking going on by the Repubs all day Sunday on the various major news networks regarding their WMD lies. Stewart has edited in a little footage from one of Colin Powell's WMD speeches, just so we can all refresh our memory about what was said.

I'm also about to post some footage of my own that I was able to dig up from the weeks before the Shrub War that should help to refresh our memories a bit :-)

"The Republicans, for the first time in this Administration, are on the defensive. Their tactic can be best described as "flooding the zone."

The Repubs Flood The Zone (Small - 7 MB)
The Repubs Flood The Zone (Hi-Res - 96 MB)

The Daily Show (the best news on television).

Colin Powell has spoken up about the onslaught of allegations that he (along with the rest of the Shrub Administration) lied to Congress and the U.N. and the American People and the rest of the world about having indisputable evidence of Sadaam's WMDs.

He's spoken up to say, in a nutshell, "Did not! You can take my word for it."

We're not taking your word for anything Colin. That's what got us into this mess in the first place. Cough up with the evidence or forget it. Put up or shut up.

And this doesn't count (shown within context below) "Iraq used these weapons against Iran in the late '80s" -- what does having weapons in the late 80's have to do with having them last February? You told us that he had them THIS YEAR. Remember? That's why we had to go in to protect ourselves and the rest of the world...remember?

And what's this stuff about not using the information about buying uranium from Niger in his speech? I thought he absolutely used that evidence in one of his U.N. speeches.

You guys want to help me clarify this one way or the other? (Whether or not he used the Niger evidence in his U.N. speech.)
Update 11:13 am PST - Readers have refreshed my memory that it was the Shrub that used the Niger evidence in his January speech, not Colin who used it in one of his U.N. speeches.

Thanks for your help on this guys. -- lisa

Powell Defends Intelligence on Suspected Iraq Arms
By Arshad Mohammed for FindLaw.

Speaking in Rome, Powell said he thought the evidence that Iraq had continued to develop such weapons was "overwhelming."

"There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It wasn't a figment of anyone's imagination. Iraq used these weapons against Iran in the late '80s," Powell said. "There is no question, there is no debate here."

"There was no doubt in my mind as I went through the intelligence and as I prepared myself for the (Feb. 5) briefing ... that the evidence was overwhelming that they had continued to develop these programs," he added...

Powell told reporters as he flew to Egypt he chose not to cite intelligence suggesting Iraq tried to buy "yellow cake" uranium from Niger -- quoted by other U.S. officials but later found by the International Atomic Energy Agency to be based partly on forged documents -- because he felt there was insufficient substantiation.

"Not that I thought it was untrue, it's just that I didn't think it was solid enough for the kind of presentation I had to give," Powell said. "It turned out to be untrue. That happens a lot in the intelligence business."

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://news.findlaw.com/politics/s/20030602/iraqusaweaponsdc.html

Powell Defends Intelligence on Suspected Iraq Arms

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Arshad Mohammed

SHARM EL-SHEIKH (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday defended intelligence he presented to justify war against Iraq despite the United States' failure so far to find any weapons of mass destruction in the country.

Speaking to reporters in Rome and en route to Egypt, Powell appeared to be trying to beat back media reports questioning the quality of U.S. intelligence about Iraq's suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.

Powell said he spent days culling down the masses of U.S. intelligence into the selection that he presented to the U.N. Security Council on February 5, rejecting some because he felt it was not sufficiently substantiated to present in public.

Speaking in Rome, Powell said he thought the evidence that Iraq had continued to develop such weapons was "overwhelming."

"There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It wasn't a figment of anyone's imagination. Iraq used these weapons against Iran in the late '80s," Powell said. "There is no question, there is no debate here."

"There was no doubt in my mind as I went through the intelligence and as I prepared myself for the (Feb. 5) briefing ... that the evidence was overwhelming that they had continued to develop these programs," he added.

Powell noted that the CIA and the Pentagon last week said they had concluded that two truck-trailers found in Iraq could only have been mobile biological weapons factories, although no trace of biological weapons was found in either.

The U.S. failure to find Iraqi biological or chemical weapons has triggered suggestions from former U.S. officials that U.S. intelligence may have been skewed to buttress the case for war, something the Bush administration has denied.

