Contradicted Cheney and sought more UN involvement
Powell was often confounded by Cheney. In his 1995 memoir "My American Journey," Powell wrote of Cheney, "He and I had never, in nearly four years, spent a single purely social hour together."
For the first 16 months of the administration, Powell had
been "in the refrigerator," as he called his frequent isolation. [Finally, in Aug. 2002, Powell presented his case without Cheney present] and Bush asked, "What else can I do?" Powell offered, "You can still make a pitch for a coalition or UN action to
do what needs to be done."
[In response, Cheney said in a speech], "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of his compliance with UN resolutions." Powell
was astonished. It was a preemptive attack on what the president had agreed to 10 days earlier. Powell was accused of contradicting Cheney and of disloyalty. How can I be disloyal, he wondered, when I'm giving the president's stated position?
Source: Plan of Attack, by Bob Woodward, adapted in Washington Post
Apr 20, 2004
Invading Iraq means "owning" it, for better or worse
[Bush told Powell], "The inspections are not getting us there." He had made up his mind that the US should go to war.
"You understand the consequences," Powell said in a half question. For nearly six months, he had been hammering on this theme-that
the US would be taking down a regime, would have to govern Iraq, and the ripple effect in the Middle East and the world could not be predicted. "You know that you're going to be owning this place?" Powell said. An invasion would mean assuming the hopes,
aspirations and all the troubles of Iraq. Powell wasn't sure whether Bush had fully understood the meaning and consequences of total ownership.
But I think I have to do this, the president said, making it clear this was not a discussion, but the
president informing one of his Cabinet members of his decision. The fork in the road had been reached and Bush had chosen war. In all the discussions, meetings, chats and back-and-forth, the president had never once asked Powell, Would you do this?
Source: Plan of Attack, by Bob Woodward, adapted in Washington Post
Apr 18, 2004
Inspectors are inspectors, not detectives
Resolution 1441 gave Iraq one last chance to come into compliance or to face serious consequences. No council member that day had any allusions about the intent of the resolution or what "serious consequences" meant if Iraq did not comply. We called on
Iraq to cooperate with returning inspectors. This council placed the burden on Iraq to comply and disarm and not on the inspectors to find that which Iraq has gone out of its way to conceal for so long. Inspectors are inspectors; they are not detectives.
Source: Speech to the UN Security Council
Feb 5, 2003
The facts show Iraq has not disarmed
My purpose is to share with you what the US knows about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as well as Iraq's involvement in terrorism.
The material comes from a variety of sources. Iraq's behavior demonstrates that Saddam Hussein has made no effort to disarm. The facts show that Saddam is concealing his efforts to produce weapons of mass destruction.
Source: Speech to the UN Security Council
Feb 5, 2003
Iraq moved weapons to hide them from inspectors
Human sources tell us that the Iraqis are moving, not just documents & hard drives, but weapons of mass destruction to keep them from being found. While we were debating Resolution 1441 last fall, we know that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was
disbursing rocket launchers & warheads containing biological warfare agents to various locations in western Iraq. Most of the launchers & warheads have been hidden in large groves of palm trees & were to be moved every 1 to 4 weeks to escape detection.
Source: Speech to the UN Security Council
Feb 5, 2003
Saddam has enough anthrax to kill thousands
Less than a teaspoon of dry anthrax in an envelope shutdown the US Senate. This forced several hundred people to undergo emergency medical treatment & killed two postal.
Iraq declared 8,500 liters of anthrax, but UNSCOM estimates that Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters. If concentrated into this dry form, this amount would be enough to fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons.
Source: Speech to the UN Security Council
Feb 5, 2003
WMD inspectors eluded by producing weapons in mobile labs
Although Iraq's mobile production program began in the mid-1990s, confirmation came later. The source was an engineer who supervised one of these facilities. He was present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an
accident occurred in 1998. 12 technicians died from exposure. He reported that when UNSCOM was inspecting, the biological weapons agent production always began on Thursdays at midnight because Iraq thought UNSCOM would not inspect on the Muslim Holy Day.
Source: Speech to the UN Security Council
Feb 5, 2003
Photo shows Iraqi jet modified to spray anthrax
Saddam has investigated biological agents causing diseases such as gangrene, plague, typhus, tetanus, cholera, camelpox and hemorrhagic fever, and he also has the wherewithal to develop smallpox. The regime has also developed ways to disburse lethal
biological agents. For example, Iraq had a program to modify aerial fuel tanks for Mirage jets. This video shows an Iraqi F-1 Mirage jet. Note the spray coming from beneath the Mirage; that is 2,000 liters of simulated anthrax that a jet is spraying.
