Transcript of Powell’s presentation to U.N.MSN Home | My MSN |
Hotmail | Search | Shopping | Money | People & Chat
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 5 — Text of the presentation to the U.N.
Security Council open meeting on the situation in Iraq, as delivered
by United States Secretary of State Colin Powell:
• eDiets Diet Center
• Shop at B&N.com
• Auctions at uBid
• Yellow Pages
• lavalife.com Where singles click
• MSN Broadband
Thank you, Mr. President.
Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, distinguished colleagues, I
would like to begin by expressing my thanks for the special effort that
each of you made to be here today. This is important day for us all as we
review the situation with respect to Iraq and its disarmament obligations
under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441.
Last November 8, this council passed Resolution 1441 by a unanimous
vote. The purpose of that resolution was to disarm Iraq of its weapons of
mass destruction. Iraq had already been found guilty of material breach of
its obligations, stretching back over 16 previous resolutions and 12
years.
Resolution 1441 was not dealing with an innocent party, but a
regime this council has repeatedly convicted over the years. Resolution
1441 gave Iraq one last chance, one last chance to come into compliance or
to face serious consequences. No council member present in voting on that
day had any allusions about the nature and intent of the resolution or
what serious consequences meant if Iraq did not comply.
And to assist in its disarmament, we called on Iraq to cooperate
with returning inspectors from UNMOVIC and IAEA.
We laid down tough standards for Iraq to meet to allow the
inspectors to do their job.
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.
I asked for this session today for two purposes: First, to support
the core assessments made by Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei. As Dr. Blix
reported to this council on January 27th, quote, “Iraq appears not to have
come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was
demanded of it,” unquote.
And as Dr. ElBaradei reported, Iraq’s declaration of December 7,
quote, “did not provide any new information relevant to certain questions
that have been outstanding since 1998.”
My second purpose today is to provide you with additional
information, to share with you what the United States knows about Iraq’s
weapons of mass destruction as well as Iraq’s involvement in terrorism,
which is also the subject of Resolution 1441 and other earlier
resolutions.
I might add at this point that we are providing all relevant
information we can to the inspection teams for them to do their work.
The material I will present to you comes from a variety of sources.
Some are U.S. sources. And some are those of other countries. Some of the
sources are technical, such as intercepted telephone conversations and
photos taken by satellites. Other sources are people who have risked their
lives to let the world know what Saddam Hussein is really up to.
I cannot tell you everything that we know. But what I can share
with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years,
is deeply troubling.
What you will see is an accumulation of facts and disturbing
patterns of behavior. The facts on Iraqis’ behavior — Iraq’s behavior
demonstrate that Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort — no
effort — to disarm as required by the international community. Indeed, the
facts and Iraq’s behavior show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are
concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.
Let me begin by playing a tape for you. What you’re about to hear
is a conversation that my government monitored. It takes place on November
26 of last year, on the day before United Nations teams resumed
inspections in Iraq.
The conversation involves two senior officers, a colonel and a
brigadier general, from Iraq’s elite military unit, the Republican Guard.
Click here to hear the intercepted conversation.
Let me pause and review some of the key elements of this
conversation that you just heard between these two officers.
First, they acknowledge that our colleague, Mohamed ElBaradei, is
coming, and they know what he’s coming for, and they know he’s coming the
next day. He’s coming to look for things that are prohibited. He is
expecting these gentlemen to cooperate with him and not hide things.
But they’re worried. “We have this modified vehicle. What do we say
if one of them sees it?”
What is their concern? Their concern is that it’s something they
should not have, something that should not be seen.
The general is incredulous: “You didn’t get a modified. You don’t
have one of those, do you?”
“I have one.”
“Which, from where?”
“From the workshop, from the Al Kendi (ph) Company?”
“What?”
“From Al Kendi (ph).”
“I’ll come to see you in the morning. I’m worried. You all have
something left.”
“We evacuated everything. We don’t have anything left.”
Note what he says: “We evacuated everything.”
We didn’t destroy it. We didn’t line it up for inspection. We
didn’t turn it into the inspectors. We evacuated it to make sure it was
not around when the inspectors showed up.
“I will come to you tomorrow.”
The Al Kendi (ph) Company: This is a company that is well known to
have been involved in prohibited weapons systems activity.
Let me play another tape for you. As you will recall, the
inspectors found 12 empty chemical warheads on January 16. On January 20,
four days later, Iraq promised the inspectors it would search for more.
You will now hear an officer from Republican Guard headquarters issuing an
instruction to an officer in the field. Their conversation took place just
last week on January 30.
Click here to hear the intercepted conversation.
(BEGIN AUDIO TAPE)
(Speaking in Arabic.)
(END AUDIO TAPE)
Let me pause again and review the elements of this message.
“They’re inspecting the ammunition you have, yes.”
“Yes.”
“For the possibility there are forbidden ammo.”
“For the possibility there is by chance forbidden ammo?”
“Yes.”
“And we sent you a message yesterday to clean out all of the areas,
the scrap areas, the abandoned areas. Make sure there is nothing there.”
Remember the first message, evacuated.
This is all part of a system of hiding things and moving things out
of the way and making sure they have left nothing behind.
If you go a little further into this message, and you see the
specific instructions from headquarters: “After you have carried out what
is contained in this message, destroy the message because I don’t want
anyone to see this message.”
“OK, OK.”
Why? Why?
This message would have verified to the inspectors that they have
been trying to turn over things. They were looking for things. But they
don’t want that message seen, because they were trying to clean up the
area to leave no evidence behind of the presence of weapons of mass
destruction. And they can claim that nothing was there. And the inspectors
can look all they want, and they will find nothing.
Advertisement
This effort to hide things from the inspectors is not one or two
isolated events, quite the contrary. This is part and parcel of a policy
of evasion and deception that goes back 12 years, a policy set at the
highest levels of the Iraqi regime.
We know that Saddam Hussein has what is called quote, “a higher
committee for monitoring the inspections teams,” unquote. Think about
that. Iraq has a high-level committee to monitor the inspectors who were
sent in to monitor Iraq’s disarmament.