Powell told reporters as he flew to Egypt he chose not to cite intelligence suggesting Iraq tried to buy "yellow cake" uranium from Niger -- quoted by other U.S. officials but later found by the International Atomic Energy Agency to be based partly on forged documents -- because he felt there was insufficient substantiation.

"Not that I thought it was untrue, it's just that I didn't think it was solid enough for the kind of presentation I had to give," Powell said. "It turned out to be untrue. That happens a lot in the intelligence business."

In case you were wondering, "yes" the Shrub's Administration has thrown diplomacy completely out the window.

U.S. Says Will Not Cede Control of Iraq to U.N.

"We didn't take on this huge burden with our coalition partners not to be able to have a significant dominating control over how it unfolds in the future," Powell told a House of Representatives subcommittee.

"We would not support ... essentially handing everything over to the U.N. for someone designated by the U.N. to suddenly become in charge of this whole operation," he added.

"We have picked on a greater obligation -- to make sure there is a functioning Iraqi government that is supported by the coalition, the center of gravity remaining with the coalition, military and civilian," he said.

Powell said the United Nations should, however, have a role in a post-Saddam Iraq, if only because it makes it easier for other countries to contribute to reconstruction costs...

The coalition is the Bush administration's term for the United States, Britain and the other minor contributors to the invasion of Iraq they launched last week.

The question of the U.N. role has come to the fore in the last few days because of debates in New York on the terms for releasing Iraqi oil money to pay for humanitarian relief.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=584&ncid=584&e=4&u=/nm/20030326/pl_nm/iraq_usa_un_dc

U.S. Says Will Not Cede Control of Iraq to U.N.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will not cede control of Iraq (news - web sites) to the United Nations (news - web sites) if and when it overthrows President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said on Wednesday.

"We didn't take on this huge burden with our coalition partners not to be able to have a significant dominating control over how it unfolds in the future," Powell told a House of Representatives subcommittee.

"We would not support ... essentially handing everything over to the U.N. for someone designated by the U.N. to suddenly become in charge of this whole operation," he added.

"We have picked on a greater obligation -- to make sure there is a functioning Iraqi government that is supported by the coalition, the center of gravity remaining with the coalition, military and civilian," he said.

Powell said the United Nations should, however, have a role in a post-Saddam Iraq, if only because it makes it easier for other countries to contribute to reconstruction costs.

"If we ask these nations to go get funds from their parliaments, it makes it a lot easier for them to get those funds and contribute those funds to the reconstruction effort ... if it has an international standing," he said.

The coalition is the Bush administration's term for the United States, Britain and the other minor contributors to the invasion of Iraq they launched last week.

The question of the U.N. role has come to the fore in the last few days because of debates in New York on the terms for releasing Iraqi oil money to pay for humanitarian relief.

The problem is expected to loom even larger if the United States takes control in Baghdad and then starts managing the Iraqi oil industry or seeking funds for reconstruction.

Washington will argue that as the victor it has the right to manage the transition to an Iraqi civilian government. Its opponents will say that the invasion was illegal and that the United Nations cannot endorse it retroactively.

Powell was speaking to the Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Powell, there is such a thing as making a mistake. It would appear that, if you can admit to this one mistake, innocent people don't have to die. (The threat to the world is not what you thought, so we can give Iraq more time to disarm, etc.)

Is is really so hard to admit that someone else purposely misled you and the Shrub -- causing you to unknowingly mislead the American people?

We understand that you were acting accordingly, taking what you believed to be the truth into account. But the charade is over. Please let the madness stop.

Some Evidence on Iraq Called Fake
U.N. Nuclear Inspector Says Documents on Purchases Were Forged
By Joby Warrick for the Washington Post.

Documents that purportedly showed Iraqi officials shopping for uranium in Africa two years ago were deemed "not authentic" after careful scrutiny by U.N. and independent experts, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the U.N. Security Council.

ElBaradei also rejected a key Bush administration claim -- made twice by the president in major speeches and repeated by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday -- that Iraq had tried to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes to use in centrifuges for uranium enrichment. Also, ElBaradei reported finding no evidence of banned weapons or nuclear material in an extensive sweep of Iraq using advanced radiation detectors.

"There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities," ElBaradei said...

