"Dave Hall" wrote in message
...


Proceeding to undermine the fight against terrorism, especially when
you have little to no credible information to base your opposition on,
is analogous to being a traitor. How can you be a good citizen if you
oppose the policies of your own country?

Removing dog poop from your shoes may not remove the smell. Fill a shallow
box with baking soda and place the shoes in it for a couple of days. While
waiting for the smell to dissipate, read what left-wing puppet Powell has to
say:

Powell Admits No Hard Proof in Linking Iraq to Al Qaeda

By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS



WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell conceded Thursday
that despite his assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no
"smoking gun" proof of a link between the government of Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein and terrorists of Al Qaeda.



"I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection," Mr.
Powell said, in response to a question at a news conference. "But I think
the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to
consider them at the time that we did."



Mr. Powell's remarks on Thursday were a stark admission that there is no
definitive evidence to back up administration statements and insinuations
that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda, the acknowledged authors of the
Sept. 11 attacks. Although President Bush finally acknowledged in September
that there was no known connection between Mr. Hussein and the attacks, the
impression of a link in the public mind has become widely accepted - and
something administration officials have done little to discourage.



Mr. Powell offered a vigorous defense of his Feb. 5 presentation before the
Security Council, in which he voiced the administration's most detailed case
to date for war with Iraq. After studying intelligence data, he said that a
"sinister nexus" existed "between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a
nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of
murder."



Without any additional qualifiers, Mr. Powell continued, "Iraq today harbors
a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, an associate
and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants."



He added, "Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with Al Qaeda. These
denials are simply not credible."



On Thursday, Mr. Powell dismissed second-guessing and said that Mr. Bush had
acted after giving Mr. Hussein 12 years to come into compliance with the
international community.



"The president decided he had to act because he believed that whatever the
size of the stockpile, whatever one might think about it, he believed that
the region was in danger, America was in danger and he would act," he said.
"And he did act."



In a rare, wide-ranging meeting with reporters, Mr. Powell voiced some
optimism on several other issues that have bedeviled the administration,
including North Korea and Sudan, while expressing dismay about the Middle
East and Haiti.



But mostly, the secretary, appearing vigorous and in good spirits three
weeks after undergoing surgery for prostate cancer, defended his
justification for the war in Iraq. He said he had been fully aware that "the
whole world would be watching," as he painstakingly made the case that the
government of Saddam Hussein presented an imminent threat to the United
States and its interests.



The immediacy of the danger was at the core of debates in the United Nations
over how to proceed against Mr. Hussein. A report released Thursday by the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonpartisan Washington
research center, concluded that Iraq's weapons programs constituted a
long-term threat that should not have been ignored. But it also said the
programs did not "pose an immediate threat to the United States, to the
region or to global security."



Mr. Powell's United Nations presentation - complete with audiotapes and
satellite photographs - asserted that "leaving Saddam Hussein in possession
of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an
option." The secretary said he had spent time with experts at the Central
Intelligence Agency studying reports. "Anything that we did not feel was
solid and multisourced, we did not use in that speech," he said Thursday.



He said that Mr. Hussein had used prohibited weapons in the past - including
nerve gas attacks against Iran and Iraqi Kurds - and said that even if there
were no actual weapons at hand, there was every indication he would
reconstitute them once the international community lost interest.



"In terms of intention, he always had it," Mr. Powell said. "What he was
waiting to do is see if he could break the will of the international
community, get rid of any potential future inspections, and get back to his
intentions, which were to have weapons of mass destruction."



The administration has quietly withdrawn a 400-member team of American
weapons inspectors who were charged with finding chemical or biological
weapons stockpiles or laboratories, officials said this week. The team was
part of the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group, which has not turned up such
weapons or active programs, the officials said.



The Carnegie report challenged the possibility that Mr. Hussein could have
destroyed the weapons, hidden them or shipped them out of the country.
Officials had alleged that Iraq held amounts so huge - hundreds of tons of
chemical and biological weapons, dozens of Scud missiles - that such moves
would have been detected by the United States, the report said.



The Washington Post this week reported that Iraq had apparently preserved
its ability to produce missiles, biological agents and other illicit weapons
through the decade-long period of international sanctions after the Persian
Gulf war, but that their development had apparently been limited to the
planning stage.



On North Korea, he said he had received "encouraging signals" from his Asian
counterparts that the North might be close to agreeing to another round of
six-party talks. But he said the administration would not yield on its
insistence that the North first state its willingness to bring its nuclear
program to a verifiable end.



Mr. Powell was equally hopeful about a peace agreement to end a grueling
civil war in Sudan. "The key here is that after 20 years of most terrible
war, Sudanese leaders have come together and are just one or two steps short
of having a comprehensive peace agreement," he said.



On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said the United States and the three
other nations promoting peace talks had expected more movement ending
hostilities and establishing a Palestinian state. "They are as disturbed as
I am that we haven't seen the kind of progress that we had hoped for," he
said.



Turning to Haiti, where a decade ago Mr. Powell took part in a delegation
that sought to persuade plotters in a military coup to step down, he voiced
frustration at the failure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to reach
agreement with his political foes. Violence has flared in recent days as
anti-Aristide protesters demanded an end to a political deadlock that has
paralyzed the government. The country's Catholic Bishops Conference has
tried to broker a new agreement.