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Robert Fisk: You wanted to believe Powell – but it was like something out of Beckett
(Robert Fisk, The Independent, 06 February 2003)
Colin Powell's terror talk to the United Nations Security Council yesterday sounded like one of those government-inspired reports on the front page of The New York Times . . . Because Colin Powell is supposed to be the good cop to the Bush-Rumsfeld bad cop routine, one wanted to believe him. The Iraqi officer's telephoned order to his subordinate – "remove 'nerve agents' whenever it comes up in the wireless instructions" – looked as if the Americans had indeed spotted a nasty new little line in Iraqi deception. But a dramatic picture of a pilotless Iraqi aircraft capable of spraying poison chemicals turned out to be the imaginative work of a Pentagon artist. . . . And when General Powell started blathering on about "decades'' of contact between Saddam and al-Qa'ida, things went wrong for the Secretary of State. Al-Qa'ida only came into existence five years ago, since Bin Laden – "decades" ago – was working against the Russians for the CIA, whose present day director was sitting grave-faced behind General Powell. And Colin Powell's new version of his President's State of the Union lie – that the "scientists" interviewed by UN inspectors had been Iraqi intelligence agents in disguise – was singularly unimpressive. . . . The worst moment came when General Powell started talking about anthrax and the 2001 anthrax attacks in Washington and New York, pathetically holding up a teaspoon of the imaginary spores and – while not precisely saying so – fraudulently suggesting a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 2001 anthrax scare. . . . These elegantly dressed statesmen were constructing the framework that would allow them to kill quite a lot of people, the monstrous Saddam perhaps, with his cronies, but a considerable number of innocents as well.

posted by Lorenzo 2:50 PM