Did you forget the Powell fiasco at the UN?
Not sure I know to what you're referring. I'm aware that he made statements questioning the "credibility" of the Niger evidence in response to why he didn't include it in his UN speech.
MR. FREI: Two more brief ones, if I may, Niger and the issue of the allegations of the uranium exports to Iraq. You, yourself, if I am correct in thinking, thought that that was not a truthful allegation at the time it was made; is that right?
SECRETARY POWELL: The question is not truthfulness. The question is credibility at a moment in time.
MR. FREI: But you had your doubts about it, didn't you?
SECRETARY POWELL: I did not use it in the formal presentation I made on the 5th of February because by then there was such controversy about it, and as we looked at all that we knew about it, it did not seem to be the kind of claim that I should take into the UN.
But here is the more important point. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind, no matter what you might think about one piece of intelligence or another piece of intelligence, that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weapons in the past, and, if freed of sanctions and allowed to continue unabated without sanctions, without the international community intervening, he would have continued to pursue weapons of mass destruction.
state.gov
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