ElBaradei's report yesterday all but ruled out the use of the tubes in a nuclear program. The IAEA chief said investigators had unearthed extensive records that backed up Iraq's explanation. The documents, which included blueprints, invoices and notes from meetings, detailed a 14-year struggle by Iraq to make 81mm conventional rockets that would perform well and resist corrosion. Successive failures led Iraqi officials to revise their standards and request increasingly higher and more expensive metals, ElBaradei said.

Moreover, further work by the IAEA's team of centrifuge experts -- two Americans, two Britons and a French citizen -- has reinforced the IAEA's conclusion that the tubes were ill suited for centrifuges. "It was highly unlikely that Iraq could have achieved the considerable redesign needed to use them in a revived centrifuge program," ElBaradei said.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59403-2003Mar7.html

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 8, 2003; Page A01

A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program appears to have been fabricated, the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector said yesterday in a report that called into question U.S. and British claims about Iraq's secret nuclear ambitions.

Documents that purportedly showed Iraqi officials shopping for uranium in Africa two years ago were deemed "not authentic" after careful scrutiny by U.N. and independent experts, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the U.N. Security Council.

ElBaradei also rejected a key Bush administration claim -- made twice by the president in major speeches and repeated by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday -- that Iraq had tried to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes to use in centrifuges for uranium enrichment. Also, ElBaradei reported finding no evidence of banned weapons or nuclear material in an extensive sweep of Iraq using advanced radiation detectors.

"There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities," ElBaradei said.

Knowledgeable sources familiar with the forgery investigation described the faked evidence as a series of letters between Iraqi agents and officials in the central African nation of Niger. The documents had been given to the U.N. inspectors by Britain and reviewed extensively by U.S. intelligence. The forgers had made relatively crude errors that eventually gave them away -- including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written, the officials said.

"We fell for it," said one U.S. official who reviewed the documents.

A spokesman for the IAEA said the agency did not blame either Britain or the United States for the forgery. The documents "were shared with us in good faith," he said.

The discovery was a further setback to U.S. and British efforts to convince reluctant U.N. Security Council members of the urgency of the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Powell, in his statement to the Security Council Friday, acknowledged ElBaradei's findings but also cited "new information" suggesting that Iraq continues to try to get nuclear weapons components.

"It is not time to close the book on these tubes," a senior State Department official said, adding that Iraq was prohibited from importing sensitive parts, such as tubes, regardless of their planned use.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein pursued an ambitious nuclear agenda throughout the 1970s and 1980s and launched a crash program to build a bomb in 1990 following his invasion of neighboring Kuwait. But Iraq's nuclear infrastructure was heavily damaged by allied bombing in 1991, and the country's known stocks of nuclear fuel and equipment were removed or destroyed during the U.N. inspections after the war.

However, Iraq never surrendered the blueprints for nuclear weapons, and kept key teams of nuclear scientists intact after U.N. inspectors were forced to leave in 1998. Despite international sanctions intended to block Iraq from obtaining weapons components, Western intelligence agencies and former weapons inspectors were convinced the Iraqi president had resumed his quest for the bomb in the late 1990s, citing defectors' stories and satellite images that showed new construction at facilities that were once part of Iraq's nuclear machinery.

Last September, the United States and Britain issued reports accusing Iraq of renewing its quest for nuclear weapons. In Britain's assessment, Iraq reportedly had "sought significant amounts of uranium from Africa, despite having no active civil nuclear program that could require it."

Separately, President Bush, in his speech to the U.N. Security Council on Sept. 12, said Iraq had made "several attempts to buy-high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

Doubts about both claims began to emerge shortly after U.N. inspectors returned to Iraq last November. In early December, the IAEA began an intensive investigation of the aluminum tubes, which Iraq had tried for two years to purchase by the tens of thousands from China and at least one other country. Certain types of high-strength aluminum tubes can be used to build centrifuges, which enrich uranium for nuclear weapons and commercial power plants.

By early January, the IAEA had reached a preliminary conclusion: The 81mm tubes sought by Iraq were "not directly suitable" for centrifuges, but appeared intended for use as conventional artillery rockets, as Iraq had claimed. The Bush administration, meanwhile, stuck to its original position while acknowledging disagreement among U.S. officials who had reviewed the evidence.

In his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, Bush said Iraq had "attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

Last month, Powell likewise dismissed the IAEA's conclusions, telling U.N. leaders that Iraq would not have ordered tubes at such high prices and with such exacting performance ratings if intended for use as ordinary rockets. Powell specifically noted that Iraq had sought tubes that had been "anodized," or coated with a thin outer film -- a procedure that Powell said was required if the tubes were to be used in centrifuges.

