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Powell’s UN Fiasco: Fresh and Festering
By Ray
McGovern
06/02/08 "ICH" -- - Yesterday was a difficult day for
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. It was hard to
celebrate the fifth anniversary of our first corporate
memorandum, a same-day critique of Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2002
UN address, when we could not escape the reality that this
speech greased the skids for death and destruction in Iraq and
brought unprecedented shame on our country. We found no solace
in the realization that those who saw our analysis should have
seen disaster coming.
A handful of former CIA intelligence officers joined me in
forming the VIPS movement in Jan. 2002, after we concluded that
our profession had been corrupted to “justify” what was, pure
and simple, a war of aggression. Little did we know at the time
that a month later Colin Powell, with then-CIA Director George
Tenet plumped down conspicuously behind him, would provide the
world with a textbook example of careerism and cowardice in
cooking intelligence to the recipe of his master.
Powell’s Prior Practice
It was hardly Powell’s first display of such behavior.
Those able to look past the medals and ribbons have been able to
trace a pattern of malleability back to Powell’s early days as a
young Army officer in Vietnam, and then in the 1980s as an
Iran-Contra accomplice together with his boss Casper Weinberger,
then secretary of defense. Weinberger was indicted for perjury
but escaped trial when pardoned by George H. W. Bush on
Christmas Eve 1992. [See Chapter 8 of Robert Parry’s new book,
Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush,
for more on Powell’s proclivity to pander.]
A year before his UN speech Powell winked at the introduction of
torture into the Army’s repertoire, rather than confront
President George W. Bush personally on the pressure that Vice
President Dick Cheney was exerting to conjure up legal
wiggle-room for torture. Instead, Powell merely asked State
Department lawyers to engage White House lawyers Alberto
Gonzales and Cheney-favorite David Addington, in what Powell
knew would be—absent his personal involvement— a quixotic
effort.
Powell’s lawyers put in writing his concern that making an
end-run around the Geneva protections for prisoners of war
“could undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes
maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and
could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of
adversaries.” Well, he got that right.
But when Gonzales and Addington simply declared parts of Geneva
“quaint” and “obsolete,” Powell caved, acquiescing in the
corruption of the Army to which he owed so much. We know the
next chapters of that story—Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Powell’s
instincts were right, but he lacked the strength of his
convictions. It turns out that this key instance of abject
obeisance—important as it was in its own right—was just practice
for the super bowl at the UN.
VIPS’ Maiden Effort
When those of us in our fledgling VIPS movement learned
that Powell would address the UN on Feb. 5, 2003, we decided to
do a same-day analytic assessment—the kind we used to do when
someone like Khrushchev, or Gorbachev, or Gromyko, or Mao Tse-dung,
or Castro gave a major address. We were well accustomed to the
imperative to beat the media with our commentary. Coordinating
our Powell draft via email, at 5:15 p.m. we issued VIPS’ first
Memorandum for the President: “Subject: Today’s Speech by
Secretary Powell at the UN.”
Our understanding at that time was far from perfect. It was not
yet completely clear to us, for example, that Saddam Hussein had
for the most part been abiding by, rather than flouting, UN
resolutions. We stressed, though, that the key question was
whether any of this justified war:
“This is the question the world is asking. Secretary
Powell’s presentation does not come close to answering it.”
We warned the president of the “politicization of
intelligence” and the deep analytical flaws that inevitably
follow, for example:
“Intelligence community analysts are finding it hard to make
themselves heard above the drumbeat for war...”
“Your Pentagon advisers draw a connection between war with Iraq
and terrorism, but for the wrong reasons. The connection takes
on much more reality in a post-US invasion scenario.
(bold in original) Indeed, it is our view that an invasion of
Iraq would ensure overflowing recruitment centers for terrorists
into the indefinite future. Far from eliminating the threat it
would enhance it exponentially.”
Dissociating VIPS from Powell’s bravado claim that the
evidence he presented was “irrefutable,” we noted that no one
has a corner on the truth and ended our memo for President Bush
with this observation:
“...after watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced
you would be well served if you widened the discussion beyond
violations of Resolution 1441, and beyond the circle of those
advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling
reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are
likely to be catastrophic.”
Senator Clinton Knew
Five years later, we take no pleasure at having been
right; we take considerable pain at having been ignored. The
impending debacle was a no-brainer, and serious specialists like
former UN inspector Scott Ritter, to his credit, were shouting
it from the rooftops.
What follows is more than a mere footnote. It is not widely
known that our Feb. 5, 2003 memorandum analyzing Powell’s speech
was shared with the junior senator from New York. Thus, she
still had plenty of time to raise her voice before the Bush
administration launched the fateful attack on Iraq on March 19.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of
the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. A
former Army officer and veteran of 27 years in the analytic
ranks of CIA, he is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity. VIPS’ issuances are listed below;
complete texts of all 16 can be found at afterdowningstreet.org/vips.
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Issuances
1 Memorandum for the President, February 5, 2003
“Secretary Powell’s Presentation to the UN Today”
2 Memorandum for Confused Americans, March 12, 2003
“Cooking Intelligence for War”
3 Memorandum for the President, March 18, 2003
“Forgery, Hyperbole, Half-Truth: A Problem”
4 Memorandum, March 26, 2003
“Arafat Interviewed by the Christisons on Current Impasse”
5 Memorandum, April 24, 2003
“The Stakes in the Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction”
6 Memorandum for the President, May 1, 2003
“Intelligence Fiasco”
7 Letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, May 19, 2003
“On UN Inspectors and Weapons of Mass Destruction”
8 Memorandum for the President, July 14, 2003
“Intelligence Unglued”
9 Memorandum for Colleagues in Intelligence, August 22, 2003
“Now It’s Your Turn”
10 Memorandum for Colleagues in Intelligence, October 13,
2003
“One Person Can Make a Difference”
11 Memorandum for the President, January 13, 2004
“Your State-of-the-Union Address”
12 Memorandum for the President, August 24, 2005
“Recommendation: Try A Circle of ‘Wise Women’”
13 Memorandum for Speaker of the House, Senate Majority
Leader
“Denouement on Iraq: First Stop the Bleeding, March 14,
2007
14 Memorandum, March 29, 2007
“Brinkmanship Unwise in Uncharted Waters”
15 Memorandum, June 17, 2007
“Countering Terrorism—How Not to Do It”
16 Memorandum, July 27, 2007
“Dangers of a Cornered George Bush”
An earlier
version of this article appeared yesterday at Consortiumnews.com.
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