Powell admits U.S. had no proof of Iraq-Qaeda link
iht.com
Christopher Marquis
NYT
Saturday, January 10, 2004
WASHINGTON Secretary of State Colin Powell has conceded that despite his assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no "smoking gun" proof of a link between the government of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq and terrorists of Al Qaeda.
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"I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection," Powell said, in response to a question at a news conference Thursday.
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"But I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did."
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Powell's remarks were a stark admission that there is no definitive evidence to back up administration statements and insinuations that Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda, the alleged authors of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
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Although President George W. Bush finally acknowledged last 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 it is something administration officials have done little to discourage.
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Powell offered a vigorous defense of his Feb. 5, 2003, presentation before the UN Security Council, in which he voiced the administration's most detailed case to date for war with Iraq. After studying intelligence data, he claimed, the administration had found a "sinister nexus" existed "between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder."
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Without any additional qualifiers, Powell continued then: "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants."
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He added: "Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with Al Qaeda. These denials are simply not credible."
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On Thursday, Powell dismissed second-guessing and said that Bush had acted after Saddam had had 12 years to come into compliance with the rules of the international community.
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"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," Powell said.
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"And he did act."
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The immediacy of the danger was at the core of debates in the United Nations over how to proceed against Saddam.
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A report released Thursday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonpartisan Washington research center, concluded that Iraq's weapons programs had constituted a long-term threat that should not have been ignored. But it also said the programs had not posed "an immediate threat to the United States, to the region or to global security."
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