Reply #151: Hmmm. That's not what CNN was reporting LAST year.

[Carolab]

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

Thursday, January 8, 2004 Posted: 7:13 PM EST (0013 GMT)


Powell said the Saddam Hussein regime "was a danger we had to worry about."


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."

(more)

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/01/08/sprj.nirq.wmd.report/