Colin Powell is Secretary of State. His job is not to
clandestinely or otherwise investigate ties to terrorism.
The CIA & other intelligence agencies do that. They had
many ties between Saddam & terrorists, including Al Qaeda.
Many of those ties were highly classified & could not be
made public, including to Colin Powell for his Speech to
the UN. (See links below for known ties between Al Qaeda &
Saddam)
BTW, here's what Secretary Powell actually said, in his own words....
SECRETARY POWELL: My presentation on the 5th of February when I talked to this issue made it clear that we had seen some links and connections to terrorist organizations over time, and I focused on one particular case, Zawahiri, and I think that was a pretty solid case.
There is not -- you know, I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I think the possibility of such connections did exist and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did.
Were there other ways to solve this problem? I think the
President gave the international community every
opportunity to solve this problem another way. The
international community gave the Iraqis 12 years to solve
this problem any other way.
The President took the case to the international community
and said: For 12 years, you have been defied. What are you
going to do now? It's time for us to act.
And the President, after a reasonable period of time -- inspectors were still being thwarted, we got an incorrect, ridiculous declaration from the Iraqi Government in response to Resolution 1441 -- and after waiting a sufficient period of time, 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 and he did act.
And he acted with a large number of countries who felt likewise, and he acted under the authority that we were absolutely sure we had because we negotiated it that way in UN Resolution 1441.........
....I knew exactly the circumstances under which I was presenting that speech to the UN on the 5th of February: the whole world would be watching, and there would be those who would applaud every word, and there would be those who were going to be skeptical of every word.
That's why I took the time --- -- I took the time to go
out to the agency and sit down with the experts. And
anything that we did not feel was solid and multi-sourced,
we did not use in that speech.....
state.gov
The U.S. government's secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Message 19506425
The Saddam-Osama Memo (cont.)
A close examination of the Defense Department's latest statement
Message 19524655
Two blockbuster magazine articles last week revealed evidence that Saddam's spy agency and top Qaeda operatives certainly were in frequent contact for a decade, and that there is renewed reason to suspect an Iraqi spymaster in Prague may have helped finance the 9/11 attacks.
Message 19534084
An Intelligent Democrat . . .
Message 19569702
The Clinton View of Iraq-al Qaeda Ties
From the December 29, 2003 / January 5, 2004 issue:
Connecting the dots in 1998, but not in 2003.
Message 19619772
Short-Term Memo-ry?
Message 19524519
THIS STORY MUSTN'T DIE:
Message 19509006
The evidence of an Iraq/al-Qaida connection hasn't gone away.
Prague Revisited
Message 19534201
THE VISIBLE HAND
The Iraqi Connection
Message 19540240 |