Not to cooperate with them, not to assist them, but to spy on them
and keep them from doing their jobs.
The committee reports directly to Saddam Hussein. It is headed by
Iraq’s vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan. Its members include Saddam
Hussein’s son Qusay.
This committee also includes Lieutenant General Amir al-Saadi, an
adviser to Saddam. In case that name isn’t immediately familiar to you,
General Saadi has been the Iraqi regime’s primary point of contact for Dr.
Blix and Dr. ElBaradei. It was General Saadi who last fall publicly
pledged that Iraq was prepared to cooperate unconditionally with
inspectors. Quite the contrary, Saadi’s job is not to cooperate, it is to
deceive; not to disarm, but to undermine the inspectors; not to support
them, but to frustrate them and to make sure they learn nothing.
We have learned a lot about the work of this special committee. We
learned that just prior to the return of inspectors last November the
regime had decided to resume what we heard called, quote, “the old game of
cat and mouse,” unquote.
For example, let me focus on the now famous declaration that Iraq
submitted to this council on December 7. Iraq never had any intention of
complying with this council’s mandate.
Instead, Iraq planned to use the declaration, overwhelm us and to
overwhelm the inspectors with useless information about Iraq’s permitted
weapons so that we would not have time to pursue Iraq’s prohibited
weapons. Iraq’s goal was to give us, in this room, to give those us on
this council the false impression that the inspection process was working.
You saw the result. Dr. Blix pronounced the 12,200-page
declaration, rich in volume, but poor in information and practically
devoid of new evidence.
Could any member of this council honestly rise in defense of this
false declaration?
Everything we have seen and heard indicates that, instead of
cooperating actively with the inspectors to ensure the success of their
mission, Saddam Hussein and his regime are busy doing all they possibly
can to ensure that inspectors succeed in finding absolutely nothing.
My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by
sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you
are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some
examples, and these are from human sources.
Orders were issued to Iraq’s security organizations, as well as to
Saddam Hussein’s own office, to hide all correspondence with the
Organization of Military Industrialization.
This is the organization that oversees Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction activities. Make sure there are no documents left which could
connect you to the OMI.
We know that Saddam’s son, Qusay, ordered the removal of all
prohibited weapons from Saddam’s numerous palace complexes. We know that
Iraqi government officials, members of the ruling Baath Party and
scientists have hidden prohibited items in their homes. Other key files
from military and scientific establishments have been placed in cars that
are being driven around the countryside by Iraqi intelligence agents to
avoid detection.
Thanks to intelligence they were provided, the inspectors recently
found dramatic confirmation of these reports. When they searched the home
of an Iraqi nuclear scientist, they uncovered roughly 2,000 pages of
documents. You see them here being brought out of the home and placed in
U.N. hands. Some of the material is classified and related to Iraq’s
nuclear program.
Tell me, answer me, are the inspectors to search the house of every
government official, every Baath Party member and every scientist in the
country to find the truth, to get the information they need, to satisfy
the demands of our council?
• Analysis: Powell at U.N.
• Full text: Powell at U.N.
• Powell, viewed from Baghdad
• Muslim world's view
• Israelis brace for war
• Risky gamble for Qatar
• U.S. weighs new resolution
• Oil: The other Iraq war
• Detailed Iraq map
• War of words
Other Iraq coverage
Latest from Newsweek
• Muted response to Powell
• Powell's Iraq evidence
• U.S.makes its case
• Wash. Post special section
Our sources tell us that, in some cases, the hard drives of
computers at Iraqi weapons facilities were replaced. Who took the hard
drives. Where did they go? What’s being hidden? Why? There’s only one
answer to the why: to deceive, to hide, to keep from the inspectors.
Numerous human sources tell us that the Iraqis are moving, not just
documents and hard drives, but weapons of mass destruction to keep them
from being found by inspectors.
While we were here in this council chamber debating Resolution 1441
last fall, we know, we know from sources that a missile brigade outside
Baghdad was disbursing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological
warfare agents to various locations, distributing them to various
locations in western Iraq. Most of the launchers and warheads have been
hidden in large groves of palm trees and were to be moved every one to
four weeks to escape detection.
We also have satellite photos that indicate that banned materials
have recently been moved from a number of Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction facilities.
Let me say a word about satellite images before I show a couple.
The photos that I am about to show you are sometimes hard for the average
person to interpret, hard for me. The painstaking work of photo analysis
takes experts with years and years of experience, pouring for hours and
hours over light tables. But as I show you these images, I will try to
capture and explain what they mean, what they indicate to our imagery
specialists.
Let’s look at one. This one is about a weapons munition facility, a
facility that holds ammunition at a place called Taji (ph). This is one of
about 65 such facilities in Iraq. We know that this one has housed
chemical munitions. In fact, this is where the Iraqis recently came up
with the additional four chemical weapon shells.
Click here to learn more about the satellite images taken at Taji.
Here, you see 15 munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. The
four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers.
How do I know that? How can I say that? Let me give you a closer
look. Look at the image on the left. On the left is a close- up of one of
the four chemical bunkers. The two arrows indicate the presence of sure
signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions. The arrow at the
top that says security points to a facility that is the signature item for
this kind of bunker. Inside that facility are special guards and special
equipment to monitor any leakage that might come out of the bunker.
The truck you also see is a signature item. It’s a decontamination
vehicle in case something goes wrong.
This is characteristic of those four bunkers. The special security
facility and the decontamination vehicle will be in the area, if not at
any one of them or one of the other, it is moving around those four, and
it moves as it needed to move, as people are working in the different
bunkers.
Click here to learn more about the sanitized bunkers.
Now look at the picture on the right. You are now looking at two of
those sanitized bunkers. The signature vehicles are gone, the tents are
gone, it’s been cleaned up, and it was done on the 22nd of December, as
the U.N. inspection team is arriving, and you can see the inspection
vehicles arriving in the lower portion of the picture on the right.
The bunkers are clean when the inspectors get there. They found
nothing.
