Rogue Media

By Jonathan Schwarz  –  huffingtonpost.com

Colin Powell’s Own Staff Had Warned Him Against His War Lies

Colin Powell made his Iraq presentation at the United Nations ten years ago today, on February 5th, 2003.

As much criticism as Powell has gotten for this — hecalls it ”painful” and says, “I get mad when bloggers accuse me of lying” — it hasn’t been close to what he deserves. That’s because there’s no question that Powell was consciously lying: he fabricated “evidence” and ignored repeated warnings that what he was saying was false.

We know this because of some good reporting and what’s seeped into the public record via one of the congressional investigations of pre-war Iraq intelligence. The record is still incomplete, because Congress never bothered to look at how Powell used the intelligence he received, and the corporate media has never taken a close look at what happened. But with what’s available we can go through Powell’s presentation line by line to demonstrate the chasm between what he knew and what he told the world. As you’ll see, there’s quite a lot to say about it.

Powell’s speech can be found on the archived State Department website here. All other sources are linked below.

PUBLIC CERTAINTY, PRIVATE DOUBT

On that February 5 in front of the UN Security Council, was Colin Powell certain what he was saying was accurate? He certainly was:

POWELL: My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.

Later, regarding whether Iraq had reconstituted a nuclear weapons program, he said:

POWELL: [T]here is no doubt in my mind…

That’s in public. What about in private? According to Larry Wilkerson, Powell’s chief of staff, here’s what Powell was thinking at the time:

WILKERSON: [Powell] had walked into my office musing and he said words to the effect of, I wonder how we’ll all feel if we put half a million troops in Iraq and march from one end of the country to the other and find nothing. Read the rest of this entry →