Source: Speech to the UN Security Council
Feb 5, 2003
Iraq has at least 100 tons of chemical weapons
Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets. Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam to cause mass casualties acro
more than 100 square miles of territory. Of the 122 millimeter chemical warheads, that the U.N. inspectors found recently, this discovery could very well be the tip of the submerged iceberg.
Source: Speech to the UN Security Council
Feb 5, 2003
Iraq has been trying to enrich uranium
Saddam's efforts to reconstitute his nuclear program have focused on acquiring material to produce a nuclear explosion. To make the material, he needs to enrich uranium. He has made repeated attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from
11 different countries, even after inspections resumed. We also have intelligence that Iraq is attempting to acquire magnets and high-speed balancing machines; both items can be used in a gas centrifuge program to enrich uranium.
Source: Speech to the UN Security Council
Feb 5, 2003
Intelligence shows links between Iraq and terrorists
Iraq harbors a terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialties is
poisons. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish a training center in Iraq. Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization. In 2000 this agent offered Al Qaida safe haven in the region.
Source: Speech to the UN Security Council
Feb 5, 2003
Documented ties between Iraq & Al Qaida
Al Qaida coordinates the movement of people, money & supplies into Iraq, & they've been operating in the capital for more than eight months. Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with Al Qaida. These denials are simply not credible. Last year an
Al Qaida associate bragged that the situation in Iraq was, quote, "good," that Baghdad could be transited quickly. A detained Al Qaida member tells us that Saddam was willing to assist Al Qaida after the 1998 bombings of our embassies in Kenya & Tanzania
Source: Speech to the UN Security Council
Feb 5, 2003
Our future is frightening unless we act against Iraq
The nexus of Iraq & terror is old. Iraqi denials of supporting terrorism take the place alongside the other denials of weapons of mass destruction. It is all a web of lies. When we confront a regime that harbors ambitions for regional domination,
hides weapons of mass destruction & provides support for terrorists, we are not confronting the past, we are confronting the present. Unless we act, we are confronting an even more frightening future.
Source: Speech to the UN Security Council
Feb 5, 2003
Saddam killed 5,000 Kurds with mustard & nerve gas
Saddam's use of mustard & nerve gas against the Kurds in 1988 was one of the 20th century's most horrible atrocities; 5,000 died. His campaign against the Kurds from 1987 to '89 included mass summary executions, disappearances, arbitrary jailing,
ethnic cleansing & the destruction of some 2,000 villages. Saddam ruthlessly eliminates anyone who dares to dissent. Iraq has more forced disappearance cases than any other country.
Source: Speech to the UN Security Council
Feb 5, 2003
Post 9/11, we cannot allow Iraq to have nuclear weapons
Given Saddam's history of aggression, his grandiose plans, and his terrorist associations, should we take the risk that he will not some day use these weapons at a time when the world is in a much weaker position to respond?
The US will not run that risk to the American people. Leaving Saddam in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world.
Source: Speech to the UN Security Council
Feb 5, 2003
Iraq close to facing serious consequences for defiance
Three months ago this council recognized that Iraq continued to pose a threat to international peace, and that Iraq had been and remained in material breach of its disarmament obligations. Today Iraq still poses a threat and still remains in
material breach. Indeed, by its failure to seize on its one last opportunity to disarm, Iraq has put itself in deeper material breach and closer to the day when it will face serious consequences for its defiance of this council.
Source: Speech to the UN Security Council
Feb 5, 2003
We wrote Resolution 1441 to preserve peace
We have an obligation to our citizens, we have an obligation to this body to see that our resolutions are complied with. We wrote 1441 not in order to go to war, we wrote 1441 to try to preserve the peace.
We wrote 1441 to give Iraq one last chance. Iraq is not so far taking that one last chance.
Source: Speech to the UN Security Council
Feb 5, 2003
Favored containment over invasion in both Iraq wars
In early August, Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to President Bush's father, had declared that an attack on Iraq could turn the Middle East into a "cauldron and thus destroy the war on terrorism." Blunt talk, but Powell basically agreed.
Virtually all the Iraq discussions had been about war plans -- how to attack, when, with what force levels, military strike scenario this and military strike scenario that. It was clear to him now that the context was being lost.