ElBaradei's report yesterday all but ruled out the use of the tubes in a nuclear program. The IAEA chief said investigators had unearthed extensive records that backed up Iraq's explanation. The documents, which included blueprints, invoices and notes from meetings, detailed a 14-year struggle by Iraq to make 81mm conventional rockets that would perform well and resist corrosion. Successive failures led Iraqi officials to revise their standards and request increasingly higher and more expensive metals, ElBaradei said.

Moreover, further work by the IAEA's team of centrifuge experts -- two Americans, two Britons and a French citizen -- has reinforced the IAEA's conclusion that the tubes were ill suited for centrifuges. "It was highly unlikely that Iraq could have achieved the considerable redesign needed to use them in a revived centrifuge program," ElBaradei said.

A number of independent experts on uranium enrichment have sided with IAEA's conclusion that the tubes were at best ill suited for centrifuges. Several have said that the "anodized" features mentioned by Powell are actually a strong argument for use in rockets, not centrifuges, contrary to the administration's statement.

The Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based research organization that specializes in nuclear issues, reported yesterday that Powell's staff had been briefed about the implications of the anodized coatings before Powell's address to the Security Council last month. "Despite being presented with the falseness of this claim, the administration persists in making misleading arguments about the significance of the tubes," the institute's president, David Albright, wrote in the report.

Powell's spokesman said the secretary of state had consulted numerous experts and stood by his U.N. statement.

Here is Colin Powell speaking to the U.N. last Friday, March 7, 2003.

More interesting than what Colin Powell is actually saying, which is the same thing he's been saying -- that almost everyone else in the U.N. disputes -- that Saddam has nuclear capabilities and hasn't lived up to the previous U.N. Resolutions, are the reactions of the diplomats surrounding him during his speech. They are frantically writing notes back and forth to each other and making faces in reaction to his words.

I'm working on putting up lower-resolutions of this stuff with iMovie...sorry for the large file sizes.

(Next comes a clip of Russian Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov -- disputing
Colin Powell's latest allegations about the demands of the last U.N. resolution not being met.)

Audio - Colin Powell at the U.N. (MP3 - 4 MB)
Colin Powell at the U.N. (Hi-res 137 MB)
Colin Powell at the U.N. (Lo-res 21 MB)
Colin Powell at the U.N. (Lo-res 19 MB)
Colin Powell at the U.N. (Lo-res 13 MB)

Advisors warn Bush he faces "humiliating" defeat on UN resolution
By the staff at Capital Hill Blue.

"You will lose, Mr. President," Powell told Bush. "You will lose badly and the United States will be humiliated on the world stage."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_1870.shtml

Last Updated: Mar 4th, 2003 - 23:00:40

1600 Pennsylvania
Advisors warn Bush he faces "humiliating" defeat on UN resolution
By CHB Staff
Mar 4, 2003, 06:22

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Senior aides to President George W. Bush say he faces a humiliating defeat before the United Nations Security Council next week.

And signs emerged today that the U.S. may withdraw the resolution from security council consideration.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, fresh from his latest round of meetings with representatives of countries on the Security Council, delivered the bad news to Bush on Monday.

"You will lose, Mr. President," Powell told Bush. "You will lose badly and the United States will be humiliated on the world stage."

President Bush
Powell told Bush he has only four of the nine votes needed for approval of a second resolution. As a result, some White House advisors are now urging the President to back off his tough stance on war with Iraq and give UN weapons inspectors more time.

"We have no other choice," admits one Bush advisor. "We don't have the votes. We don't have the support."

Presidential spokesman Ari Fleisher, in today's press briefing, appeared to signal a U.S. retreat from demanding a vote next week, saying "the president has said he believes that a vote is desirable. It is not mandatory."

John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that while it is too early for the United States to withdraw the resolution, "we haven't crossed that bridge," Negroponte said.

Powell told Bush on Monday that Turkey's refusal to allow U.S. troops to stage at the country's border with Iraq doomed any chance of consensus at the UN.

"Many were watching Turkey," Powell told Bush. "Had they agreed, it might have helped us sway critical votes."

Powell met privately today with Mexico Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez to try and "parse" new language for the second resolution to satisfy a Mexican request to modify the text and extend the deadline for weapons inspections.

