A rchive Date
[ 09-01-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/2344058
Powell admits he saw no hard proof of Iraq terror link
Still defends justification for war
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
New York Times
Jan. 9, 2004, 1:20AM
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell conceded Thursday that despite his assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no "smoking gun" proof of a link between the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and terrorists of al-Qaida.
"I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection," Powell said, in response to a question at a news conference. "But I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did."
Powell's remarks Thursday were a stark admission that there is no definitive evidence to back up administration statements and insinuations that Saddam had ties to al-Qaida, the alleged authors of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Although President Bush finally acknowledged in September that there was no known connection between Saddam and the attacks, the impression of a link in the public mind has become widely accepted - and something administration officials have done little to discourage.
Powell offered a vigorous defense of his Feb. 5 presentation before the U.N. Security Council, in which he voiced the administration's most detailed case to date for war with Iraq. After studying intelligence data, he claimed that a "sinister nexus" existed "between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder."
Without any additional qualifiers, Powell continued: "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants."
He added: "Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with al-Qaida. These denials are simply not credible."
On Thursday, Powell dismissed second-guessing and said that Bush had acted after giving Saddam 12 years to come into compliance with the international community.
"The president decided he had to act because he believed that whatever the size of the stockpile, whatever one might think about it, he believed that the region was in danger, America was in danger and he would act," he said. "And he did act."
Powell defended his justification for the war in Iraq. He said he had been fully aware that "the whole world would be watching," as he painstakingly made the case that Saddam's government presented an imminent threat to the United States and its interests.
The immediacy of the danger was at the core of debates in the United Nations over how to proceed against Saddam. A report released Thursday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonpartisan Washington research center, concluded that Iraq's weapons programs constituted a long-term threat that should not have been ignored. But it also said the programs did not "pose an immediate threat to the United States, to the region or to global security."
Powell's U.N. presentation asserted that "leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option." The secretary said he had spent time with experts at the CIA combing through reports. "Anything that we did not feel was solid and multi-sourced, we did not use in that speech," he said on Thursday.
He noted that Saddam had used prohibited weapons in the past - including nerve gas attacks against Iran and against Iraqi Kurds - and said that even if there were no actual weapons at hand, there was every indication he would reconstitute them once the international community lost interest.
"In terms of intention, he always had it," Powell said. "What he was waiting to do is see if he could break the will of the international community, get rid of any potential future inspections, and get back to his intentions, which were to have weapons of mass destruction."
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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