Even in the few minutes that I watched, it seems the evidence against Iraq is pretty strong.
Well, here it is............the world is reacting.
The evidence is damning if Powell's interpretation of the activities seen in the photos is the correct one. I watched his presentation for 30 minutes on and off and you just couldn't tell what was in those trucks.
ted
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Speech Seen as Strong but Unlikely to Sway Skeptics
BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune
ASHINGTON, Feb. 5 — Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's presentation on Iraq to the Security Council today produced no smoking gun, but considerable and compelling smoke, in the view of some analysts and others who follow Iraq and arms issues.
Whether it ultimately would help budge the most important members of Mr. Powell's audience today — France, Russia and China, all permanent members and veto-holders on the council, and all skeptical up to now of the use of force — remained unclear, however.
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Immediately afterward, France called for a doubling or tripling of United Nations inspectors in Iraq, though Mr. Powell had labored to depict inspections as a pointless deferral of urgently needed action. China said inspections should be pursued so long as there was the "slightest hope" of avoiding war. Russia, too, called for more inspections. Britain was the sole permanent member to strongly endorse the American position.
Richard W. Murphy, who was assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs in the Reagan administration, called Mr. Powell's evidence "strong and persuasive," but predicted that those members of the Security Council who are skeptical of military action against Iraq "will not move to support us on the basis of today's session."
He said he thought that if those skeptics shifted at all, it would be after Hans Blix, the chief United Nations weapons inspector, and Mohamed ElBaradei, who heads the United Nations agency that monitors nuclear programs, next address the Security Council on Feb. 14.
But Mr. Murphy said Mr. Powell's impact at home should be strong.
"I believe he will have carried his American audience further toward supporting military action versus Iraq,"he said.
James Phillips, a resident fellow at the Heritage Foundation, agreed. "I thought it was a very strong, persuasive speech, a damning indictment," he said. "But it remains to be seen," added Mr. Phillips, who specializes in the Middle East and terrorism, "whether the Security Council will follow through with a conviction" in the form of a new resolution to authorize use of force.
Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that while he thought Mr. Powell had made a "fairly convincing case of Iraqi misbehavior," many people had already made up their minds against war. "Some people are never going to be convinced," he said.
In the Arab world, he suggested, reaction would be colored by a "perception that the United States has an outrageous double standard — that Israel is just as aggressive as Iraq, that it has more prohibited weapons than Iraq, but that the U.S. not only doesn't attack Israel but gives it billions in aid."
Rick Barton, a former deputy high commissioner for refugees at the United Nations, said of Mr. Powell's presentation, "the evidence is fresh, and it does strengthen the argument" against Iraq. But as a specialist in the reconstruction of countries after conflicts — he is now working on a study about Iraq's future — Mr. Barton suggested that Mr. Powell could have done more to "capture the imagination of people who have not made up their minds."
This could have been done, he said, if Mr. Powell had argued strongly that a change of regimes in Baghdad could bring long-term benefits to the Iraqi people, and to their region.
"It does leave people wondering about the sincerity of the U.S. commitment to change," Mr. Barton said. It leaves the "U.S. posture being more bombastic and more militaristic," he said, "a real concern to key allies, and clearly to many people in the Arab world who are probably sympathetic to U.S. ideals."
Ahmed Abdel Rahman, a senior aide to Yasir Arafat, told Reuters that the Powell speech launched "a new phase for U.S. control over the world." He also questioned Powell's interpretation of evidence.
But the quality of the evidence, and particularly the audiotapes of what Mr. Powell described as Iraqi officers discussing the concealment of banned weapons, was among the more compelling aspects of the speech, several analysts said.
"You realize how much of an almost everyday occurrence it is for these guys to deal with chemical weapons," said Mr. Phillips. "It's part of their standard operating procedure, which is chilling."
Particularly striking, Mr. Phillips said, was evidence on purported activities of al Qaeda in Iraq and the activities there of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a man Mr. Powell called a "collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenant."
Mr. Alterman said that "the evidence that the Iraqis are trying not to comply but rather to sanitize things in advance of inspections" was a clear "attack on French logic" about the importance of continuing inspections.
Barthelemy Courmont, an analyst with the Institute of International and Strategic Relations in Paris, said that the presentation was "very strong" in public relations terms. But while the evidence appeared damning, he said, listeners had to take it on Powell's word that the activities depicted were in fact illicit.
"These are damning proofs for activities whose nature is not known," Mr. Courmont told Reuters. "Just because there are trucks around a site doesn't mean they're transporting warheads."
Mr. Murphy, who was an ambassador to Syria and Saudi Arabia, and others suggested that the secretary of state's most telling point to the skeptics might have been his warning — one made previously by President George W. Bush — that the Security Council risked irrelevance if it permitted Iraq to flout its resolutions.
"That was really the heart of what he was talking about" Mr. Alterman said.
The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, said after an early-morning preview of Mr. Powell's presentation at the White House that he was unsure the Security Council would be won over. But he said that he was persuaded.
He told reporters as he left the White House, "If I had this evidence, before a jury that was an unbiased jury, I could get a conviction." |
