Powell: No Apologize on Uranuim Charged
washingtonpost.com
By DARLENE SUPERVILLE
The Associated Press
Thursday, July 10, 2003; 3:56 PM
washingtonpost.com
PRETORIA, South Africa - Secretary of State Colin Powell defended the administration's handling of information about Iraq's weapons programs, saying Thursday that President Bush shouldn't have to apologize for statements that later proved false.
"There was no effort or attempt on the part of the president or anyone else in the administration to mislead or to deceive the American people," Powell said. "The president was presenting what seemed to be a reasonable statement at that time."
Powell's remarks, in Africa where he is traveling with the president, were the administration's strongest defense yet of Bush's decision to include a line in his State of the Union speech that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium in Africa.
As weeks have passed with the American search turning up no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, criticism, especially by Democrats, has been building concerning assertions the administration made as justification for the war.
Powell said the issue was "overblown." The president's remarks in January reflected the best available intelligence at the time, Powell said. He said that as he prepared his own Feb. 5 speech to the United Nations, the information on uranium "was not standing the test of time" and he decided not to use it.
"I didn't use it, and we haven't used it since," Powell said. "But to think that somehow we went out of our way to insert this single sentence into the State of the Union Address for the purpose of deceiving and misleading the American people is an overdrawn, overblown, overwrought conclusion."
© 2003 The Associated Press |
