Powell Was Told His UN Speech Was Fabrication - Said It Anyway

[heidiho]

In late January 2003, as Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to argue the Bush administration's case against Iraq at the United Nations, veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller sat down with a classified draft of Powell's speech to look for errors. He found a whopper: a claim about mobile biological labs built by Iraq for germ warfare.

Drumheller instantly recognized the source, an Iraqi defector suspected of being mentally unstable and a liar. The CIA officer took his pen, he recounted in an interview, and crossed out the whole paragraph.

A few days later, the lines were back in the speech. Powell stood before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 and said: "We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails."

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13493736/

Doesn't it just blow your mind that Clinton was impeached for a blue dress stain????

How do they get away with it?






http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13493736/

[blm]

1. THEY get away with it because THEY control most media and

even when word like this gets out, it is treated as if it's an "old story" and "nothing really new, here" just like they always do - remember the DSM?

[acmejack]

2. That speech sold a hell of a lot of people on this war too.

Powell must answer for this at the Hague.

[Guaranteed]

6. Yup. My dad.

I remember. I fucking remember.

[bananas]

14. Al Franken, too. nt

[rock]

3. We have first-hand descriptions ...

So Powell told the truth. They did have first-hand descriptions. Also of dragons and winged horses.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Yeah, I figured he knew he was lying. I heard the whole speech on the

radio, and there was something about his voice. Something dead. He didn't believe what he was reading. At that point, I was certainly suspicious of Bush, but I didn't know all the facts. So I was listening with interest. And it kind of spooked me. I remember saying to myself, "That man is lying. He is 100% lying. Every word." It was an intuition--which there was soon corroboration for. That dead voice was sickening. I knew we would be unable to stop it. The heinous slaughter of tens of the thousands of innocent people. The horror of unjust war--deja vu Vietnam--brought back by DELIBERATE CHOICE. By dead voices like Powell's. All our progress on just and lawful use of our military, gone. All those lessons learned, now forgotten. Our young people brutalized and militarized, and driven crazy again, by unjust war. Thousands killed. Tens of thousands with permanent mental and physical wounds. Our nation's hands steeped in blood and gore again. You hear them on the radio still (it's not so noticeable on TV)--these Bushite voices that have that strange combination of deadness and glibness. They don't really believe anything they're saying. You can hear it in their voices. A swirl of glib lies without a core. There is no real life there. No real convictions--just pudding-like glops of words pushed out of the mouths. It's almost as if their souls have died. And maybe that's what I was hearing in Colin Powell's voice: whatever soul he possessed was in its death throes. No living soul ever really dies. Redemption is always possible. So it's just a metaphor. But that's how it felt. Maybe the death-voice he used was actually a sign of life. He didn't believe what he was reading, so he (perhaps unconsciously) used his deadest voice to deliver it. He COULD NOT deliver it with conviction and enthusiasm. Dunno. Anyway, I knew then that we were in for one hell of a difficult time.

[allemand]

5. Drumheller never talked to Powell, just to McLaughlin and Tenet.

And Tenet apparently never told Powell, instead he "personally vouched for the accuracy" of the source:

"In briefing Powell before his U.N. speech, George Tenet, then the CIA director, personally vouched for the accuracy of the mobile-lab claim, according to participants in the briefing." (...)

"No one mentioned Drumheller, or Curveball," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff at the time, said in an interview. "I didn't know the name Curveball until months afterward."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13493736

CNN, August 23, 2005:

"In fact, Secretary Powell was not told that one of the sources he was given as a source of this information had indeed been flagged by the Defense Intelligence Agency as a liar, a fabricator," says David Kay, who served as the CIA's chief weapons inspector in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. That source, an Iraqi defector who had never been debriefed by the CIA, was known within the intelligence community as "Curveball."

After searching Iraq for several months across the summer of 2003, Kay began e-mailing Tenet to tell him the WMD evidence was falling apart. At one point, Wilkerson says, Tenet called Powell to tell him the claims about mobile bioweapons labs were apparently not true.

"George actually did call the Secretary, and said, 'I'm really sorry to have to tell you. We don't believe there were any mobile labs for making biological weapons,'" Wilkerson says in the documentary. "This was the third or fourth telephone call. And I think it's fair to say the Secretary and Mr. Tenet, at that point, ceased being close. I mean, you can be sincere and you can be honest and you can believe what you're telling the Secretary. But three or four times on substantive issues like that? It's difficult to maintain any warm feelings."
http://us.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/08/19/powell.un/

[gratuitous]

7. The question remains . . .

Why didn't Drumheller say anything for more than three years after he heard Powell's speech at the UN? Now that he's been paid his salary, secured his pension (presumably), and has a book to sell, he's ready to tell everyone what a pack of lies the invasion of Iraq was based on.

Did it somehow slip his mind that he'd told Tenet and McLaughlin that Curveball wasn't trustworthy? Was he unable to look up the phone number for the Washington Post? His car get a flat tire? An old friend come in from out of town? Or was it a nocturnal visitation from the ghosts of 2,500 dead soldiers that finally woke up his conscience?

I'm guessing that if there's an updated edition of Profiles in Courage, Mr. Drumheller needn't worry about keeping his calendar clear for an interview by the author.

[Vyan]

12. One answer - Two Words

Job Security!

However, he did apparently tell the Robb-Silbermann commission - it's just that Tenet and McLaughlin both denied having heard the truth about Curveball prior to the UN Speach.

Vyan

[Cocoa]

8. "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit!"

Powell to Jack Straw regarding the UN speech he'd been given to present. But he went ahead and read it.

[BlueEyedSon]

16. Thank you for that. So which part did they change so he would feel ok

about presenting it?