During the first
Persian Gulf War, Powell had played the role of reluctant warrior, arguing to the first President Bush, perhaps too mildly, that containing Iraq might work, that war might not be necessary. But as the principal military adviser, he hadn't pressed his
arguments that forcefully because they were less military than political. Now as secretary of state, his account was politics. He decided he had to come down very hard, state his convictions and conclusions so there would be no doubt as to where he stood
Source: Bush At War, by Bob Woodward, adapted in Washington Post
Nov 17, 2002
War cabinet split: Rumsfeld & Cheney hawks; Powell dove
Powell joked privately that he had been put in the "icebox" -- to be used only when needed. In early October 2001, Powell said, "I'm in the icebox again," [regarding speaking out on the Iraq war]. Maybe because he was pushing to release a white paper
detailing evidence against Osama bin Laden.
One of Powell's greatest difficulties was that he was more or less supposed to pretend in public that the sharp differences in the war cabinet did not exist. The president would not tolerate public discord.
Powell was also held in check by his own code -- a soldier obeys.
Bush might order, Go get the guns! Get my horses! -- all the Texas, Alamo macho that made Powell uncomfortable. But he believed and hoped that the president knew better,
that he would see the go-it-alone approach did not stand further analysis.
The ghosts in the machine in Powell's view were Rumsfeld and Cheney. Too often they went for the guns and the horses.
Source: Bush At War, by Bob Woodward, adapted in Washington Post
Nov 17, 2002
Predicted Iraq war would suck the oxygen from War on Terror
[Meeting with Bush in August 2002,] Powell said the president had to consider what a military operation against Iraq would do in the Arab world. The entire region could be destabilized -- friendly regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan could be put in
jeopardy or overthrown. Anger and frustration at America abounded.
War would suck the oxygen out of just about everything else the US was doing, not only in the war on terrorism, but also in all other diplomatic, defense and intelligence
relationships, Powell said. The economic implications could be staggering, potentially driving the supply and price of oil in directions that were as-yet unimagined.
Following victory, the day-after implications were giant. What of the image of an
American general running an Arab country for some length of time? he asked. A General MacArthur in Baghdad? This would be a big event within Iraq, the region and the world. How long would it last? No one could know. How would success be defined?
Source: Bush At War, by Bob Woodward, adapted in Washington Post
Nov 17, 2002
Support Iraqi opposition while maintaining sanctions
A State Department official said yesterday that the administration is seeking to develop a policy that combines support for the Iraqi opposition with maintaining the economic sanctions that were imposed after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Colin
Powell said he had not determined whether it would be realistic ultimately to remove Hussein by funding opposition groups. “Iraq is a problem for its own people,” Powell said. He said his focus would remain on Hussein’s refusal to cooperate with United
Nations weapons inspectors. “I think we have to keep reminding everybody that this is an arms control problem,” Powell said.
The US had provided covert aid to opposition groups in the years after the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. But those
efforts came to a tumultuous end when Hussein’s military rolled into the US-protected “safe area” of northern Iraq, routing the opposition. Opposition organizations can now draw from $4 million set aside by Congress for gathering information inside Iraq.
Source: Alan Sipress, Washington Post, p. A1
Feb 2, 2001
US need not choose between Israel & Arabs
Powell has been as popular with the Jewish community as he has with the general public. He wowed many Jews in 1991 when he addressed the AIPAC Policy Conference, starting off in Yiddish [which he learned as a boy growing up in New York City].
In that speech, he noted that the Gulf War destroyed the myth that the United States must choose between Israel and the Arabs. He lauded Israel’s “heroic restraint” after withstanding the Scud missile attacks. He also said the friendship between our
nations is “symbolized by the strategic cooperation between both countries. Cooperation that will grow.”
He also talked about going to Israel and feeling so comfortable he could speak to his Israeli counterparts in “short-hand,
the kind that develops among close and dear friends.” He traced this relationship to the basis of the alliance’s “democratic cooperation...a cooperation based on rules of law and democracy.”
Source: Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, Op-Ed, Mitchell Bard
Nov 3, 1995
US has always stood with Israel; and will continue to do so
Powell concluded a 1991 speech to the AIPAC Policy Conference with the kind of passionate statement every friend of Israel hopes for from public officials: “We have stood with Israel throughout its history. We have demonstrated again
and again that our roots are intertwined, as they are with all nations who share our beliefs in openness and democracy. So let there be no question that America will stand by Israel today. And, let there be no question that America will stand
by Israel in the future. Peace in the Middle East, a peace we all yearn for, can only be secured if the U.S.-Israeli relationship remains strong and vibrant.“
Those were his most extensive public remarks on the
Middle East. As Joint Chiefs chairman, Powell had a role in the growth of strategic cooperation between the United States and Israel, but he was not a catalyst.
