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Ex-Secretary of State Powell slams storm effort
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Colin Powell, the former U.S. secretary of state seen as a potential leader for Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts, has joined the chorus of Americans criticizing the disaster response at all levels of government.
Colin Powell, the former U.S. secretary of state seen as a potential leader for Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts, has joined the chorus of Americans criticizing the disaster response at all levels of government.
"There have been a lot of failures at a lot of levels -- local, state and federal," Powell said in an ABC interview for the "20/20" program to be broadcast on Friday evening.
American political figures from both major parties have assailed the slow response to the hurricane's assault last week on the U.S. Gulf Coast, which devastated New Orleans and killed hundreds, possibly thousands, in the region.
"There was more than enough warning over time about the dangers to New Orleans. Not enough was done. I don't think advantage was taken of the time that was available to us, and I just don't know why," Powell said in excerpts on ABC's Web site.
He said he did not think that race was a factor in the slow response, but that many of those unable to leave New Orleans in time were trapped by poverty which disproportionately affects blacks.
Powell was the highest-ranking black official during U.S.
President George W. Bush's first term and chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991
Gulf War. He is among various names mentioned in Washington as a potential "hurricane czar" to take over the long-term recovery effort.
Two senators from Bush's Republican party on Thursday proposed that such a job be created. White House officials have not ruled out the option, saying it is among several being discussed.
Some black leaders, including Democrats in Congress, have charged that racism contributed to the misery of New Orleans' predominantly black storm victims.
"I don't think it's racism, I think it's economic," Powell said. "But poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans in this country. And it happened because they were poor."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050909/pl_nm/powell_dc
WASHINGTON - Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a television interview to be broadcast today that his 2003 speech to the United Nations, in which he gave a detailed description of Iraqi weapons programs that turned out not to exist, was "painful" for him personally and would be a permanent "blot" on his record.
"I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world," Powell told Barbara Walters of ABC News.
"It was painful. It's painful now," Powell said.
Asked how he felt upon learning that he had been misled about the accuracy of intelligence on which he relied, Powell said, "terrible."
He added that it was "devastating" to learn later that some intelligence agents knew the information he had was unreliable but did not speak up.
Powell also implied that the United States did not go to war in Iraq with sufficient troops to secure the country and failed to keep sufficient Iraqi forces to help stabilize the nation.
"What we didn't do in the immediate aftermath of the war was to impose our will on the whole country with enough troops of our own, with enough troops from coalition forces or by re-creating the Iraqi forces, armed forces, more quickly than we are doing now," he said.
But with Iraq still violent and plagued by sectarian conflict, the U.S. has "little choice but to keep investing in the Iraqi armed forces and to do everything we can to increase their size and their capability and their strength," he said.
Asked by Walters, "When the president made the decision to go to war, you were for it?" Powell said, "Yes."
Asked about editorials asserting that he put loyalty "ahead of leadership," he said: "Well, loyalty is a trait that I value, and yes, I am loyal. And there are some who say, 'Well, you shouldn't have supported it, you should have resigned.' But I'm glad that Saddam Hussein is gone."
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3345970
American political figures from both major parties have assailed the slow response to the hurricane's assault last week on the U.S. Gulf Coast, which devastated New Orleans and killed hundreds, possibly thousands, in the region.
"There was more than enough warning over time about the dangers to New Orleans. Not enough was done. I don't think advantage was taken of the time that was available to us, and I just don't know why," Powell said in excerpts on ABC's Web site.
He said he did not think that race was a factor in the slow response, but that many of those unable to leave New Orleans in time were trapped by poverty which disproportionately affects blacks.
Powell was the highest-ranking black official during U.S.
President George W. Bush's first term and chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991
Gulf War. He is among various names mentioned in Washington as a potential "hurricane czar" to take over the long-term recovery effort.
Two senators from Bush's Republican party on Thursday proposed that such a job be created. White House officials have not ruled out the option, saying it is among several being discussed.
Some black leaders, including Democrats in Congress, have charged that racism contributed to the misery of New Orleans' predominantly black storm victims.
"I don't think it's racism, I think it's economic," Powell said. "But poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans in this country. And it happened because they were poor."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050909/pl_nm/powell_dc
WASHINGTON - Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a television interview to be broadcast today that his 2003 speech to the United Nations, in which he gave a detailed description of Iraqi weapons programs that turned out not to exist, was "painful" for him personally and would be a permanent "blot" on his record.
"I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world," Powell told Barbara Walters of ABC News.
"It was painful. It's painful now," Powell said.
Asked how he felt upon learning that he had been misled about the accuracy of intelligence on which he relied, Powell said, "terrible."
He added that it was "devastating" to learn later that some intelligence agents knew the information he had was unreliable but did not speak up.
Powell also implied that the United States did not go to war in Iraq with sufficient troops to secure the country and failed to keep sufficient Iraqi forces to help stabilize the nation.
"What we didn't do in the immediate aftermath of the war was to impose our will on the whole country with enough troops of our own, with enough troops from coalition forces or by re-creating the Iraqi forces, armed forces, more quickly than we are doing now," he said.
