ticklebutton
05-17-2004, 05:43 PM
Poor Colin Powell. It must be terrible to find that his colleagues tricked him into giving a speech before the U.N. & the world, presenting what he thought was evidence that Saddam Hussein was pursuing weapons of mass destruction.
Powell has said his presentation
“was based on...the collective judgment, the sound judgment of the intelligence community. But it turns out that the information was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading. It appears not to be the case that it was that solid,” he said.
[http://www.why-war.com/news/2003/05/12/selectiv.html]
CIA Director George Tenet has testified to Congress that he had called Cheney to warn him that the evidence was in doubt - current and former U.S. officials, including the former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, have said that most of the evidence came from an Iraqi defector code-named “Curveball”, who is closely tied to:
AHMAD CHALABI, a powerful member of the Iraqi Governing Council (whose current president has just been assasinated), and criminal fugitive still wanted by Interpol.
[http://www.iraqgroup.net/issues_opinions/2004/march_2004/english/chalabi_13_mar_04.html]
Chalabi is backed by an array of powerful neo-conservatives - including Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle (the neoconservative chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and former Deputy Secretary of Defense [http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/show_1017.html],
Paul Wolfowitz, and Caspar Weinberger.
Chalabi has amassed a fair amount of power - in Newsweek, Christopher Dickey reports the staggering array of positions that Chalabi has come to control within the Iraqi Governing Council:
He is head of the economics and finance committees, which controls the ministries of oil, finance, and trade, as well as the central bank and several private banks, including the largest commercial bank in the country.
He also runs the De-Baathification Commission, and thus holds potentially vast control over the flow of personnel into, or out of, any future Iraqi government.
For the moment, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer writes the big checks and can veto policies, but all that will supposedly change on June 30, the Bush administration's self-imposed deadline for returning sovereignty to an Iraqi government.
Both Iraqi and U.S. officials in Baghdad say it's almost certain that on June 30, the government that does receive sovereignty — and the purse strings — will be either the current, appointed Iraqi Governing Council, or some variation on it.
[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4409622/]
Powell has said his presentation
“was based on...the collective judgment, the sound judgment of the intelligence community. But it turns out that the information was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading. It appears not to be the case that it was that solid,” he said.
[http://www.why-war.com/news/2003/05/12/selectiv.html]
CIA Director George Tenet has testified to Congress that he had called Cheney to warn him that the evidence was in doubt - current and former U.S. officials, including the former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, have said that most of the evidence came from an Iraqi defector code-named “Curveball”, who is closely tied to:
AHMAD CHALABI, a powerful member of the Iraqi Governing Council (whose current president has just been assasinated), and criminal fugitive still wanted by Interpol.
[http://www.iraqgroup.net/issues_opinions/2004/march_2004/english/chalabi_13_mar_04.html]
Chalabi is backed by an array of powerful neo-conservatives - including Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle (the neoconservative chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and former Deputy Secretary of Defense [http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/show_1017.html],
Paul Wolfowitz, and Caspar Weinberger.
Chalabi has amassed a fair amount of power - in Newsweek, Christopher Dickey reports the staggering array of positions that Chalabi has come to control within the Iraqi Governing Council:
He is head of the economics and finance committees, which controls the ministries of oil, finance, and trade, as well as the central bank and several private banks, including the largest commercial bank in the country.
He also runs the De-Baathification Commission, and thus holds potentially vast control over the flow of personnel into, or out of, any future Iraqi government.
For the moment, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer writes the big checks and can veto policies, but all that will supposedly change on June 30, the Bush administration's self-imposed deadline for returning sovereignty to an Iraqi government.
Both Iraqi and U.S. officials in Baghdad say it's almost certain that on June 30, the government that does receive sovereignty — and the purse strings — will be either the current, appointed Iraqi Governing Council, or some variation on it.
[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4409622/]