| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| Article Implies WMD Stockpiles not found...but still no direct quote |
| 2004-02-11 |
| EFL WASHINGTON (AFP) A testy US Secretary of State Colin Powell denied that President George W. Bush "cooked the books" or "murdered" the truth to justify war on Iraq. testy? In a contentious House of Representatives committee hearing, Powell fired off the latest salvo in the prior use of WMD’s, rape rooms, paper shredders and mass murder are no reason for war Powell snapped back, "the truth was not murdered Mr Ackerman, nobody shaped it, nobody told the intelligence community what to say." does Powell say we haven’t find WMD’s? No... He defended his presentation to the United Nations Security Council on February 5 last year, which argued that Saddam was deceiving UN weapons inspectors and pursuing banned weapons programs. Did Powell say we haven’t found WMD’s? NO... "I went into that briefing believing there were stockpiles, that there were weapons there, that we expected to find them. Did Powell say we didn’t find stockpiles? NO... "It was not a question of we knew nothing was there and we lied about it, what we did was we presented the facts that our intelligence community provided to us, nothing more nothing less. Did Powell say we haven’t found WMD’s? NO... "I did not go before the UN and tell anything but the truth as we knew it at the time." Did Powell say we haven’t found WMD’s? NO... Powell also rode to the defense of Bush, who beset by attacks on his handling of Iraq, last week announced an independent probe into US intelligence gathering on weapons of mass destruction. "I don’t think we have anything to be apologetic about and under no set of circumstances do I believe that anybody in America should think that the president cooked the books or in some way tried to mislead them." Did Powell say we haven’t found WMD’s? NO... Powell argued that although no weapons of mass destruction had yet been discovered in Iraq, there was proof that Saddam Hussein had been developing long-range missile systems. Why... at first blush.. this appears to be an admission by Powell that no WMD’s have yet been found....but WAIT! THIS IS NOT A QUOTE!!. Did Powell actually say, "no WMDs had yet been discovered" or is that the reporter’s take on it??? Why, on this most important issue, does the reporter suddenly switch to Ah...now that the editor has got in his editorial spin, he switches back to quoting Powell... "He was developing long-range delivery systems and not to deliver popcorn." snip for headshaking conflict In a television interview Sunday, President George W. Bush insisted the Iraq invasion was a "war of necessity" [editorial alert] amid growing signs that the failure to find unconventional weapons has hurt his credibility before the November US presidential election. Hmm..once again we are given carefully worded editorial here. Bush is quoted only as saying it was a "war of necessity". But the reporter has sandwiched Bush’s quote within his own unsourced commentary, to make it appear that even Bush acknowledges that there has been a failure to find WMD’s ....but Bush doesn’t really say that. We don’t know, now do we? He told NBC television that Saddam "had the capacity" to make weapons of mass destruction. Bush suggested Saddam might have destroyed his arsenals, hidden them or transported them to a nearby country. But Bush still never said we didn’t find them yet...now did he? |
| Posted by:B |