"It (the meeting) did not produce results," a Powell spokesman said afterwards.

Publicly, Powell is leaving the door open for the U.S. to withdraw the resolution, telling a German television interviewer: "At the start of next week we'll decide when, depending on what we have heard, we will vote on a resolution. It will be a difficult vote for the U.N. Security Council."

Some Bush aides now admit privately that the President, for all his tough talk, may have to back down and postpone his plans to invade Iraq in the near future, delaying any invasion until April or May at the earliest.

"The vote in Turkey fucked things up big time," grumbles one White House aide. "It pushes our timetable back. On the other hand, it might give us a chance to save face."

"Saving face" could mean backing away from a showdown with the UN Security Council next week and agreeing to let the weapons inspection process run its course.

"The arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed gives us some breathing room," says a Bush strategist. "We can concentrate on the favorable publicity generated by the arrest and the valuable intelligence we have gained from that event."

Mohammed, arrested in Pakistan, masterminded the 9-11 terrorist attacks. CIA agents found computer files, memos and other materials which pointed to plans for new attacks against the U.S.

"The prudent thing to do would be to let Iraq cool off on a back burner and concentrate on Mohammed," says Republican strategist Arnold Beckins. "Saddam isn't going anywhere. There's too much heat on him right now for him to pull something."

But a delay would not mean a war with Iraq is off. Most Bush strategists and Pentagon military planners agree that the U.S. will probably have to take military action sooner or later.

Right now, only the U.S., Britain and Spain favor immediate military action against Iraq. With most of the other allies lining up against the U.S., Bush faces both a diplomatic and public relations nightmare if he proceeds against Hussein without setting a proper public stage.

"We've always needed an exit strategy," admits a White House aide. "Circumstances have given us one. Perhaps we shouldn't ignore it."

Letter and link to Washington post story: U.S. Diplomat Resigns, Protesting 'Our Fervent Pursuit of War'

I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens, effective March 7. I do so with a heavy heart. The baggage of my upbringing included a felt obligation to give something back to my country...

...until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer.

The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America’s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security...

...this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo?

...Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character and ability. You have preserved more international credibility for us than our policy deserves, and salvaged something positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-serving Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes too far. We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America’s ability to defend its interests.

I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share.

John Brady Kiesling

Here is the full text of the letter and article in case the link goes bad:

http://truthout.org/docs_03/030103A.shtml

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EDITOR'S NOTE: What follows is a letter of resignation written by John Brady Kiesling, a member of Bush's Foreign Service Corps and Political Counselor to the American embassy in Greece. Kiesling has been a diplomat for twenty years, a civil servant to four Presidents. The letter below, delivered to Secretary of State Colin Powell, is quite possibly the most eloquent statement of dissent thus far put forth regarding the issue of Iraq. The New York Times story which reports on this remarkable event can be found after Kiesling's letter. - wrp

Go to Original

t r u t h o u t | Letter
U.S. Diplomat John Brady Kiesling
Letter of Resignation, to:
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell

ATHENS | Thursday 27 February 2003

Dear Mr. Secretary:

I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens, effective March 7. I do so with a heavy heart. The baggage of my upbringing included a felt obligation to give something back to my country. Service as a U.S. diplomat was a dream job. I was paid to understand foreign languages and cultures, to seek out diplomats, politicians, scholars and journalists, and to persuade them that U.S. interests and theirs fundamentally coincided. My faith in my country and its values was the most powerful weapon in my diplomatic arsenal.

It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer.

The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America’s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.

The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam. The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo?

We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners. Even where our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests. Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is blind in Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the Occupied Territories, to our own advice, that overwhelming military power is not the answer to terrorism? After the shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny and Ramallah, it will be a brave foreigner who forms ranks with Micronesia to follow where we lead.

We have a coalition still, a good one. The loyalty of many of our friends is impressive, a tribute to American moral capital built up over a century. But our closest allies are persuaded less that war is justified than that it would be perilous to allow the U.S. to drift into complete solipsism. Loyalty should be reciprocal. Why does our President condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this Administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials. Has “oderint dum metuant” really become our motto?

I urge you to listen to America’s friends around the world. Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know that the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and they want a strong international system, with the U.S. and EU in close partnership. When our friends are afraid of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet?

Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character and ability. You have preserved more international credibility for us than our policy deserves, and salvaged something positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-serving Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes too far. We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America’s ability to defend its interests.

I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share.

John Brady Kiesling

Go to Original

U.S. Diplomat Resigns, Protesting 'Our Fervent Pursuit of War'
By Felicity Barringer
New York Times

Thursday 27 February 2003

UNITED NATIONS — A career diplomat who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan resigned this week in protest against the country's policies on Iraq.

The diplomat, John Brady Kiesling, the political counselor at the United States Embassy in Athens, said in his resignation letter, "Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson."

Mr. Kiesling, 45, who has been a diplomat for about 20 years, said in a telephone interview tonight that he faxed the letter to Secretary of State Colin L, Powell on Monday after informing Thomas Miller, the ambassador in Athens, of his decision.

He said he had acted alone, but "I've been comforted by the expressions of support I've gotten afterward" from colleagues.

"No one has any illusions that the policy will be changed," he said. "Too much has been invested in the war."

Louis Fintor, a State Department spokesman, said he had no information on Mr. Kiesling's decision and it was department policy not to comment on personnel matters.

In his letter, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times by a friend of Mr. Kiesling's, the diplomat wrote Mr. Powell: "We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners."

His letter continued: "Even where our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests."

It is rare but not unheard-of for a diplomat, immersed in the State Department's culture of public support for policy, regardless of private feelings, to resign with this kind of public blast. From 1992 to 1994, five State Department officials quit out of frustration with the Clinton administration's Balkans policy.

Asked if his views were widely shared among his diplomatic colleagues, Mr. Kiesling said: "No one of my colleagues is comfortable with our policy. Everyone is moving ahead with it as good and loyal. The State Department is loaded with people who want to play the team game — we have a very strong premium on loyalty."

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

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"Long War" is doublespeak for "thousands of our soldiers will die and we'll keep sending more over."

What happened to killing Saddam within 48 hours and leaving it at that? The story keeps changing and changing...

Even Colin Powell is trying to warn us about this war. As best he can, considering he works for the crazies that are in favor of this war.

Colin Powell. If you're listening. I have a question for you:
Why don't you stop this war right now by speaking out against it?

You could stop all the madness right now, by just picking up the telephone, resigning, and telling the world why.

Why not tell the truth you must know better than anyone else? Why show up to the U.N. with smoke and mirrors and a vial of anthrax and a dog and pony show?
(Video of this on the way, of course, courtesy of The Daily Show...of course.)

Powell: Commitment in Iraq Would Be Long

Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites),
on the eve of another faceoff at the United Nations
(news - web sites) over disarming Saddam Hussein
(news - web sites), said Thursday the American
people should be "prepared for a fairly long-term
commitment" in Iraq...

Once those goals are achieved, Powell said, the
U.S. military leader in such a war would take
temporary charge of Iraq. But that person
would give way to a prominent American
or international figure, whose own term
would be limited with an eye toward turning
over the government to the Iraqis themselves,
the secretary of state said.

"We would try to build as much as we can
on the structure that is there," Powell said.
"The challenge would be to put in place a
representative leadership."

...His confrontation with officials of those
two countries is set for Friday in New York.
That's when chief U.N. weapons inspectors
Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei report
on searches that have not turned up what
the Bush administration has characterized
as hundreds of concealed and illicit
biological and chemical weapons...

Meanwhile, a new audio recording by
Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) was
reported Wednesday — the second to
surface this week — in which the al-Qaida
leader purportedly predicts his own death
in an unspecified act of "martyrdom."

Al-Ansaar, a British-based Islamic news
agency, said it believed the 53-minute tape,
allegedly recorded earlier this month and
acquired by the news agency from an
unidentified man via an Internet contact,
was a carefully worded last will and
testament from bin Laden.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=542&e=1&u=/ap/20030213/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq

By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites), on the eve of another faceoff at the United Nations (news - web sites) over disarming Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), said Thursday the American people should be "prepared for a fairly long-term commitment" in Iraq.

Appearing before the House Budget Committee, Powell said he could furnish no estimate of the cost of any war with Iraq. But he did say he thought that Arab nation should be able to adjust quickly after a war — in contrast to the slow pace of recovery in Afghanistan (news - web sites).

