It's been a big week for Jon Stewart, interviewing Newt Gingrich Tuesday (with Gingrich hinting strongly at his intentions to run for president in 2008), followed by an interview with Colin Powell last night (Stewart called it the biggest interview of his life).
In a surprising departure from the administration's standard practice of never admitting any mistakes, Powell admitted that there were no weapons on mass destruction in Iraq:
"Where we got the intelligence wrong--dead wrong--is that we thought he also had existing stockpiles." said Powell.
[If you have any friends who are Fox News viewers and still believe that there were WMD in Iraq, please pass this news flash on to them.]
Powell brushed off the claims of the Downing Street Memo, the minutes of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet meeting of July 23, 2002, which were leaked to the press recently. In the meeting, which took place more than eight months before the United States invaded Iraq, UK officials expressed the viewpoint that the Bush administration had already made the decision to invade Iraq, and that the administration was in the process of "fixing" intelligence reports to support the case for military action even without the support of the U.N.
Unlike Gingrich, Powell made no hints at a presidential run. In fact, he did not make any real effort to dispel his image as a yes-man who could not stand up to the president, even though Stewart gave him several opportunities to do so.
Editors note: One of our readers pointed out an error in this post regarding the wording of what Colin Powell said in the interview: Powell used the phrase "existing stockpiles," not "weapons of mass destruction" in the sentence quoted above. The quote has been corrected.
Has anyone here heard of General Georges Sada?
http://www.nysun.com/article/26514
2nd General under Saddam Hussein. He wrote a whole book (Saddam's Secrets) on how Saddam DID HAVE WMD and got rid of them with Russian help during the time Bush was going to the U.N. to get help. (but oil bribes from Saddam to France, Russia, Germany, China, etc stopped votes). Saddam used gutted airplanes and disguised them as humanitarian aid transport, also ships carried some weapons away. Very interesting/good high ranking Iraqi source.
I guess 1.5 tons of enriched uranium doesn't count?
finally someone admits it...
Its great to see Colin Powell rip Bush...
Finally, people are starting to believe that Iraq was a war that was a waste of money, time, and the lives of soldiers. There never were WMD's. The UN Security council found that. Yet, we are led by a president who wanted to get revenge on Saddam Hussein, and to further worsen Islamic tensions in the world.
I remember hearing George W. on TV once, "He tried to kill my dad". Basically, the war was a move of indulgence, one to get back at the man who almost killed his dad. But why would you lie to the US people? Why would you risk the lives of many soldiers in warfare just to get revenge, and evidently destroy a country that was operating nicely?
The only answer I can see would be oil. His lies were SUPPOSE to lower gas prices in the end, but it never did. The complete opposite happened. Not to mention the civil war which is happening in Iraq between the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds.
Its just painful for me to see so many Iraqi Muslims, civilians mostly, dying every day. Maybe Hugo Chavez was right in saying that George Bush "is the biggest killer... he's Hitler"
Powell was thrown into the fire by the Bush administation. The ONLY reason they chose Powell to go in front of the UN to present unverifiable evidence of Iraqi arms build up was because people trusted him; people on the left trusted him and people on the right trusted him.
The Bush administration wasted all that good faith people had placed in Colin Powell to convince the world that we must invade Iraq. Now Powell has left the political arena and it is a shame that this country lost such an upstanding individual in an otherwise shady world of politics.
Powell isn't the type to backstab, so I would not expect him to go against the administration. But I'm sure he personally disagreed with many of the administration's decisions when he was Secretary of State.
Um..Why are we going to war again, Mr. Powell?
I think we were using any excuse we could find to go take over. Bush needs to learn that he can't just bully other countries whenever he wants. We need to end terrorism by stopping bush!
The wording is wrong. What Powell actually said was, "Where we got the intelligence wrong--dead wrong--is that we thought he also had existing stockpiles." If one puts something in quotes, it should be accurate!
I heard that Powell's wife was angry about how the Bush administration had treated her husband toward the end of his time as Secretary of State. She even called Cheney and Rumsfeld "scary."
Even though Powell didn't try to distance himself from the Bush administration in the interview, the question remains -- why is he doing interviews on TDS? Is he trying to gradually turn himself into a candidate for 2008?