In an interview that aired on PBS on Friday, Feb. 3, Colin Powell's former chief of staff claimed that the speech Powell made before the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, laying out a case for war with Iraq, included falsehoods of which Powell had never been made aware. He said,
"My participation in that presentation at the UN constitutes the lowest point in my professional life. I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council."Colonel (ret.) Lawrence Wilkerson, a veteran of the Vietnam War, served for many years as Powell's consultant and advisor. He stated in the interview that he was "intimately involved in the preparation of Secretary Powell for his five February 2003 presentation at the UN Security Council" and that neither CIA Director George Tenent nor the CIA analysts involved in furnishing Powell with the information on mobile biological laboratories that he would use in his speech gave any indication that there were disputes about the reliability of the informants who had supplied this information.
Wilkerson still sees this lapse as the result of a profound intelligence failure, saying,
"I have to believe that. Otherwise I have to believe some rather nefarious things about some fairly highly placed people in the intelligence community and perhaps elsewhere."
Link:
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Powells_former_chief_of_staff_on_0205.htmlLink to my post and comments at dKos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/2/5/211135/9334Interesting revelations from the Colonel, but his attempts to focus the blame on "the intelligence community" is just lame. We all know that Cheney, WHIG, and the neoconster dudes at the Pentagon all have mucho blood on their hands over this one, and as much as Col Wilkerson is going to take a heap of doodoo from those folk, he's still providing cover for them. And, for that, I have zero idea why.
In any event, he's called it what it is -- a HOAX -- and lots of Americans and Iraqis are dead, wounded, crippled, tortured and horrified because of it.
Call it what it really is, Col Wilkerson ==
WAR CRIMES, TREASON, AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.Peace.