Iraq has an effective bureaucracy, rich oil resources and a developed middle class, Powell said. "I would hope that it would be a short conflict and that it would be directed at the leadership, not the society," he said.

Once those goals are achieved, Powell said, the U.S. military leader in such a war would take temporary charge of Iraq. But that person would give way to a prominent American or international figure, whose own term would be limited with an eye toward turning over the government to the Iraqis themselves, the secretary of state said.

"We would try to build as much as we can on the structure that is there," Powell said. "The challenge would be to put in place a representative leadership."

At another hearing, Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, asked whether U.S. forces were prepared for a possible war with Iraq while continuing the fight against terrorism.

"Absolutely," replied Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld also told senators he couldn't estimate the cost of a war, but added, "It would cost a heck of a lot less than 9-11 cost and 9-11 would cost a heck of a lot less than a chemical or biological 9-11," referring to administration concerns that Iraq could provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

Asked by Sen. Evan Bayh (news, bio, voting record), D-Ind., about the future of NATO (news - web sites) following a dispute with allies over defending Turkey, Rumsfeld joked "I have a feeling you're trying to put me in a position of defending Germany or France."

Bayh replied: "It's hard to defend the indefensible."

Rumsfeld said that while he is disappointed by the dispute, he believes the alliance is important. He recalled that the alliance has survived past disputes. "It's never been perfect. it's always been bumpy," he said.

Powell said Wednesday he intends to ask France and Germany whether they are opposing war with Iraq in order to get Saddam "off the hook."

His confrontation with officials of those two countries is set for Friday in New York. That's when chief U.N. weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei report on searches that have not turned up what the Bush administration has characterized as hundreds of concealed and illicit biological and chemical weapons.

U.S. and Russian officials on Wednesday said international missile experts this week did find that an Iraqi missile exceeds the maximum 93-mile range allowed under U.N. resolutions. U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said it was now up to Blix to recommend what to do about the violation.

In addition, Turkey's foreign minister, Yasar Yakis, was holding talks in Washington on basing American troops in Turkey for use against Iraq.

And Sen. Joseph Lieberman (news, bio, voting record), D-Conn., asked President Bush (news - web sites) to consider convening debtor and donor conferences to pay for a smooth, post-Saddam transition.

Powell told the House International Relations Committee on Wednesday that all 15 nations who voted unanimously in November to threaten Iraq with "serious consequences" if it did not disarm knew they were voting for force as an option.

"I hope in the days ahead we will be able to rally the United Nations around the original resolution and what other resolution might be necessary in order to satisfy the political needs of a number of the countries," Powell said.

But he said the United States would not be deterred by opposition to using force.

"France and Germany are resisting," he said. "They believe that more inspections, more time" should be allowed.

"The question I will put to them is: Why more inspections? And how much more time?" Powell said. "Or are you just delaying for the sake of delaying in order to get Saddam Hussein off the hook and no disarmament? That's a challenge I will put to them."

A U.S. official confirmed that Powell would be in New York, speaking to his counterparts Friday. The Security Council members will have a chance to discuss the report from Blix and ElBaradei first at the open meeting, and then in a closed session, said Germany's U.N. Ambassador Gunter Pleuger, the current council president.

The New York Times reported in Thursday's editions that Pentagon (news - web sites) officials say Iraqi forces have moved explosives into the southern part of the country in preparation for blowing up bridges, bursting dams and igniting oil fields in a strategy to slow an American attack.

Meanwhile, a new audio recording by Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) was reported Wednesday — the second to surface this week — in which the al-Qaida leader purportedly predicts his own death in an unspecified act of "martyrdom."

Al-Ansaar, a British-based Islamic news agency, said it believed the 53-minute tape, allegedly recorded earlier this month and acquired by the news agency from an unidentified man via an Internet contact, was a carefully worded last will and testament from bin Laden.

U.S. counterterrorism officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were studying the new message.

Note: 4/2/03-Title placeholder - can't find this article online anymore -- lr

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday he disagrees with President Bush's position on an affirmative action case before the Supreme Court, as the White House called for more money for historically black colleges.

Powell, one of two black members of Bush's Cabinet, said he supports methods the University of Michigan uses to bolster minority enrollments in its undergraduate and law school programs. The policies offer points to minority applicants and set goals for minority admissions.

