Bush, Powell Defend Remark On Iraq's Weapons Capability

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 26, 2003; Page A24

President Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell defended yesterday a statement made by Powell early in 2001 that Iraq's Saddam Hussein did not have "any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction."

Bush and Powell were asked about the remark, made on Feb. 24, 2001, after it was discovered on the State Department's Web site. Bush, asked about how Hussein went from that status in February to becoming what he called a "great and gathering danger" a year and a half later, said his perspective was changed by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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There is no better evidence of the duplicity committed by the Bush administration than this. Powell's 2002 U.N. "evidence" spoke to large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that he acknowledged had been manufactured by Iraq in the late 1980's. Yet, only months earlier, in 2001, Powell had stated that Iraq no longer had these weapons. The rush to war was based upon not just bad intelligence, but a deliberately crafted lie intended to influence American public opinion in favor of a pre-emptive war. This president should be impeached, but then we'd be left with someone even worse.</b