This sequence of events raises the worrisome suspicion that Iraq
had been tipped off to the forthcoming inspections at Taji (ph). As it did
throughout the 1990s, we know that Iraq today is actively using its
considerable intelligence capabilities to hide its illicit activities.
From our sources, we know that inspectors are under constant surveillance
by an army of Iraqi intelligence operatives. Iraq is relentlessly
attempting to tap all of their communications, both voice and electronics.
I would call my colleagues attention to the fine paper that United
Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi
deception activities.
In this next example, you will see the type of concealment activity
Iraq has undertaken in response to the resumption of inspections. Indeed,
in November 2002, just when the inspections were about to resume this type
of activity spiked. Here are three examples.
Click here to learn more about how Powell alleges Iraqis removed missiles
and warheads from this facility.
At this ballistic missile site, on November 10, we saw a cargo
truck preparing to move ballistic missile components. At this biological
weapons related facility, on November 25, just two days before inspections
resumed, this truck caravan appeared, something we almost never see at
this facility, and we monitor it carefully and regularly.
At this ballistic missile facility, again, two days before
inspections began, five large cargo trucks appeared along with the
truck-mounted crane to move missiles. We saw this kind of house cleaning
at close to 30 sites.
Click here to learn more about alleged materiel removal.
Days after this activity, the vehicles and the equipment that I’ve
just highlighted disappear and the site returns to patterns of normalcy.
We don’t know precisely what Iraq was moving, but the inspectors already
knew about these sites, so Iraq knew that they would be coming.
We must ask ourselves: Why would Iraq suddenly move equipment of
this nature before inspections if they were anxious to demonstrate what
they had or did not have?
Remember the first intercept in which two Iraqis talked about the
need to hide a modified vehicle from the inspectors. Where did Iraq take
all of this equipment? Why wasn’t it presented to the inspectors?
Iraq also has refused to permit any U-2 reconnaissance flights that
would give the inspectors a better sense of what’s being moved before,
during and after inspectors.
This refusal to allow this kind of reconnaissance is in direct,
specific violation of operative paragraph seven of our Resolution 1441.
Saddam Hussein and his regime are not just trying to conceal
weapons, they’re also trying to hide people. You know the basic facts.
Iraq has not complied with its obligation to allow immediate, unimpeded,
unrestricted and private access to all officials and other persons as
required by Resolution 1441.
The regime only allows interviews with inspectors in the presence
of an Iraqi official, a minder. The official Iraqi organization charged
with facilitating inspections announced, announced publicly and announced
ominously that, quote, “Nobody is ready to leave Iraq to be interviewed.”
Iraqi Vice President Ramadan accused the inspectors of conducting
espionage, a veiled threat that anyone cooperating with U.N. inspectors
was committing treason.
Iraq did not meet its obligations under 1441 to provide a
comprehensive list of scientists associated with its weapons of mass
destruction programs. Iraq’s list was out of date and contained only about
500 names, despite the fact that UNSCOM had earlier put together a list of
about 3,500 names.
Let me just tell you what a number of human sources have told us.
Saddam Hussein has directly participated in the effort to prevent
interviews. In early December, Saddam Hussein had all Iraqi scientists
warned of the serious consequences that they and their families would face
if they revealed any sensitive information to the inspectors. They were
forced to sign documents acknowledging that divulging information is
punishable by death.
Saddam Hussein also said that scientists should be told not to
agree to leave Iraq; anyone who agreed to be interviewed outside Iraq
would be treated as a spy. This violates 1441.
In mid-November, just before the inspectors returned, Iraqi experts
were ordered to report to the headquarters of the special security
organization to receive counterintelligence training. The training focused
on evasion methods, interrogation resistance techniques, and how to
mislead inspectors.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts,
corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence
services of other countries.
For example, in mid-December weapons experts at one facility were
replaced by Iraqi intelligence agents who were to deceive inspectors about
the work that was being done there.
On orders from Saddam Hussein, Iraqi officials issued a false death
certificate for one scientist, and he was sent into hiding.
In the middle of January, experts at one facility that was related
to weapons of mass destruction, those experts had been ordered to stay
home from work to avoid the inspectors. Workers from other Iraqi military
facilities not engaged in elicit weapons projects were to replace the
workers who’d been sent home. A dozen experts have been placed under house
arrest, not in their own houses, but as a group at one of Saddam Hussein’s
guest houses. It goes on and on and on.
As the examples I have just presented show, the information and
intelligence we have gathered point to an active and systematic effort on
the part of the Iraqi regime to keep key materials and people from the
inspectors in direct violation of Resolution 1441. The pattern is not just
one of reluctant cooperation, nor is it merely a lack of cooperation. What
we see is a deliberate campaign to prevent any meaningful inspection work.
My colleagues, operative paragraph four of U.N. Resolution 1441,
which we lingered over so long last fall, clearly states that false
statements and omissions in the declaration and a failure by Iraq at any
time to comply with and cooperate fully in the implementation of this
resolution shall constitute — the facts speak for themselves — shall
constitute a further material breach of its obligation.
We wrote it this way to give Iraq an early test — to give Iraq an
early test. Would they give an honest declaration and would they early on
indicate a willingness to cooperate with the inspectors? It was designed
to be an early test.
They failed that test. By this standard, the standard of this
operative paragraph, I believe that Iraq is now in further material breach
of its obligations. I believe this conclusion is irrefutable and
undeniable.
Iraq has now placed itself in danger of the serious consequences
called for in U.N. Resolution 1441. And this body places itself in danger
of irrelevance if it allows Iraq to continue to defy its will without
responding effectively and immediately.
The issue before us is not how much time we are willing to give the
inspectors to be frustrated by Iraqi obstruction. But how much longer are
we willing to put up with Iraq’s noncompliance before we, as a council,
we, as the United Nations, say: “Enough. Enough.”
The gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat
that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction pose to the world. Let me now turn
to those deadly weapons programs and describe why they are real and
present dangers to the region and to the world.
