...of someone whose anti-US agenda and poor investigative skills have been made apparent to the whole world?

The messenger is the origin of this message - the article is his. He may extract facts and quote others selectively to paint as an unflattering a portrait of Powell's presentation - but the finished product is his and so one must look at the "messenger".

I know I set you both up here - withholding that juicy bit about Hanley until I could lay it on as a bombshell. That was pretty devious of me. ;-) However, LOTS of folks don't read by-lines or put their skeptic cap on after they see the piece is written by an unreliable reporter. (aka the Fisk syndrome)

While I am loathe to do a point by point refutal of his attacks against Powell and the decision to attack Iraq, I'll probably have to in order to convince you both of the trickery and cherrypicking done by Hanley to paint his anti-Bush mural. As Tom might say, "I ain't getting paid for this!". Perhaps I can submit the finished refutal to the opinion page of my local paper or a syndicate as a oneshot when I'm done so as to free a lot of others who bit on Hanley's line and are being reeled in by his clever manipulating of data.

Well, here we go... (please pardon the showy writing style)

The Great Powell Massacre (Copyright 2003 SDAI-Tech1)

I was shocked when I read the piece by Charles J. Hanley in the opinion pages which compares Powell's UN presentation then and how it holds up today, (U.S. justification for war: How it stacks up now) and was distressed - until I looked at the byline. I recalled Hanley as the Pulitzer prize winning AP reporter for "investigative journalism" - won for an article revealing a US massacre of refugees at No Gun Ri, Korea in 1950. Unfortunately for Mr. Hanley, and his employer the Associated Press, the massacre and the quotes reported in Mr. Hanley's article were proven fraudulent later by U.S. News. In essence, Mr. Hanley ended up winning a Pulitzer for a "fake" news story.

Remembering the old saying, "Fool me once, shame on you...fool me twice, shame on me." I decided to look closer at Mr. Hanley's reckoning sheet and demonizing of Mr. Powell's presentation to the U.N. What I found was that Mr. Hanley's case against Powell is as poorly investigated as was his article and book about the massacre at No Gun Ri. When all is said and done, it seems to me Mr. Hanley should write dramatic fiction, rather than "news" articles, for he is rather good at it.

Let's take a look:

On a February evening in Baghdad, Iraq, in a warm conference room high above the city's streets, Iraqi bureaucrats, European envoys and foreign reporters crowded before television screens to hear the reading of an indictment.

Ooh! Tension, anticipation - I love it already! It may not be as melodramatic as a US slaughter of innocents, but he's setting the tone here and you got to appreciate it.

In a hushed U.N. Security Council chamber in New York, Secretary of State Colin Powell unleashed an 80-minute avalanche of accusations: The Iraqis were hiding chemical and biological weapons, were secretly working to make more banned arms, were reviving their nuclear-bomb project. He spoke of "the gravity of the threat that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction pose to the world."

Is that great writing or what? Even the use of alliteration! "Avalanche of accusations" - why I bet he didn't even crack out a Thesaurus for that one!

It was the most comprehensive presentation of the U.S. case for war. Powell marshaled what were described as intercepted Iraqi conversations, reconnaissance photos of Iraqi sites, accounts of defectors and other intelligence sources. Since 1998, he told fellow foreign ministers, "we have amassed much intelligence indicating that Iraq is continuing to make these weapons."

In the United States, Powell's "thick intelligence file" was galvanizing, swinging opinion toward war.

That's not quite as I remember it. But my "recollection" may be faulty too. I recall that just as many were unpersuaded by Powell's pointed presentation (look ma, alliteration!) as were persuaded. As I recall, Powell's lack of damning evidence was immediately assailed by the media and many of the antiwar protesters.

But in Baghdad, when the satellite broadcast ended, Lt. Gen. Amer al-Saadi, a presidential science adviser, appeared before the audience and dismissed the U.S. case as "stunts" aimed at swaying the uninformed.

How does Powell's pivotal indictment look from the vantage point of today? Powell has said several times since February that he stands by it, the State Department said Wednesday. Here is an Associated Press review of major elements, based on what was known in February and what has been learned since:

Get your popcorn and drinks....this promises to be good!