:(

[PurityOfEssence]

19. He also wouldn't make the claim about Niger Uranium

I thought this was conspicuously absent, since it was just a matter of days after Junior's outrageous State of the Union Address.

Let's think about this for a minute. To many, Powell's unwillingness to echo the nuclear lie shows his integrity, but to me, it shows that he knew full-well that he was working for deeply unscrupulous liars of the first order. His not having mentioned the yellow cake shouldn't really give him any kudos because the very speech itself is an act of fronting for a dishonest junta bent on a war of conquest at any cost. That he had some threshold of lying he wouldn't cross just shows his inherent dishonesty.

Powell is a truly pathetic character and his extreme cowardice and dutiful allegiance to the forces of greed and selfishness has ruined his career, as well it should have.

[Evergreen Emerald]

9. We counted on Powel--and others--to protect our democracy and they folded.

We thought of them as powerful and courageous and trusted them with our very foundation. We were mistaken. We thought they had the conviction and honesty to protect the US. They failed us. Besides the bigfatliars that occupy the whitehouse who had no intention of following the law, history will look back on Powell and McCain as traitors to the people.

They each had clear unequivocal defining moments when they could have stood against the administration and it would have made a difference. And they chose instead to bend over and kiss their...feet.

There are others--specifically in Congress who abrogated the responsibility of oversight to the administration when it was needed the most.

The press, who individually received pressure from the administration and their own bosses. And instead of standing up for the truth, they caved for the $.

We need courages and strong people to overcome this mess. And that is why the people (like us on DU) are so disappointed in the democrats. They are not standing up. 13 votes? What the hell? Where have all the courageous people gone?

[heidiho]

10. I Saw One Today on Meet the Press

and his name is Russ Feingold. He is the only ONE who voted against the Patriot Act and that took tremendous courage after 9/11.

I will not support people like Clinton who is so wishy-washy aboutthe war. I'm happy Lieberman is toast.

[PurityOfEssence]

20. The only Senator, that is...

61 members of the House of Representatives voted against the Patriot Act too.

Okay, that's only about 14% of the House, but one out of seven's something. (Hardly makes ya feel warm and fuzzy, though.)

[Vyan]

11. I don't think it's fair to blame Powell

as I point out in my Journal today, the Wapo article indicates that Drumheller's information was blocked downstream by Dept CIA director John McLauglin before it reached either Tenet or Powell.

But Rumsfeld, should have known all along.

Vyan

[sutz12]

15. I think it IS fair.

He was the highest ranking member of the admin that had any cred with liberals. Hell, I liked the guy, and probably would have even voted for him, even if he was a Repug. But not now.

He was high enough to get the facts before he presented them. He didn't. He should have known, with his connections in the military and intelligence agencies, that he was shoveling shit. Instead, he just continued on, shoveling the WH/Neo-Con shit.

In my book, he is forever tainted goods. He sold his soul, and with it his future in politics, as far as I'm concerned.

[Vyan]

22. McLaughlin blocked the information

from flowing up the chain of command, that much is clear based on the WaPo article -- and Powell's deputy (who is NO FRIEND of the Bush Administration) has backed Powell up on being clueless to the truth on this matter.

On the issue of the Uranium from Niger, Powell had independant info and backing from George Tenet, so he pushed back on that hard and didn't use it in his UN speach.

The Bushie's were dead-set on pushing forth their war agenda, and if that meant lying to and keeping thier own people in the dark, like Wilkerson and Powell, so be it. They fault is their's for being liars - not his for being tricked by the lie.

Vyan

[struggle4progress]

21. How could he possibly not have known? The lies were so obvious

and so many: millions of people around the world figured it out immediately without any special help.

[Vyan]

23. They didn't have..

Libby, Cheney and WINPAC constantly bleating in their ears that "Saddam is Dangerous".

Vyan

[kentuck]

13. Colin Powell is a whore.

He knew what he was saying was a lie and he said it anyway. No forgiving.

[Donna Zen]

26. True: Powell since he's known has never a word.

Even if we accept that Powell didn't know, which I find highly implausible, it must be remembered that Powell was one of the architects of an early forms of PNAC in 1992. Powell is a subtle imperialist.

Wes Clark said that in the nineties, he once took part in a leadership forum with Powell, and Cheney. He said that they were like a clean the swamp club. Powell definitely agreed with PNAC. And where was Powell when Rummy's planning of this fiasco negated military sense. I've never considered Powell exceptionally bright, but he was certainly smart enough to know that this bunch of clowns was betraying the Powell doctrine, and thus the troops and the country. (BTW, 12 people wrote the Powell Doctrine...notice that Powell gets all the credit.)

True to his behavior during Mai Lai, Powell remains a liar.

[Solly Mack]

17. Screw Powell. The man has no credibility

and he lacked credibility long before there was a Resident Shrub.

[Dinger]

18. Where & When Did Powell Say "This Is Bullshit"?

I think it was his "speech" before the UN Security Council.

[indepat]

24. Hopefully not true for anyone who would do that would surely burn in hell

[AusGail]

25. He sold his soul to the devil

The day Powell made that speech to the UN was the day he sold his soul to the devil. I sincerely believe that he knew the report was fabricated, but he read it so that he could prove to Bush and his buddies that he was one of them.

Doesn't he realize that Bush hired him as Secretary of State so that he could be the token African American and therefore secure the black vote.

I was reading reports long before that speech to the UN that Powell and many other current and ex military personnel were against invading Iraq because they knew of the difficulties from Desert Storm. That is history now. Because he was complicit in fraud and cover-ups he should also be indicted for war crimes along with Bush, Blair, Howard and every neocon that lied about Iraq.

[AtomicKitten]

27. Well, that makes him a liar as well as an a-hole. n/t