First, biological weapons. We have talked frequently here about
biological weapons. By way of introduction and history, I think there are
just three quick points I need to make.
First, you will recall that it took UNSCOM four long and
frustrating years to pry — to pry — an admission out of Iraq that it had
biological weapons.
Second, when Iraq finally admitted having these weapons in 1995,
the quantities were vast. Less than a teaspoon of dry anthrax, a little
bit about this amount — this is just about the amount of a teaspoon — less
than a teaspoon full of dry anthrax in an envelope shutdown the United
States Senate in the fall of 2001. This forced several hundred people to
undergo emergency medical treatment and killed two postal workers just
from an amount just about this quantity that was inside of an envelope.
Iraq declared 8,500 liters of anthrax, but UNSCOM estimates that
Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters. If concentrated into
this dry form, this amount would be enough to fill tens upon tens upon
tens of thousands of teaspoons. And Saddam Hussein has not verifiably
accounted for even one teaspoon-full of this deadly material.
And that is my third point. And it is key. The Iraqis have never
accounted for all of the biological weapons they admitted they had and we
know they had. They have never accounted for all the organic material used
to make them. And they have not accounted for many of the weapons filled
with these agents such as there are 400 bombs. This is evidence, not
conjecture. This is true. This is all well-documented.
Dr. Blix told this council that Iraq has provided little evidence
to verify anthrax production and no convincing evidence of its
destruction. It should come as no shock then, that since Saddam Hussein
forced out the last inspectors in 1998, we have amassed much intelligence
indicating that Iraq is continuing to make these weapons.
One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick
intelligence file we have on Iraq’s biological weapons is the existence of
mobile production facilities used to make biological agents.
Let me take you inside that intelligence file and share with you
what we know from eye witness accounts. We have firsthand descriptions of
biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails.
The trucks and train cars are easily moved and are designed to
evade detection by inspectors. In a matter of months, they can produce a
quantity of biological poison equal to the entire amount that Iraq claimed
to have produced in the years prior to the Gulf War.
Although Iraq’s mobile production program began in the mid-1990s,
U.N. inspectors at the time only had vague hints of such programs.
Confirmation came later, in the year 2000.
The source was an eyewitness, an Iraqi chemical engineer who
supervised one of these facilities. He actually was present during
biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an accident
occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians died from exposure to biological
agents.
He reported that when UNSCOM was in country and inspecting, the
biological weapons agent production always began on Thursdays at midnight
because Iraq thought UNSCOM would not inspect on the Muslim Holy Day,
Thursday night through Friday. He added that this was important because
the units could not be broken down in the middle of a production run,
which had to be completed by Friday evening before the inspectors might
arrive again.
This defector is currently hiding in another country with the
certain knowledge that Saddam Hussein will kill him if he finds him. His
eye-witness account of these mobile production facilities has been
corroborated by other sources.
A second source, an Iraqi civil engineer in a position to know the
details of the program, confirmed the existence of transportable
facilities moving on trailers.
A third source, also in a position to know, reported in summer 2002
that Iraq had manufactured mobile production systems mounted on road
trailer units and on rail cars.
Finally, a fourth source, an Iraqi major, who defected, confirmed
that Iraq has mobile biological research laboratories, in addition to the
production facilities I mentioned earlier.
We have diagrammed what our sources reported about these mobile
facilities. Here you see both truck and rail car-mounted mobile factories.
The description our sources gave us of the technical features required by
such facilities are highly detailed and extremely accurate. As these
drawings based on their description show, we know what the fermenters look
like, we know what the tanks, pumps, compressors and other parts look
like. We know how they fit together. We know how they work. And we know a
great deal about the platforms on which they are mounted.
Click here to hear Powell's statements about mobile labs.
As shown in this diagram, these factories can be concealed easily,
either by moving ordinary-looking trucks and rail cars along Iraq’s
thousands of miles of highway or track, or by parking them in a garage or
warehouse or somewhere in Iraq’s extensive system of underground tunnels
and bunkers.
We know that Iraq has at lest seven of these mobile biological
agent factories. The truck-mounted ones have at least two or three trucks
each. That means that the mobile production facilities are very few,
perhaps 18 trucks that we know of — there may be more — but perhaps 18
that we know of. Just imagine trying to find 18 trucks among the thousands
and thousands of trucks that travel the roads of Iraq every single day.
It took the inspectors four years to find out that Iraq was making
biological agents. How long do you think it will take the inspectors to
find even one of these 18 trucks without Iraq coming forward, as they are
supposed to, with the information about these kinds of capabilities?
Ladies and gentlemen, these are sophisticated facilities. For
example, they can produce anthrax and botulinum toxin. In fact, they can
produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands
upon thousands of people. And dry agent of this type is the most lethal
form for human beings.
By 1998, U.N. experts agreed that the Iraqis had perfected drying
techniques for their biological weapons programs. Now, Iraq has
incorporated this drying expertise into these mobile production
facilities.
We know from Iraq’s past admissions that it has successfully
weaponized not only anthrax, but also other biological agents, including
botulinum toxin, aflatoxin and ricin.
But Iraq’s research efforts did not stop there. Saddam Hussein has
investigated dozens of biological agents causing diseases such as gas
gangrene, plague, typhus (ph), tetanus, cholera, camelpox and hemorrhagic
fever, and he also has the wherewithal to develop smallpox.
The Iraqi regime has also developed ways to disperse lethal
biological agents, widely and discriminately into the water supply, into
the air. For example, Iraq had a program to modify aerial fuel tanks for
Mirage jets. This video of an Iraqi test flight obtained by UNSCOM some
years ago shows an Iraqi F-1 Mirage jet aircraft. Note the spray coming
from beneath the Mirage; that is 2,000 liters of simulated anthrax that a
jet is spraying.
In 1995, an Iraqi military officer, Mujahid Sali Abdul Latif (ph),
told inspectors that Iraq intended the spray tanks to be mounted onto a
MiG-21 that had been converted into an unmanned aerial vehicle, or a UAV.