SATELLITE PHOTOS

• Powell presented satellite photos of industrial buildings, bunkers and trucks, and suggested they showed Iraqis surreptitiously moving prohibited missiles and chemical and biological weapons to hide them. At two sites, he said trucks were "decontamination vehicles" associated with chemical weapons.

• But these and other sites had undergone 500 inspections in recent months. Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix, a day earlier, said his well-equipped experts found no contraband and no sign that items had been moved. Nothing has been reported found since.

Hans Blix reported many things. That his experts could not find evidence of contraband or movement is totally irrelevant to how things stack up now and is added as filler to mislead and sway the reader.

"Nothing has been reported found since."

Sorry Charlie...things have been reported found; Buried "weather balloon" hydrogen trailers scrubbed down with bleach, buried MIGs, buried US money. Lots of buried things! In a desert the size of California, it's safe to say there is lots of space to bury things and 500 sites will need to be 500,000 sites to really scratch under Iraq's surface. In 1999, 157 Tonnes of Anthrax had been found buried in the Iraqi desert. That Iraqis buried banned weapons is a fact and has been well documented.

Nothing Hanley presents here has shown that Powell's satellite data or its interpetation was in error. Though reading it through the first time without knowing Hanley's track record - one might have thought it showed Powell in error.

Addressing the Security Council a week after Powell, Blix used one photo scenario as an example and said it could be showing routine as easily as illicit activity. Norwegian inspector Jorn Siljeholm told The Associated Press on March 19 that "decontamination vehicles" U.N. teams were led to invariably turned out to be water or fire trucks.

Yes...the UN teams were led to water and fire trucks. That is why they were so inefficient. They certainly couldn't dig up the "weather balloon" hydrogen producing truck or anything else found after the war ended. Here we see, Hanley is reporting past events quoted by Jorn Siljeholm on March 19th - making the reader think that the event occurred on March 19th. Pretty tricky! Not bad for a Pulitzer prize winning journalist! You almost fooled me!

AUDIOTAPES

• Powell played three audiotapes of men speaking in Arabic of a mysterious "modified vehicle," "forbidden ammo" and "the expression 'nerve agents' " — tapes said to be intercepts of Iraqi army officers discussing concealment.

• Two of the brief, anonymous tapes, otherwise not authenticated, provided little context for judging their meaning. It couldn't be known whether the mystery vehicle, however "modified," was even banned. A listener could only speculate over the cryptic mention of nerve agents. The third tape, meanwhile, seemed natural, an order to inspect scrap areas for "forbidden ammo." The Iraqis had just told U.N. inspectors they would search ammunition dumps for stray, empty chemical warheads left from years earlier. They later gave four to inspectors.

Powell's rendition of that third conversation made it more incriminating, by saying an officer ordered that the area be "cleared out." The voice on the tape didn't say that, only that the area be "inspected," according to the official U.S. translation.

Wait...where's the beef? Isn't there some damning bit of information to discredit Powell's audio tapes? So far we have Hanley's opinion that Powell presented the tapes as being "more incriminating" than they were. Well, Hanley must be an expert in arabic as well as in events of 1950 Korea! Again, Hanley fails to discredit Powell's evidence. Nice try though - it certainly reads well enough, doesn't it? I wonder how many other readers thought Powell's presentation was bogus after reading such well written prose?

HIDDEN DOCUMENTS

• Powell said "classified" documents found at a nuclear scientist's Baghdad home were "dramatic confirmation" of intelligence saying prohibited items were concealed that way.

• U.N. nuclear inspectors later said the documents were old and "irrelevant": some administrative material, some from a failed and well-known uranium-enrichment program of the 1980s.

That's it? So we find that 100s of pages of documents that had not been provided to the UN as was required and which were concealed in a scientist's home can be blown off as "irrelevant" by Hanley? Nice try. It is relevant and it illustrated two things:
1) Iraq was not in compliance with UN resolutions
2) Iraq had pertinent data residing at scientists' homes.

Ding. I'm afraid this round, like the others - goes to Powell.

