Colin Powell made his presentation today to the United Nations. We all knew that there was not going to be some dramatic display of proof that banned weapons exist in Iraq. Basically the weapons inspectors told us that they didn't find anything so Colin doesn't have more info than the inspectors on this. Todays presentation was mainly to show us that Iraq doesn't comply with UN resolution 1441. In not so many words Colin just said: "Hey guys, we all sat here in November and voted for this thing. We spelled out that Iraq was to show us all their banned weapons and prove they destroyed them or destroy them in front of the inspectors." He said:...
"This council placed the burden on Iraq to comply and disarm and not on the inspectors to find that which Iraq has gone out of its way to conceal for so long. Inspectors are inspectors; they are not detectives."
To that effect he made an excellent good argument however there were moments when his presentation drifted into scare tactics. I mean the link to Al Qaida was not that convincing:
"Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associated in collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida lieutenants.... operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq..."
The fact that they're "outside" Iraq says it all right there. Another issue of debate is the nuclear program. Colin states that Saddam has nuclear scientists and diagrams for a bomb. Ok, so do many other countries. Also, he clearly states:
"...in 1991, the inspectors searched Iraq's primary nuclear weapons facilities for the first time. And they found nothing to conclude that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program..."
Then continues on by repeating claims made by Iraqi defectors . Now anyone listening to this should realize that you can't really believe everything that defectors claim. Colin bases many of his accusations on information ecxtracted from defectors and "sources".
During this presentation I was impressed by the clarity of the recorded conversations between Iraqi officials. We weren't told how these recordings were made. I can assume that the NSA had something to do with it. Which brings me to my other point. Here we have the US, a superpower which has billions of dollars at it's disposal to invest in covert spying operations. What would the UN presentations be like if we did not have this information? The only real hardcore proof would be the inspectors finding something. Everything else, photos, audio, and sources is just icing on the cake. The "smoking gun" will only reveal itself with physical proof because that is what all the skeptical countries (including Canada) are waiting for. However, the catch is we won't find physical proof because Iraq keeps cleaning it up...
The response to the presentation by Iraq was so stupid. All they could say in their defense was that the US faked the audio. I think that proves their guilt right there. Is that your best defense?
Well, we'll have to see what Hans Blix tells us in his report Feb.14 (valentine's day).
