Author: Jonathan Schwarz

UPDATE: Videos here. Some of the sound is a little unclear, so hopefully there will be transcripts soon.

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You may recall Colin Powell saying this during his U.N. speech:

Iraq’s record on chemical weapons is replete with lies. It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons.

The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamal, Saddam Hussein’s late son-in-law.

This was true. However, there’s one little thing Powell left out: when Hussein Kamel defected in 1995, he also said ALL IRAQ’S UNDECLARED WMD HAD BEEN SECRETLY DESTROYED IN 1991. In other words, Iraq had been lying about what it had done in the past, not what it possessed in the present.

Of course, to know this you had to have access to supersecret sources of information. For instance, CNN:

SADLER: Can you state here and now — does Iraq still to this day hold weapons of mass destruction?

KAMEL: No. Iraq does not possess any weapons of mass destruction. I am being completely honest about this.

Or the U.N. notes from the debriefing of Kamel:

All chemical weapons were destroyed. I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons – biological, chemical, missiles, nuclear were destroyed.

This morning Sam Husseini caught Colin Powell as he was leaving an appearance on Face the Nation and asked him whether he was aware of this when he spoke at the U.N. Powell said he wasn’t; in other words, he declared that he didn’t know the most basic information about what he was saying, and apparently doesn’t feel any responsibility for knowing it.

Check back later today for the video and transcript.

I believe Dennis Perrin may possess the world’s greatest YouTube skillz. If you like Monty Python arcana, be sure not to miss these videos he dug up of Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman appearing with Tom Snyder on “Tomorrow” in 1979 to promote Life of Brian. (You’ll have to scroll down past some cruel comments about James Woolsey and friends.)

A big story from England:

The Government’s case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

A devastating attack on Mr Blair’s justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain’s key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act.

Carne Ross:

I was First Secretary in the UK Mission to the United Nations in New York from December 1997 until June 2002. I was responsible for Iraq policy in the mission, including policy on sanctions, weapons inspections and liaison with UNSCOM and later UNMOVIC…

I read the available UK and US intelligence on Iraq every working day for the four and a half years of my posting…

During my posting, at no time did HMG assess that Iraq’s WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests. On the contrary, it was the commonly-held view among the officials dealing with Iraq that any threat had been effectively contained. I remember on several occasions the UK team stating this view in terms during our discussions with the US (who agreed). (At the same time, we would frequently argue, when the US raised the subject, that “regime change” was inadvisable, primarily on the grounds that Iraq would collapse into chaos.)

Any assessment of threat has to include both capabilities and intent. Iraq’s capabilities in WMD were moot: many of the UN’s weapons inspectors (who, contrary to popular depiction, were impressive and professional) would tell me that they believed Iraq had no significant materiel. With the exception of some unaccounted-for Scud missiles, there was no intelligence evidence of significant holdings of CW, BW or nuclear material.

(via via)

This, by James Woolsey in the recent Vanity Fair article about the chastened neocons, is a good start:

[Woolsey draws a] historical parallel, to the U.S. campaigns against Native Americans in the 19th century, to make another point: that the absence of Iraqi auxiliaries deprived coalition soldiers of invaluable local intelligence. “Without the trained Iraqis, it was like the Seventh Cavalry going into the heart of Apache country in Arizona in the 1870s with no scouts. No Apache scouts. I mean, hello?”

But we need much more where this came from. The lack of this is, I think, what has caused so much ill-will towards us among Iraqis. Only when they hear the United States constantly comparing them to Native Americans will they understand how truly glorious the future we have planned for them is.

Dennis Perrin examines the near-simultaneous passing of Augusto Pinochet and Jeane Kirkpatrick, here.

I’d forgotten this Jeane Kirkpatrick quote about the Maryknoll nuns raped and murdered by the Salvadoran National Guard in 1980:

“The nuns were not just nuns, they were political activists, and we should be very clear about that.”

EVEN BETTER: During the eighties the U.S. encouraged Chilean arms manufacturers to help arm Saddam Hussein. This effort was spearheaded by a man now forgotten by history named Robert Gates.