ANTHRAX

• Powell noted Iraq had declared it produced 8,500 liters of the biological agent anthrax before 1991, but U.N. inspectors estimated it could have made 25,000 liters. None has been "verifiably accounted for," he said.

• No anthrax has been reported found. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), in a confidential report in September, said that although it believed Iraq had biological weapons, it didn't know their nature, amounts or condition. Three weeks before the invasion, an Iraqi report of scientific soil sampling supported its contention that it destroyed its anthrax at a known site, the U.N. inspection agency said May 30.

Here, Hanley is outright misleading (some folks, not as kind, as me would say he was lying). In 1999 157 Tonnes of Anthrax were uncovered in the Iraqi desert at the al-Aziziya air base:

"SIGNIFICANT quantities of anthrax and VX nerve agent have been accounted for during ongoing excavations in Iraq", Iraqi presidential adviser Amer al-Saadi has said.

Hey, that's the same Presidential advisor who said Powell's presentation was one of the US' "stunts" - the one Hanley quoted in the first part of his article! Why didn't Hanley mention this? Oh, he reports that the Iraqis reported they had destroyed everything. Funny...why he didn't clarify that they had said they destroyed it all in 1991 - and yet in 1999 157 tonnes of Anthrax appeared! So all it proves is that Iraq lied about destroying all their WMD.

Ding. Another big round win for Powell.

BIOWEAPONS TRAILERS

• Powell said defectors told of "biological-weapons factories" on trucks and in train cars. He displayed artists' conceptions of such vehicles.

• After the invasion, U.S. authorities said they found two such truck trailers in Iraq, and the CIA said it concluded they were part of a bioweapons-production line. But no trace of biological agents was found on them, Iraqis said the equipment made hydrogen for weather balloons, and State Department intelligence balked at the CIA's conclusion. The British defense minister, Geoffrey Hoon, has said the vehicles aren't a "smoking gun."

The trailers have not been submitted to U.N. inspection for verification. No "bioweapons railcars" have been reported found.

Without becoming a cranky old lady again, I repeat myself - where's the beef? It may not be a "smoking gun" but it certainly doesn't support the contention that Powell's statement was in error. Defectors have mentioned mobile biolabs - Hanley doesn't prove that they were lying or wrong at all. I must confess, I am envious of Hanley's writing skills. I almost believed he made a point here the first time I read through the article.

'4 TONS' OF VX

• Powell said Iraq produced 4 tons of the nerve agent VX. "A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons," he said.

• Powell didn't note that most of that 4 tons was destroyed in the 1990s under U.N. supervision. Before the invasion, the Iraqis made a "considerable effort" to prove they had destroyed the rest, doing chemical analysis of the ground where inspectors confirmed VX had been dumped, the U.N. inspection agency reported May 30.

Experts at Britain's International Institute of Strategic Studies said any pre-1991 VX most likely would have degraded anyway. No VX has been reported found since the invasion.

Actually "most" of the VX destroyed had left 1.5 Tons of VX unaccounted for. The "chemical analysis" of the ground was an after the fact method of verification and U.N. inspectors were "pretty sure" about that "almost" that amount had been destroyed. When VX is that deadly, even a few gallons is too much. Powell's statements were all facts and verified. His omission of the amount destroyed is equally matched by Hanley's omission of the amount which could not be verified as destroyed.

Ding. This round is a draw.

'EMBEDDED' CAPABILITY

• "We know that Iraq has embedded key portions of its illicit chemical-weapons infrastructure within its legitimate civilian industry," Powell said.

• No "chemical-weapons infrastructure" has been reported found. The newly disclosed DIA report of September said there was "no reliable information" on "where Iraq has — or will — establish its chemical-warfare-agent-production facilities." It suggested international inspections would keep Iraq from rebuilding a chemical-weapons program.

Hanley falls back to quoting irrelevant events from September of 2002! How is that relevant to what is being researched in Iraq now? Powell's statement was dead on accurate. Iraq did embed chemical weapons research in its civilian industry. Hospitals and buildings were found with chemical weapons gas masks. Iraq had no official "chemical weapons centers" and the 157 tonnes of anthrax that had been uncovered in 1999 as well asmuch more that had been destroyed had been produced under the cover of civilian factories and facilities.

