Powell 'never told' of doubts
From correspondents in London
The Herald Sun
18dec05
THE US administration was never told of doubts about the secret intelligence used to justify war with Iraq, former secretary of state Colin Powell told the BBC in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday night.
Mr Powell, who argued the case for military action against Saddam Hussein in the UN in 2003, told BBC News 24 television he was "deeply disappointed in what the intelligence community had presented to me and to the rest of us."
"What really upset me more than anything else was that there were people in the intelligence community that had doubts about some of this sourcing, but those doubts never surfaced to us," he said.
Mr Powell's comments follow US President George W. Bush's acceptance earlier this week of responsibility for going to war on intelligence, much of which "turned out to be wrong".
US involvement in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion has led to the loss of 2,140 of its troops and badly hit the Republican president's popularity.
The opposition Democrats have increased calls for a timetable for a military withdrawal.
But ahead of this week's parliamentary elections in Iraq, President Bush insisted he was still right to order the invasion and argued a hurried withdrawal would be "a recipe for disaster".
The British government, Washington's key allies in the invasion, has similarly refused to give a withdrawal date for its 8,000 or so troops in Iraq's four southern states, although has said it could happen next year.
For his part, Mr Powell considered the US military could not be deployed in Iraq at its current strength for years to come, raising the possibility of withdrawal from next year.
But he told the BBC that "essentially just to walk away, to say that we're taking all of our troops out as fast as we can, would be a tragic mistake". A US presence would be required in Iraq for "years", he added.
"We've invested a great deal in this country, and the Iraqi people deserve democracy and the freedom that they were promised when we got rid of Saddam Hussein and we have to stay with them... until they decide that they can get it now on their own, they don't need us any longer," he added.
"And even then, I suspect, there will be a continuing relationship and presence of some significance for some years to come."
In the interview, Mr Powell confirmed that White House "hawks" US Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had bypassed him and other colleagues on occasions.
Mr Powell's former chief-of-staff Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson made the damning allegations last month, accusing Cheney and Rumsfeld of running a "cabal" and hijacking US military and foreign policy.
Discussions with Rumsfeld about dealing with the aftermath of the Iraq invasion were "not pleasant", Mr Powell admitted in the interview. |
