The World Today - US in crisis over Iraq: Colin Powell
[This is the print version of story abc.net.au]
The World Today - Monday, 18 December , 2006 12:15:00
Reporter: Brendan Trembath
ELEANOR HALL: He delivered what's widely considered to have been the single most influential argument for invading Iraq when he addressed the United Nations about suspected weapons of mass destruction.
But at the time the former US Secretary of State Colin Powell was also issuing warnings about the risks of going to war, frequently using the phrase "you break it, you own it."
Now, nearly four years on, Colin Powell says Iraq is well and truly broken, and that what Washington now owns is a crisis that threatens US security as well as Baghdad's.
He's not the first US military heavyweight to question the conduct of the war in Iraq, but Colin Powell's criticism overnight is the first from the select group of Bush insiders who set the US and its allies on the path to war. And he says not only is the US losing the war, but that sending more troops may do nothing to rescue the situation.
Brendan Trembath reports.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: Once a Bush administration insider, Colin Powell is now sounding more and more like an outsider, with his frank assessment of the war in Iraq.
COLIN POWELL: Nothing seems to be improving. It seems to me that this looks like a civil war, and we ought to call it that.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: Civil war is not a description the US President George W. Bush considers appropriate. Observers say Colin Powell's assessment is by no means new but, coming from someone of his standing, quite symbolic.
Dr Ron Huisken from the Centre for Strategic and Defence Studies at the Australian National University.
RON HUISKEN: Pretty much everybody of consequence among the Washington foreign and security policy elite, are now questioning the, if not the original decision, then certainly the tactics employed since. So, it's one voice among many, but still he still has a lot of cache in the United States. So, it's probably an important and additional voice, I think, calling for a quite radical departure from the present cause.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: He was instrumental in helping steer public opinion, not just in the United States, but in other countries, Australia included. Would you expect people to adjust their opinions here, with somebody like him now suggesting that the war is not as winnable as it was put out to be originally?
RON HUISKEN: Well, if you think back to the circumstances, I think Colin Powell's advocacy of the war, or support for the war, is a pretty complicated issue. It's not clear to me, if you like, that his heart was ever in it. But he was an ostracised member of the inner circle, but it was eventually co-opted, because of his credibility both within the US and in the international community, to do that major selling job on the weapons of mass destructions.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: In February 2003, Colin Powell used a world forum, the United Nations Security Council, to argue why the most powerful nations should confront Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
COLIN POWELL: The United States will not and cannot run that risk for the American people, leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post September 11th world.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: Colin Powell's argument was supported with satellite images and secretly recorded phone and radio conversations. The Powell presentation carried a lot of weight here in Australia.
JOHN HOWARD: The reason that Australia is concerned about this matter, the reason why it directly affects the national interest of Australia, is that a world in which you run the risk of the twin evils of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of rogue states, joining the other great modern evil of international terrorism, is not a world that I believe Australians want to live in.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: As well as Prime Minister John Howard, numerous coalition politicians like Kay Elson from Queensland also made speeches in the Parliament, warning of the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
But in 2004 a CIA report concluded that Saddam Hussein did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the US-led invasion in March 2003. And Iraq had not begun any program to produce them.
ELEANOR HALL: Brendan Trembath reporting.
© 2006 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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