Hanley doesn't score any points here either.

'500 TONS' OF CHEMICAL AGENT

• "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent," Powell said.

• Powell gave no basis for the assertion, and no such agents have been reported found. An unclassified CIA report in October made a similar assertion without citing evidence, saying only that Iraq "probably" concealed precursor chemicals to make such weapons. The DIA reported in September there "is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons."

If 157 tonnes of Anthrax were leftovers found as recently as 199 from an even larger stockpile destroyed - I think it is safe to estimate that 100 to 500 tons of chemical agent still remained unaccounted for. It probably still lurks under the sands of Iraq and nothing Hanley presents here discredits such an assumption or that such an assumption might be, in fact, conservative.

Another try- but under closer inspection - another miss at Powell's credibility.

CHEMICAL WARHEADS

• Powell said 122-mm chemical warheads found by U.N. inspectors in January might be the "tip of an iceberg."

• The warheads were empty, a fact Powell didn't note. Blix said on June 16 the dozen stray rocket warheads, never uncrated, were apparently "debris from the past," the 1980s. No others have been reported found.

When taking Saddam Hussein's regime and its lies into account, I am incredulous that finding banned and unreported weapons can be brushed off as not possibly being "the tip of the iceberg". And when you know about the anthrax incident - one Hanley has glossed over -and how they have actively buried and concealed chemical weapons in the past, Powell's assessment is not only logical but almost demanded.

No points for Hanley here either.

DEPLOYED WEAPONS

• "Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons. ... And we have sources who tell us that he recently has authorized his field commanders to use them," Powell said.

• No such weapons were used and none was reported found after the U.S. and allied military units overran Iraqi field commands and ammunition dumps.

This really doen't deny any of Powell's partial quote as presented here. Hanley fails to mention the chemical weapons suits that were found in hospitals and possessed by captured troops, indicating that indeed chemical weapons might have been expected to be deployed and Saddam decided against using them.

REVIVED NUCLEAR PROGRAM

• "We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear-weapons program," Powell said.

• Chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei told the council two weeks before the U.S. invasion, "We have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear-weapons program in Iraq." On July 24, Foreign Minister Ana Palácio of Spain, a U.S. ally on Iraq, said there were "no evidences, no proof" of a nuclear-bomb program before the war. No such evidence has been reported found since the invasion.

What I fail to understand is why Hanley keeps quoting people prior to the war. He must feel it helps his case against Powell. The truth is we have already uncovered aburied uranium enrichment facility. It was old and buried - but had not been destroyed as ordered under UN resolutions and had not been unreported. Concealment of a uranium enrichment facility indicates Saddam never did abandon his nuclear weapons program and had hopes of reviving it after sanctions would be lifted.

This round, too, clearly goes to Powell.

SCUDS, NEW MISSILES

• Powell said "intelligence sources" indicate Iraq had a secret force of up to a few dozen prohibited Scud-type missiles. He said it also had a program to build 600-mile-range missiles and had put a roof over a test facility to block the view of spy satellites.

• No Scud-type missiles have been reported found. In the 1990s, U.N. inspectors had reported accounting for all but two of these missiles. No program for long-range missiles has been uncovered.

Powell didn't note that U.N. teams were repeatedly inspecting missile facilities, including looking under that roof, and reporting no Iraqi violations of U.N. resolutions.

Tricky, Tricky Mr. Hanley! Yes, no "Scud-type" missiles had been found. In fact, it was another type of long range missile that exceeded the banned range which had been found by inspectors. The missile attacks on Kuwait were not "Scud" missiles either.

Such deception and trickery is unbecoming a Pulitzer prize winning journalist.

As you can see, when one reads past the persuasive paragraphs penned by Mr. Hanley - his day of reckoning for Mr. Powell falls apart almost as quickly as his No Gun Ri article did.

"Fool me once, shame on you...".

Fortunately, Mr. Hanley has failed to fool me twice. I can only hope that others are not swayed to condemn the US by another of Mr. Hanley's articles - yet again.

SDAI-Tech1

PS Whew!
My fingers are tired! I hope this'll satisfy you. ;-)