UAVs outfitted with spray tanks constitute an ideal method for launching a
terrorist attack using biological weapons.
Iraq admitted to producing four spray tanks. But to this day, it
has provided no credible evidence that they were destroyed, evidence that
was required by the international community.
There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons
and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the
ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can
cause massive death and destruction. If biological weapons seem too
terrible to contemplate, chemical weapons are equally chilling.
UNMOVIC already laid out much of this, and it is documented for all
of us to read in UNSCOM’s 1999 report on the subject.
Let me set the stage with three key points that all of us need to
keep in mind: First, Saddam Hussein has used these horrific weapons on
another country and on his own people. In fact, in the history of chemical
warfare, no country has had more battlefield experience with chemical
weapons since World War I than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Second, as with biological weapons, Saddam Hussein has never
accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with
mustard, 30,000 empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his
stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents. If we consider just
one category of missing weaponry — 6,500 bombs from the Iran-Iraq war —
UNMOVIC says the amount of chemical agent in them would be in the order of
1,000 tons. These quantities of chemical weapons are now unaccounted for.
Dr. Blix has quipped that, quote, “Mustard gas is not (inaudible)
You are supposed to know what you did with it.”
We believe Saddam Hussein knows what he did with it, and he has not
come clean with the international community. We have evidence these
weapons existed. What we don’t have is evidence from Iraq that they have
been destroyed or where they are. That is what we are still waiting for.
Third point, 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. UNSCOM also gained forensic evidence that Iraq
had produced VX and put it into weapons for delivery.
Yet, to this day, Iraq denies it had ever weaponized VX. And on
January 27, UNMOVIC told this council that it has information that
conflicts with the Iraqi account of its VX program.
We know that Iraq has embedded key portions of its illicit chemical
weapons infrastructure within its legitimate civilian industry. To all
outward appearances, even to experts, the infrastructure looks like an
ordinary civilian operation. Illicit and legitimate production can go on
simultaneously; or, on a dime, this dual-use infrastructure can turn from
clandestine to commercial and then back again.
These are chemical weapons.
For example, Iraq has rebuilt key portions of the Tariq (ph) state
establishment. Tariq (ph) includes facilities designed specifically for
Iraq’s chemical weapons program and employs key figures from past
programs.
That’s the production end of Saddam’s chemical weapons business.
What about the delivery end?
I’m going to show you a small part of a chemical complex called
al-Moussaid (ph), a site that Iraq has used for at least three years to
transship chemical weapons from production facilities out to the field.
Click here to learn more about Powell's statements concerning alleged
chemical weapons activity.
In May 2002, our satellites photographed the unusual activity in
this picture. Here we see cargo vehicles are again at this transshipment
point, and we can see that they are accompanied by a decontamination
vehicle associated with biological or chemical weapons activity.
What makes this picture significant is that we have a human source
who has corroborated that movement of chemical weapons occurred at this
site at that time. So it’s not just the photo, and it’s not an individual
seeing the photo. It’s the photo and then the knowledge of an individual
being brought together to make the case.
This photograph of the site taken two months later in July shows
not only the previous site, which is the figure in the middle at the top
with the bulldozer sign near it, it shows that this previous site, as well
as all of the other sites around the site, have been fully bulldozed and
graded. The topsoil has been removed. The Iraqis literally removed the
crust of the earth from large portions of this site in order to conceal
chemical weapons evidence that would be there from years of chemical
weapons activity.
Click here to learn more about the alleged bulldozing of chemical complex
evidence.
To support its deadly biological and chemical weapons programs,
Iraq procures needed items from around the world using an extensive
clandestine network. What we know comes largely from intercepted
communications and human sources who are in a position to know the facts.
Iraq’s procurement efforts include equipment that can filter and
separate micro-organisms and toxins involved in biological weapons,
equipment that can be used to concentrate the agent, growth media that can
be used to continue producing anthrax and botulinum toxin, sterilization
equipment for laboratories, glass-lined reactors and specialty pumps that
can handle corrosive chemical weapons agents and precursors, large amounts
of vinyl chloride, a precursor for nerve and blister agents and other
chemicals such as sodium sulfide, an important mustard agent precursor.
Now, of course, Iraq will argue that these items can also be used
for legitimate purposes. But if that is true, why do we have to learn
about them by intercepting communications and risking the lives of human
agents? With Iraq’s well documented history on biological and chemical
weapons, why should any of us give Iraq the benefit of the doubt? I don’t,
and I don’t think you will either after you hear this next intercept.
Just a few weeks ago, we intercepted communications between two
commanders in Iraq’s Second Republican Guard Corps. One commander is going
to be giving an instruction to the other. You will hear as this unfolds
that what he wants to communicate to the other guy, he wants to make sure
the other guy hears clearly, to the point of repeating it so that it gets
written down and completely understood. Listen.
(BEGIN AUDIO TAPE)
(Speaking in Foreign Language.)
(END AUDIO TAPE)
Click here to hear the intercepted communication.
Let’s review a few selected items of this conversation. Two
officers talking to each other on the radio want to make sure that nothing
is misunderstood:
“Remove. Remove.”
The expression, the expression, “I got it.”
“Nerve agents. Nerve agents. Wherever it comes up.”
“Got it.”
“Wherever it comes up.”
“In the wireless instructions, in the instructions.”
“Correction. No. In the wireless instructions.”
“Wireless. I got it.”
Why does he repeat it that way? Why is he so forceful in making
sure this is understood? And why did he focus on wireless instructions?
Because the senior officer is concerned that somebody might be listening.
Well, somebody was.
“Nerve agents. Stop talking about it. They are listening to us.
Don’t give any evidence that we have these horrible agents.”
Well, we know that they do. And this kind of conversation confirms
it. Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of
between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent
to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.
Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein
to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory,
an area nearly 5 times the size of Manhattan.
Let me remind you that, of the 122 millimeter chemical warheads,
that the U.N. inspectors found recently, this discovery could very well
be, as has been noted, the tip of the submerged iceberg. The question
before us, all my friends, is when will we see the rest of the submerged
iceberg?
Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein has used such
weapons. And Saddam Hussein has no compunction about using them again,
against his neighbors and against his own people.
And we have sources who tell us that he recently has authorized his
field commanders to use them. He wouldn’t be passing out the orders if he
didn’t have the weapons or the intent to use them.
We also have sources who tell us that, since the 1980s, Saddam’s
regime has been experimenting on human beings to perfect its biological or
chemical weapons.
A source said that 1,600 death row prisoners were transferred in
1995 to a special unit for such experiments. An eyewitness saw prisoners
tied down to beds, experiments conducted on them, blood oozing around the
victim’s mouths and autopsies performed to confirm the effects on the
prisoners. Saddam Hussein’s humanity — inhumanity has no limits.
Let me turn now to nuclear weapons. We have no indication that
Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program.
On the contrary, we have more than a decade of proof that he
remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons.
To fully appreciate the challenge that we face today, remember
that, 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.
But based on defector information in May of 1991, Saddam Hussein’s
lie was exposed. In truth, Saddam Hussein had a massive clandestine
nuclear weapons program that covered several different techniques to
enrich uranium, including electromagnetic isotope separation, gas
centrifuge, and gas diffusion. We estimate that this elicit program cost
the Iraqis several billion dollars.
Nonetheless, Iraq continued to tell the IAEA that it had no nuclear
weapons program. If Saddam had not been stopped, Iraq could have produced
a nuclear bomb by 1993, years earlier than most worse-case assessments
that had been made before the war.
In 1995, as a result of another defector, we find out that, after
his invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein had initiated a crash program to
build a crude nuclear weapon in violation of Iraq’s U.N. obligations.
Saddam Hussein already possesses two out of the three key
components needed to build a nuclear bomb. He has a cadre of nuclear
scientists with the expertise, and he has a bomb design.
Since 1998, his efforts to reconstitute his nuclear program have
been focused on acquiring the third and last component, sufficient fissile
material to produce a nuclear explosion. To make the fissile material, he
needs to develop an ability to enrich uranium.
Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. He
is so determined that he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire
high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries, even after
inspections resumed.
These tubes are controlled by the Nuclear Suppliers Group precisely
because they can be used as centrifuges for enriching uranium. By now,
just about everyone has heard of these tubes, and we all know that there
are differences of opinion. There is controversy about what these tubes
are for.
Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in
centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Other experts, and the Iraqis
themselves, argue that they are really to produce the rocket bodies for a
conventional weapon, a multiple rocket launcher.
Let me tell you what is not controversial about these tubes. First,
all the experts who have analyzed the tubes in our possession agree that
they can be adapted for centrifuge use. Second, Iraq had no business
buying them for any purpose. They are banned for Iraq.
I am no expert on centrifuge tubes, but just as an old Army
trooper, I can tell you a couple of things: First, it strikes me as quite
odd that these tubes are manufactured to a tolerance that far exceeds U.S.
requirements for comparable rockets.
Maybe Iraqis just manufacture their conventional weapons to a
higher standard than we do, but I don’t think so.
Second, we actually have examined tubes from several different
batches that were seized clandestinely before they reached Baghdad. What
we notice in these different batches is a progression to higher and higher
levels of specification, including, in the latest batch, an anodized
coating on extremely smooth inner and outer surfaces. Why would they
continue refining the specifications, go to all that trouble for something
that, if it was a rocket, would soon be blown into shrapnel when it went
off?
The high tolerance aluminum tubes are only part of the story. We
also have intelligence from multiple sources that Iraq is attempting to
acquire magnets and high-speed balancing machines; both items can be used
in a gas centrifuge program to enrich uranium.
In 1999 and 2000, Iraqi officials negotiated with firms in Romania,
India, Russia and Slovenia for the purchase of a magnet production plant.
Iraq wanted the plant to produce magnets weighing 20 to 30 grams. That’s
the same weight as the magnets used in Iraq’s gas centrifuge program
before the Gulf War. This incident linked with the tubes is another
indicator of Iraq’s attempt to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.
Intercepted communications from mid-2000 through last summer show
that Iraq front companies sought to buy machines that can be used to
balance gas centrifuge rotors. One of these companies also had been
involved in a failed effort in 2001 to smuggle aluminum tubes into Iraq.
People will continue to debate this issue, but there is no doubt in
my mind, these elicit procurement efforts show that Saddam Hussein is very
much focused on putting in place the key missing piece from his nuclear
weapons program, the ability to produce fissile material. He also has been
busy trying to maintain the other key parts of his nuclear program,
particularly his cadre of key nuclear scientists.
It is noteworthy that, over the last 18 months, Saddam Hussein has
paid increasing personal attention to Iraqi’s top nuclear scientists, a
group that the governmental-controlled press calls openly, his nuclear
mujahedeen. He regularly exhorts them and praises their progress. Progress
toward what end?
Long ago, the Security Council, this council, required Iraq to halt
all nuclear activities of any kind.
Let me talk now about the systems Iraq is developing to deliver
weapons of mass destruction, in particular Iraq’s ballistic missiles and
unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs.
First, missiles. We all remember that before the Gulf War Saddam
Hussein’s goal was missiles that flew not just hundreds, but thousands of
kilometers. He wanted to strike not only his neighbors, but also nations
far beyond his borders.
While inspectors destroyed most of the prohibited ballistic
missiles, numerous intelligence reports over the past decade, from sources
inside Iraq, indicate that Saddam Hussein retains a covert force of up to
a few dozen Scud variant ballistic missiles. These are missiles with a
range of 650 to 900 kilometers.
We know from intelligence and Iraq’s own admissions that Iraq’s
alleged permitted ballistic missiles, the al-Samud II (ph) and the al-
Fatah (ph), violate the 150-kilometer limit established by this council in
Resolution 687. These are prohibited systems.
UNMOVIC has also reported that Iraq has illegally important 380
SA-2 (ph) rocket engines. These are likely for use in the al-Samud II
(ph). Their import was illegal on three counts. Resolution 687 prohibited
all military shipments into Iraq. UNSCOM specifically prohibited use of
these engines in surface-to-surface missiles. And finally, as we have just
noted, they are for a system that exceeds the 150-kilometer range limit.
