CHESSNOID

I think it is ironic that the man who basically endorsed going to war against Iraq is endorsing the man who initially opposed the war against Iraq.  General Colin Powell once had my respect because he didn’t believe in the Bush doctrines of preemptive strikes.

CNN:

Powell on WMD existence: ‘This game is still unfolding’
Author: Political pressure influenced intelligence before war

WASHINGTON (CNN) –Secretary of State Colin Powell Thursday defended the Bush administration’s position that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction programs and defended his speech on the matter to the United Nations last February.

“This game is still unfolding,” he told reporters.

He was responding to a study that found Iraq had ended its programs by the mid-1990s and did not pose an immediate threat to the United States before the 2003 war. Powell said he had not read the report but read news reports about it.

The study, released Thursday, was conducted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonpartisan, respected group that opposed the war in Iraq.

The United States used the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as a justification for launching the war against the regime of Saddam Hussein, according to the report.

The report follows a nine-month search in Iraq for WMD — nuclear, biological and chemical — the key reason the administration cited in its decision to invade Iraq.

“We looked at the intelligence assessment process, and we’ve come to the conclusion that it is broken,” author Joseph Cirincione said Thursday on CNN’s “American Morning.”

“It is very likely that intelligence officials were pressured by senior administration officials to conform their threat assessments to pre-existing policies.”

But Powell noted that Iraq used chemical weapons in the Iraq-Iran war and on the Kurds in the 1980s and had the chance to come clean about its programs to the international community through the ’90s.

“It’s a fact,” he said.

He said there was a “solid case” from U.N. inspectors and other officials that the Saddam Hussein regime “was a danger we had to worry about.”

“In terms of intention, you always had it,” he said. “And anybody who thinks that Saddam Hussein last year was just, you know, waiting to give all of this up even though he was given the opportunity to do so, he didn’t do it.

“What he was waiting to do is see if he could break the will of the international community, get rid of any potential for future inspections and get back to his intentions, which were to have weapons of mass destruction.”

Powell said Saddam Hussein “kept the infrastructure, the programs intact.”

“Where the debate is, is why haven’t we found huge stockpiles and why haven’t we found large caches of these weapons? Let’s let the Iraqi Survey Group complete its work.”

Then he did a 180 and claimed they had proof Iraq had WMDs.  I knew there were no WMDs and I believe Powell knew there were no WMDs.  All I saw was an honorable man’s will and strength break and a man who knowingly compromised his principles because of pressure from the Bush Administration. He should of quit like the rest of Bush’s other secretaries to “spend more time with their families”.  Seems like this former Republican Secretary of State will again compromise his beliefs for a position in a possible Obama Presidency.

USA Today:

Barack Obama said Monday that former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who endorsed his candidacy for president this weekend, will be one of his top advisers and could play a formal role if he chooses.

If Obama really does give Powell a cabinet role, then it would further seem to me his decision making process is flawed. Appointing Powell to his cabinet would be like appointing Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld who all supported the war. It doesn’t make any sense.