"Whereas I have expressed my support for the policies used by the University of Michigan, the president, in looking at it, came to the conclusion that it was constitutionally flawed based on the legal advice he received," Powell said on the CBS program "Face the Nation."

Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-affirmative-action0120jan20,0,1744433.story?coll=sns%2Dap%2Dpolitics%2Dheadlines

By SCOTT LINDLAW

January 20, 2003, 10:08 AM EST

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday he disagrees with President Bush's position on an affirmative action case before the Supreme Court, as the White House called for more money for historically black colleges.

Powell, one of two black members of Bush's Cabinet, said he supports methods the University of Michigan uses to bolster minority enrollments in its undergraduate and law school programs. The policies offer points to minority applicants and set goals for minority admissions.

"Whereas I have expressed my support for the policies used by the University of Michigan, the president, in looking at it, came to the conclusion that it was constitutionally flawed based on the legal advice he received," Powell said on the CBS program "Face the Nation."

It was a rare public acknowledgment of dissent with the president and with other top White House aides.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said she backed Bush's decision to step into the case before the Supreme Court and to argue that the University of Michigan's methods were unconstitutional. She said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that there are "problems" with the university's selection policies, and cited the points system.

But she also said race can be a factor in colleges' selection process. The brief the Bush administration filed with the Supreme Court was silent on that issue of whether race can be a factor under some circumstances.

"It is important to take race into consideration if you must, if race-neutral means do not work," she said.

Rice said she had benefited from affirmative action during her career at Stanford University.

"I think they saw a person that they thought had potential, and yes, I think they were looking to diversify the faculty," she said.

"I think there's nothing wrong with that in the United States," Rice said. "It does not mean that one has to go to people of lower quality. Race is a factor in our society."

In a speech to the Republican National Convention in 2000, Powell sharply criticized GOP attacks on affirmative action.

"We must understand the cynicism that exists in the black community," he said. "The kind of cynicism that is created when, for example, some in our party miss no opportunity to roundly and loudly condemn affirmative action that helped a few thousand black kids get an education, but you hardly heard a whimper from them over affirmative action for lobbyists who load our federal tax codes with preferences for special interests."

Sunday on CNN, Powell said he remained "a strong proponent of affirmative action."

Education Secretary Rod Paige is the other black member of Bush's Cabinet.

Paige firmly agrees with Bush's stance, a spokesman said Sunday.

"Secretary Paige believes in equal opportunity for all students and he fully supports President Bush's position on the University of Michigan case," said spokesman Dan Langan. He wasn't sure whether Paige agreed with Rice that race can sometimes be a factor in university admissions.

In an unusual Sunday night announcement, the White House said Bush's budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year would increase funding by 5 percent for grants to historically black colleges, universities, graduate programs and Hispanic education institutions.

The money affects three programs.

The Historically Black Colleges and Universities program makes grants to 99 eligible institutions to help strengthen infrastructure and achieve greater financial stability.

The Historically Black Graduate Institutions program makes 5-year grants to 18 institutions to expand capacity for providing graduate-level education.

The Hispanic-Serving Institutions program makes grants of up to five years to eligible institutions -- those with a full-time population of at least 25 percent Hispanic students, at least 50 percent of which are low-income.

In its brief to the Supreme Court, the administration argued that policies at the University of Michigan and its law school fail the constitutional test of equal protection for all under the law, and ignore race-neutral alternatives that could boost minority presence on campuses.

A White House spokesman declined to say Sunday night why the black and Hispanic grant programs are acceptable, when the University of Michigan admission system is not.

Bush, who drew 9 percent of the black vote in 2000, was attending a predominantly black church on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday Monday.

See the Time Magazine article by Massimo Calabresi:
Colin Powell: Planning for an Exit.

...he has privately grown more frustrated, and now, sources close to Powell tell Time, he has a firm plan for his exit: he will step down at the end of President Bush’s current term. “He will have done a yeoman’s job of contributing over the four years,” says a close aide. “But that’s enough.” The aide says Powell’s view of the matter is, “I did what my heart told me to do. I got (Bush) here and set him up. I did the best I could do.” If Bush wins a second term, only the imminence of a major diplomatic victory—in the Middle East, for example—could induce him to stay a short while longer. By the same token, the aide stresses that Powell is determined to serve out the entire term—even if the U.S. launches an invasion of Iraq, which Powell has fought to delay or derail.