Worst of all, some of these engines were acquired as late as
December — after this council passed Resolution 1441.
What I want you to know today is that Iraq has programs that are
intended to produce ballistic missiles that fly of 1,000 kilometers. One
program is pursuing a liquid fuel missile that would be able to fly more
than 1,200 kilometers. And you can see from this map, as well as I can,
who will be in danger of these missiles.
As part of this effort, another little piece of evidence, Iraq has
built an engine test stand that is larger than anything it has ever had.
Notice the dramatic difference in size between the test stand on the left,
the old one, and the new one on the right. Note the large exhaust vent.
This is where the flame from the engine comes out. The exhaust on the
right test stand is five times longer than the one on the left. The one on
the left was used for short-range missile. The one on the right is clearly
intended for long-range missiles that can fly 1,200 kilometers. This
photograph was taken in April of 2002. Since then, the test stand has been
finished and a roof has been put over it so it will be harder for
satellites to see what’s going on underneath the test stand.
Saddam Hussein’s intentions have never changed. He is not
developing the missiles for self-defense. These are missiles that Iraq
wants in order to project power, to threaten, and to deliver chemical,
biological and, if we let him, nuclear warheads.
Now, unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs.
Iraq has been working on a variety of UAVs for more than a decade.
This is just illustrative of what a UAV would look like. This effort has
included attempts to modify for unmanned flight the MiG-21 (ph) and with
greater success an aircraft called the L-29 (ph). However, Iraq is now
concentrating not on these airplanes, but on developing and testing
smaller UAVs, such as this.
UAVs are well suited for dispensing chemical and biological
weapons.
There is ample evidence that Iraq has dedicated much effort to
developing and testing spray devices that could be adapted for UAVs. And
of the little that Saddam Hussein told us about UAVs, he has not told the
truth. One of these lies is graphically and indisputably demonstrated by
intelligence we collected on June 27, last year.
According to Iraq’s December 7 declaration, its UAVs have a range
of only 80 kilometers. But we detected one of Iraq’s newest UAVs in a test
flight that went 500 kilometers nonstop on autopilot in the race track
pattern depicted here.
Not only is this test well in excess of the 150 kilometers that the
United Nations permits, the test was left out of Iraq’s December 7th
declaration. The UAV was flown around and around and around in a circle.
And so, that its 80 kilometer limit really was 500 kilometers unrefueled
and on autopilot, violative of all of its obligations under 1441.
The linkages over the past 10 years between Iraq’s UAV program and
biological and chemical warfare agents are of deep concern to us. Iraq
could use these small UAVs which have a wingspan of only a few meters to
deliver biological agents to its neighbors or if transported, to other
countries, including the United States.
My friends, the information I have presented to you about these
terrible weapons and about Iraq’s continued flaunting of its obligations
under Security Council Resolution 1441 links to a subject I now want to
spend a little bit of time on. And that has to do with terrorism.
Our concern is not just about these elicit weapons. It’s the way
that these elicit weapons can be connected to terrorists and terrorist
organizations that have no compunction about using such devices against
innocent people around the world.
Iraq and terrorism go back decades. Baghdad trains Palestine
Liberation Front members in small arms and explosives. Saddam uses the
Arab Liberation Front to funnel money to the families of Palestinian
suicide bombers in order to prolong the Intifada. And it’s no secret that
Saddam’s own intelligence service was involved in dozens of attacks or
attempted assassinations in the 1990s.
But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially
much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaida terrorist network,
a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods
of murder. 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.
Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war
more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a
terrorist training camp. One of his specialities and one of the
specialties of this camp is poisons. When our coalition ousted the
Taliban, the Zarqaqi network helped establish another poison and explosive
training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.
Going back to the early and mid-1990s, when bin Laden was based in
Sudan, an Al Qaida source tells us that Saddam and bin Laden reached an
understanding that Al Qaida would no longer support activities against
Baghdad. Early Al Qaida ties were forged by secret, high-level
intelligence service contacts with Al Qaida, secret Iraqi intelligence
high-level contacts with Al Qaida.
We know members of both organizations met repeatedly and have met
at least eight times at very senior levels since the early 1990s. In 1996,
a foreign security service tells us, that bin Laden met with a senior
Iraqi intelligence official in Khartoum, and later met the director of the
Iraqi intelligence service.
Saddam became more interested as he saw Al Qaida’s appalling
attacks. A detained Al Qaida member tells us that Saddam was more willing
to assist Al Qaida after the 1998 bombings of our embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania. Saddam was also impressed by Al Qaida’s attacks on the USS Cole
in Yemen in October 2000.
Iraqis continued to visit bin Laden in his new home in Afghanistan.
A senior defector, one of Saddam’s former intelligence chiefs in Europe,
says Saddam sent his agents to Afghanistan sometime in the mid-1990s to
provide training to Al Qaida members on document forgery.
From the late 1990s until 2001, the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan
played the role of liaison to the Al Qaida organization.
Some believe, some claim these contacts do not amount to much. They
say Saddam Hussein’s secular tyranny and Al Qaida’s religious tyranny do
not mix. I am not comforted by this thought. Ambition and hatred are
enough to bring Iraq and Al Qaida together, enough so Al Qaida could learn
how to build more sophisticated bombs and learn how to forge documents,
and enough so that Al Qaida could turn to Iraq for help in acquiring
expertise on weapons of mass destruction.
And the record of Saddam Hussein’s cooperation with other Islamist
terrorist organizations is clear. Hamas, for example, opened an office in
Baghdad in 1999, and Iraq has hosted conferences attended by Palestine
Islamic Jihad. These groups are at the forefront of sponsoring suicide
attacks against Israel.
Al Qaida continues to have a deep interest in acquiring weapons of
mass destruction. As with the story of Zarqawi and his network, I can
trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided
training in these weapons to Al Qaida. Fortunately, this operative is now
detained, and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now as he,
himself, described it.
