USA: Colin Powell regrets lies on Iraq WMD in UN

From the Google cache.

USA: Colin Powell regrets lies on Iraq WMD in UN

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Date: 9/9/05 at 9:16AM

Mood: Thinking Playing: War, by Edwin Starr

US broadcasting corporation ABC interviewed former US Secretary of State Colin Powell:

Now out of government service, Powell is airing openly his disappointments and frustration on everything from the invasion of Iraq to the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

It is a pity that Powell, like many other politicians, postponed speaking out until he was out of office.

When Powell left the Bush administration in January 2005, he was widely seen as having been at odds with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney over foreign policy choices.

It was Powell who told the United Nations and the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and posed an imminent threat.

He told Walters that he feels “terrible” about the claims he made in that now-infamous address — assertions that later proved to be false.

When asked if he feels it has tarnished his reputation, he said, “Of course it will. It’s a blot.

I’m the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and [it] will always be a part of my record.

It was painful. It’s painful now.”

A copy of Pablo Picasso’s famous anti-war painting Guernica, at the United Nations building in New York City as a warning, was covered up as “too realistic” during that 2003 speech by Colin Powell.

From the Google cache, 12/26/05:

Translated from an interview by Dutch daily NRC with Dutch foreign minister, Bernard Bot:

The speech in 2003 by then US Secretary of State Colin Powell in the United Nations security council about the [so-called] presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq tends to make, Bot says, ask him: “Colin, how did you feel then?

Were you lying while knowing better?”

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