But with Iraq still violent and plagued by sectarian conflict, the U.S. has "little choice but to keep investing in the Iraqi armed forces and to do everything we can to increase their size and their capability and their strength," he said.
Asked by Walters, "When the president made the decision to go to war, you were for it?" Powell said, "Yes."
Asked about editorials asserting that he put loyalty "ahead of leadership," he said: "Well, loyalty is a trait that I value, and yes, I am loyal. And there are some who say, 'Well, you shouldn't have supported it, you should have resigned.' But I'm glad that Saddam Hussein is gone."
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3345970
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"It's a blot" on my record, Powell said in an interview with ABC News. "I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and it will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now."
http://www.albawaba.com/en/news/188745
Mr Powell said he could not understand why more preparations had not been made, in an interview to be broadcast on US television on Friday.
A new opinion poll by the Pew Research Center suggests two-thirds of Americans think President George Bush could have done more in the disaster aftermath.
US Under-Secretary of State Karen Hughes backed the president's response.
She said allegations that he was not doing all he could to help were heartbreaking to him.
'Blinding obvious'
American political figures in both the Republican and Democrat parties have criticised the slow response to the disaster.
The BBC's Justin Webb in Washington says Mr Powell's views will be listened to with particular interest - as a highly respected figure and a prominent black American.
Mr Powell told ABC there had been "a lot of failures at a lot of levels - local, state and federal".
"There was more than enough warning over time about the dangers to New Orleans. Not enough was done," he said.
The Pew Research Center poll indicated that two-thirds of the African-Americans questioned believed the government reaction would have been faster if most of those affected had been white.
But Mr Powell said so many African-Americans were left unprotected because they were poor, rather than because they were black.
It "should have been a blinding flash of the obvious... that when you order a mandatory evacuation, you can't expect everybody to evacuate on their own", he said.
Mr Powell's interview comes amid a growing partisan rift over the form of an inquiry into the government response.
Democratic leaders said they would refuse to appoint members to a committee that Republican leaders plan to create.
Republicans said they would aim to go ahead, despite the threatened boycott. One accused the Democrats of seeking to score political points in the aftermath of the disaster.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4229238.stm
"It is a blot on my record," Powell said in an interview with ABC TV news, to be broadcast Friday, September9 , Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.
In his February 2003 presentation to the UN Security Council, Powell forcibly made the case for the US invasion of the Arab country, offering "proof" that the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Powell's presentation included satellite photos of trucks that the former diplomat identified as mobile bio-weapons laboratories.
But after the US invasion-turned-occupation of Iraq, US weapons inspectors found no traces of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons in the Arab country.
"I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and (it) will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now."
Misinformed
Before giving his UN statement on Iraq, Powell spent five days at the CIA headquarters studying intelligence reports on the alleged Iraqi WMDs, most – if not all -- of which turned out to be false.
Powell said he felt "terrible" at being misinformed. However, he did not blame CIA director George Tenet on false information.
"Mr. Tenet did not sit there for five days with me misleading me," Powell said.
"He believed what he was giving to me was accurate."
The former US official, however, said some members of the US intelligence community "knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up."
"These are not senior people, but these are people who were aware that some of these resources should not be considered reliable," he said.
"I was enormously disappointed."
In April2004 , Powell acknowledged that the pre-war intelligence he gave the United Nations to justify the invasion-turned occupation of Iraq was not "solid", heaping the blame on the intelligence community.
The Guardian had said that the doubts had already emerged at a private meeting between Powell and his British counterpart Jack Straw shortly before Powell’s presentation.
At a private meeting with Powell at the Waldorf hotel in New York, Straw expressed concern that the WMDs claims parroted by the Bush administration could not be proved.
No Links
The former US top diplomat also said that he had "never seen evidence to suggest" a connection between the9 / 11terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein.
Powell downplayed his reported difference with Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
He maintained that he was on good terms with US President George W Bush.
"There are some who say, 'well, you shouldn't have supported (the war), you should have resigned', but I'm glad that Saddam Hussein is gone," Powell said.
Powell called Cheney, Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz “fucking crazies” during a phone conversation with his British counterpart Jack Straw, the Guardian reported on September12 .
Concern
The former US diplomat expressed concern over a possible sectarian strife in post-Saddam Iraq, threatening to divide the Arab country.
"A way has to be found for the Sunnis to be brought into the political process. You cannot let ... Iraq devolve into a mini-state in the north, a larger mini-state in the south, and sort of nothing in the middle," he said.
"The mission we set for ourselves at the beginning, and which we told the Iraqis that we were going to do, is to keep this as a single state. And that's the challenge that we have now."
Iraqi Sunnis have opposed to the new Iraqi charter drafted by the ruling Shiite and Kurdish coalition.
Sunnis want the text to be amended to a country with “one capital, one province, decentralized governorates and a local administration.”
Iraqi MPs concluded late August in a special session on the final text of the draft constitution without a vote due to the Sunni opposition, leaving the final decision for the public in an Oct. 15 referendum.
http://islamonline.net/English/News/2005-09/09/article06.shtml