This senior Al Qaida terrorist was responsible for one of Al
Qaida’s training camps in Afghanistan.
His information comes first-hand from his personal involvement at
senior levels of Al Qaida. He says bin Laden and his top deputy in
Afghanistan, deceased Al Qaida leader Muhammad Atif (ph), did not believe
that Al Qaida labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to manufacture these
chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere else. They had
to look outside of Afghanistan for help. Where did they go? Where did they
look? They went to Iraq.
The support that (inaudible) describes included Iraq offering
chemical or biological weapons training for two Al Qaida associates
beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant known as Abu Abdula
Al-Iraqi (ph) had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997 and 2000
for help in acquiring poisons and gases. Abdula Al-Iraqi (ph)
characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as
successful.
As I said at the outset, none of this should come as a surprise to
any of us. Terrorism has been a tool used by Saddam for decades. Saddam
was a supporter of terrorism long before these terrorist networks had a
name. And this support continues. The nexus of poisons and terror is new.
The nexus of Iraq and terror is old. The combination is lethal.
With this track record, Iraqi denials of supporting terrorism take
the place alongside the other Iraqi denials of weapons of mass
destruction. It is all a web of lies.
When we confront a regime that harbors ambitions for regional
domination, hides weapons of mass destruction and provides haven and
active support for terrorists, we are not confronting the past, we are
confronting the present. And unless we act, we are confronting an even
more frightening future.
My friends, this has been a long and a detailed presentation. And I
thank you for your patience. But there is one more subject that I would
like to touch on briefly. And it should be a subject of deep and
continuing concern to this council, Saddam Hussein’s violations of human
rights.
Underlying all that I have said, underlying all the facts and the
patterns of behavior that I have identified as Saddam Hussein’s contempt
for the will of this council, his contempt for the truth and most damning
of all, his utter contempt for human life. Saddam Hussein’s use of mustard
and nerve gas against the Kurds in 1988 was one of the 20th century’s most
horrible atrocities; 5,000 men, women and children died.
His campaign against the Kurds from 1987 to ’89 included mass
summary executions, disappearances, arbitrary jailing, ethnic cleansing
and the destruction of some 2,000 villages. He has also conducted ethnic
cleansing against the Shi’a Iraqis and the Marsh Arabs whose culture has
flourished for more than a millennium. Saddam Hussein’s police state
ruthlessly eliminates anyone who dares to dissent. Iraq has more forced
disappearance cases than any other country, tens of thousands of people
reported missing in the past decade.
Nothing points more clearly to Saddam Hussein’s dangerous
intentions and the threat he poses to all of us than his calculated
cruelty to his own citizens and to his neighbors. Clearly, Saddam Hussein
and his regime will stop at nothing until something stops him.
For more than 20 years, by word and by deed Saddam Hussein has
pursued his ambition to dominate Iraq and the broader Middle East using
the only means he knows, intimidation, coercion and annihilation of all
those who might stand in his way. For Saddam Hussein, possession of the
world’s most deadly weapons is the ultimate trump card, the one he most
hold to fulfill his ambition.
We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of
mass destruction; he’s determined to make more. Given Saddam Hussein’s
history of aggression, given what we know of his grandiose plans, given
what we know of his terrorist associations and given his determination to
exact revenge on those who oppose him, should we take the risk that he
will not some day use these weapons at a time and the place and in the
manner of his choosing at a time when the world is in a much weaker
position to respond?
The United States will not and cannot run that risk to the American
people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass
destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a
post-September 11th world.
My colleagues, over three months ago this council recognized that
Iraq continued to pose a threat to international peace and security, and
that Iraq had been and remained in material breach of its disarmament
obligations. Today Iraq still poses a threat and Iraq still remains in
material breach.
Indeed, by its failure to seize on its one last opportunity to come
clean and disarm, Iraq has put itself in deeper material breach and closer
to the day when it will face serious consequences for its continued
defiance of this council.
My colleagues, we have an obligation to our citizens, we have an
obligation to this body to see that our resolutions are complied with. We
wrote 1441 not in order to go to war, we wrote 1441 to try to preserve the
peace. We wrote 1441 to give Iraq one last chance. Iraq is not so far
taking that one last chance.
We must not shrink from whatever is ahead of us. We must not fail
in our duty and our responsibility to the citizens of the countries that
are represented by this body.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Powell: Iraq data 'deeply troubling'
Powell fails to sway U.N. skeptics
N. Korea reactivates nuke facilities
NASA downplays foam theory
U.S. ordered to freeze executions
MSNBC Cover Page
MSNBC READERS' TOP 10
Would you recommend this story to other readers?
not at all 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 highly
MSNBC is optimized for
• Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Windows Media Player • MSNBC Terms,
Conditions and Privacy © 2003
Cover | News | Business | Sports | Local News | Health | Technology
& Science | Living | Travel
TV News | Opinions | Weather | Comics
InfoCenter | Newsletters | Search | Help | News Tools | Jobs | Write
Us | Terms & Conditions | Privacy
MSN - More Useful Everyday
MSN Home | My MSN | Hotmail | Search | Shopping
| Money | People & Chat
©2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Terms of Use
Advertise Truste Approved Privacy Statement GetNetWise
America At War
• Powell describes Iraq's 'web of lies'
• Powell fails to sway U.N. skeptics
• Iraq sees Powell as seeking a pretext
• 'Firsthand' data, but whose hand?
News
• Powell: Iraq data 'deeply troubling'
• Powell fails to sway U.N. skeptics
• N. Korea reactivates nuke facilities
• NASA downplays foam theory
MSNBC's Top News
• Powell: Iraq data 'deeply troubling'
• NASA downplays foam theory
• N. Korea reactivates nuke facilities
• U.S. service sector keeps growing
(
geocities.com/yaoleechenh/s1/m/news) (
geocities.com/yaoleechenh/s1/m) (
geocities.com/yaoleechenh/s1) (
geocities.com/yaoleechenh)