How Torture Trapped Colin Powell by Ray McGovern - May 18, 2009

[L. Coyote]

How Torture Trapped Colin Powell
by Ray McGovern - May 18, 2009 - http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/051809a.html


Four days before trying to sell the invasion of Iraq to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell was ready to scrap dubious allegations about Saddam Hussein’s ties to al-Qaeda but was dissuaded by top CIA officials who cited a new “bombshell” that now appears to have been derived from torture, a top Powell aide says.

Retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was then Powell’s chief of staff, said the key moment occurred on Feb. 1, 2003, as the two men labored at the CIA over Powell’s presentation to the U.N. Security Council set for Feb. 5.

“Powell and I had a one-on-one — no one else even in the room — about his angst over what was a rather dull recounting of several old stories about Al Qa’ida-Baghdad ties ,” Wilkerson said. “I agreed with him that what we had was bull___t, and Powell decided to eliminate all mention of terrorist contacts between AQ and Baghdad.

“Within an hour, Tenet and McLaughlin dropped a bombshell on the table in the director’s Conference Room: a high-level AQ detainee had just revealed under interrogation substantive contacts between AQ and Baghdad, including Iraqis training AQ operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons.”

Though Tenet and McLaughlin wouldn’t give Powell the identity of the al-Qaeda source, .......

Wilkerson’s account underscores how the Bush administration’s reliance on harsh interrogations of al-Qaeda suspects influenced the rush to war with Iraq, while also pointing out how the need to justify the war gave impetus to the use of torture for extracting information.

..............

[dflprincess]

1. I get ill when I hear about "Powell's angst"

he went to the U.N., he lied, he knew he was lying and he did it because he thought it would further his own ambitions.

Powell is as guilty as Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld and should be dragged to The Hague with his buddies.

[applegrove]

2. What a nightmare the Bush Administration was. I fell for Powell's speech. I guess Powell fell for

his speech too.

[malaise]

3. That Tenet Medal of Honor is dripping

in blood.

Justice is coming.

[gratuitous]

4. If by "trapped" you mean eager and willing accomplice

Then yes, Colin Powell was "trapped" by the Bush administration.

But just for a second, let's pretend that Secretary of State Powell was indeed trapped by the scurrilous rumor that one of the detainees had linked Al Qaeda and Saddam. When did Powell find out he'd been snookered? March of 2003? 2005? 2008? Two thousand never? Why is he still covering for the folks who lied to him, lied the country into war, and lied all those soldiers and civilians into their graves?

Oh well, when your hands are as bloody as Colin Powell's, what's the blood a few hundred thousand more? You can only be so damned, you know?