Source: Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, Op-Ed, Mitchell Bard
Nov 3, 1995
Lebanon: providing “presence” not sufficient basis
Our Marines had been stationed in Lebanon for the fuzzy idea of providing a “presence.” The year before, in 1982, the Israelis had invaded Lebanon to drive out the PLO terrorists. The US was attempting to referee the withdrawal of all foreign troops from
Lebanon.
I was developing a strong distaste for the antiseptic phrases coined by State Department officials for foreign interventions which usually had bloody consequences for the military, words like “presence,” “symbol,” “signal.” Their use is fine
if beneath them lay a solid mission. But too often these words were used to give the appearance of clarity to mud.
I saw America sticking its hand into a thousand-year-old hornet’s nest with the expectation that our mere presence might pacify the
hornets. There are times when American lives must be risked and lost. But lives must not be risked until we can face a parent or spouse with a clear answer to the question of why. To provide a “symbol” or a “presence” is not good enough.
Source: My American Journey, by Colin Powell, p. 280-1
Jan 1, 1995
Unapologetic about not taking Baghdad; result spread peace
I am relieved that I don’t have to say to many more parents, “I’m sorry your son or daughter died in the siege of Baghdad.” I stand by my role in the President’s decision to end the war when and how he did. It is an accountability I carry with pride and
without apology.
Not only did Desert Storm [the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991] accomplish its political objective, it started to reverse the climate of chronic hostility in the Middle East. King Hussein of Jordan and Yasser Arafat,
chairman of the PLO, were the only two major Arab leaders who showed any support for the Iraqi position during the Gulf War, and both were weakened by their stance. As a result, three years later, they were trying to reach accommodations with Israel and
their other neighbors. The Madrid Middle East Peace Conference, following Desert Storm, started the process that resulted in the historic agreement between Arafat and Israel in 1993, and the peace treaty between King Hussein and Israel in 1994.
Source: My American Journey, by Colin Powell, p. 513
Jan 1, 1995
Air strikes can’t guarantee changes; only ground troops can
In response to calls to “do something” to punish the Bosnian Serbs from the air for shelling Sarajevo [in1992]. I laid out the same military options [to newly-elected President Clinton] as I had presented to Pres. Bush. Our choices ranged from limited
air strikes around Sarajevo to heavy bombing of the Serbs throughout the theater. I emphasized that none of these actions was guaranteed to change Serb behavior. Only troops on the ground could do that. Heavy bombing might persuade them to give in, but
would not compel them to quit. And, faced with limited air strikes, the Serbs would have little difficulty hiding tanks and artillery in the woods and fog of Bosnia or keeping them close to civilian populations. Furthermore, no matter what we did, it
would be easy for the Serbs to respond by seizing UN humanitarian personnel as hostages.
My constant, unwelcome message at all the meetings on Bosnia was simply that we should not commit military forces until we had a clear political objective.
Source: My American Journey, by Colin Powell, p. 561
Jan 1, 1995
When I hear “limited” & “surgical”, I head for the bunker
In 1991, I was asked why the US could not assume a “limited” role in Bosnia. I had been engaged in limited military involvements before, in Vietnam for starters. I said, “As soon as they tell me it’s limited, it means they do not care whether you
achieve a result or not. As soon as they tell me ‘surgical,’ I head for the bunker.” I criticized the pseudo-policy of establishing a US “presence” without a defined mission in trouble spots. This approach had cost the lives of 241 Marines in Lebanon.
Source: My American Journey, by Colin Powell, p. 543-4
Jan 1, 1995
Predicted Saddam’s mischief in 1994
Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait occurred about nine months after I projected, in my “Strategic Overview-1994,” that Korea and the Persian Gulf were the two world hot spots likeliest to involve US forces. The Iraqi army had made me uncomfortable
ever since Iraq and Iran ended their eight-year war in 1988, while I was National Security Advisor. Once Saddam, with an army of over one million men strong, no longer had Iran to worry about, I feared he would look for mischief somewhere else.
Source: My American Journey, by Colin Powell, p. 446-7
Jan 1, 1995
Click here for definitions & background information on War & Peace.
