9/24/2003

on Iraqi sanctions and WMD

We will always try to consult with our friends in the region so that they are not surprised and do everything we can to explain the purpose of our responses. We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place, but we are always willing to review them to make sure that they are being carried out in a way that does not affect the Iraqi people but does affect the Iraqi regime's ambitions and the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and we had a good conversation on this issue.


-- Secretary Colin L. Powell, Press Remarks with Foreign Minister of Egypt Amre Moussa, Cairo, Egypt (Ittihadiya Palace) on February 24, 2001

It's not surprising that the Administration moved the goalposts from weapons of mass destruction to programs of mass destruction. and why they are un-hyping the upcoming Kay report - which was not even able to find evidence of the weaker "programs" standard.. Via Josh Marshall:

David Kay is in charge of our effort now, with some 1,500 inspectors and analysts and experts. He will provide an interim report later this month, and I am confident when people see what David Kay puts forward they will see that there was no question that such weapons exist, existed, and so did the programs to develop one.

Colin Powell
Meet The Press
September 7th, 2003

David Kay is not going to be done with this for quite some time. And I would not count on reports. I suppose there may be interim reports. I don't know when those will be, and I don't know what the public nature of them will be.

Condi Rice
Press Briefing
September 22nd, 2003


There were a great many critics of teh Administration, lefty bloggers, liberals, etc who supported the war on Iraq solely due to the WMD issue. I would like to know if any have admitted that the rush to war was indeed a false pretext yet?

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