In a development that further undermines Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. attacked Iraq in March, a two-year-old videotape has surfaced showing Secretary of State Colin Powell boasting that sanctions had prevented Saddam from reconstituting his WMD programs.
At a February 2001 press conference, Powell told reporters that the sanctions program was put into place "for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction."
After explaining that the situation required continual monitoring, Powell said of the sanctions: "Frankly, they have worked. [Saddam has] not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."
Powell's remarks, delivered Feb. 24, 2001, at a joint news conference in Cairo with the foreign minister of Egypt, were first uncovered by British investigative reporter John Pilger. Earlier this week Britain's ITV network broadcast the tape, which was shown for the first time in the U.S. Wednesday night on MSNBC.
MSNBC "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann noted that a transcript of Powell's damaging admission remains posted on the State Department Web site to this day.
Asked about the new controversy, a State Department official told MSNBC: "9/11 changed the world. There was an active terrorist network. Iraq was a country that had used weapons of mass destruction and had not accounted for them." But his answer did little to explain the contradiction between Powell's statement and the administration's later claims.
Although the U.S. news media have been largely silent so far on the Powell revelation, it's likely to add fodder to Democrat claims that the Bush administration "lied" about Iraqi WMDs and that the Iraq war was "a fraud."
The development is also likely to heighten concern among Republicans that, while the Iraq war was justified for a whole host of other reasons, the Bush White House made an extraordinary strategic blunder when it placed so much emphasis on Saddam's biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs.
Critics argue that the White House has done almost nothing to make Americans aware of key developments showing that Iraq had indeed concealed a vast array of more conventional weapons.
In July, for instance, U.S. forces uncovered a significant portion of the Iraqi air force buried in the sand near Baghdad. The aircraft, numbering more than 30, included several state-of-the-art Soviet-built jet fighters in mint condition that had been carefully packaged for later excavation and use.
Inexplicably, the White House failed to spotlight the startling find even as criticism mounted over the search for Saddam's elusive WMDs.
Others complain that the White House has completely mishandled the issue of whether Saddam Hussein had a hand in the 9/11 attacks, a prospect that would more than justify President Bush's decision to go to war last March.
While Vice President Cheney hinted at a link during a Sept. 14 interview on "Meet the Press" - detailing an array of evidence that at least indicated the question was still an open one - within days he was contradicted by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and finally the president himself.
In comments widely viewed as a clarification of Cheney's remarks about 9/11, Bush told reporters last Thursday that the U.S. had no evidence tying Iraq to the attacks - even as he maintained that other evidence showed a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
The episode prompted the Wall Street Journal to criticize the White House for downplaying what it said was a far more compelling case than either Bush or his top aides seem willing to make.
"The Bush Administration was cautious, arguably too cautious, when making its case for the liberation of Iraq," the paper editorialized on Monday, before detailing persuasive evidence of Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attacks.
"About a month after September 11, reports surfaced that lead hijacker Mohammed Atta had met in Prague with an Iraqi embassy official and intelligence agent named Ahmed al-Ani," the paper said. While Clinton holdovers at the CIA have disputed those reports, the Journal noted, "Czech officials at the cabinet level have stuck by the story."
"Also in October 2001, two defectors alleged that a 707 fuselage at Salman Pak, south of Baghdad, was being used to train terrorists in the art of hijacking with simple weapons such as knives," the paper reported.
It might have added that as recently as May of this year, Manhattan U.S. District Judge Harold Baer awarded the families of two 9/11 victims $104 million based in part on his finding that the Salman Pak evidence implicated Iraq in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
The Journal also cited press reports going back at least five years that revealed a series of meetings between Iraq's former intelligence chief and Osama bin Laden.
Still, the Bush White House has remained virtually mum on the compelling evidence tying Iraq to 9/11 - and instead seems content to absorb the political damage its increasingly weak WMD arguments have invited.
Powell's February 2001 revelation only serves to spotlight the folly of that strategy.
The secretary of state's full Feb. 24, 2001, comment on the effectiveness of sanctions in preventing Saddam from obtaining WMDs went as follows:
"The foreign minister and I and the president and I had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions, the fact that the sanctions exist, not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction.
"We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at the sanctions to make sure that they have directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was 10 years ago when we began it.
"And frankly, they have worked. He is not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors." [End of Excerpt]
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration
Saddam Hussein/Iraq
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