From Hubris by Michael Isikoff and David Corn:
It rankled Powell that his U.N. presentation had come to be considered a pivotal event on the path to war: “It’s annoying to me. Everyone focuses on my presentation…Well the same goddamn case was presented to the U.S. Senate and the Congress and they voted for [Bush’s Iraq] resolution…Why aren’t they outraged? They’re the ones who are supposed to do oversight. The same case was presented to the president. Why isn’t the president outraged? It’s always, ‘Gee, Powell, you made this speech to the U.N.'”
Beyond the general mopery—I do one little presentation in front of the entire world at the U.N. calling for war that turns out to be 100% false and suddenly everyone’s pointing fingers at me!—I enjoy the implication that Powell is in fact outraged by what happened.
I guess this burning outrage he feels has manifested itself by him (1) never saying anything in public about it unless asked and (2) taking no actions of any kind. He’s so unbelievably outraged that he hasn’t even bothered to find out the names of the people he claims are responsible:
POWELL: George Tenet did not sit there for five days with me, misleading me… He believed what he was giving to me was accurate. The intelligence system did not work well. There was some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good and shouldn’t be relied upon, and they didn’t speak up. That devastated me.
WALTERS: Want to name names?
POWELL: I don’t have the names. These are not senior people but these are people who were aware that some of these sources should not be considered reliable. And they were aware that we were putting this information in the believing.
For a detailed look back at what exactly Powell’s subordinates were telling him at the time, go here.