Powell Admits to Feeding Fake Report to UN on Iraq

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By Anwar Iqbal

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Colin Powell has admitted that the information he used in his UN Security Council address for justifying invasion of Iraq was false.

The admission, in a dramatic interview to NBC television, has assumed an added importance because of his aide's attempt to cut him off. Mr Powell, however, brushed off his deputy press secretary, Emily Miller, and went on to acknowledge that the CIA and other US agencies had received false information from their sources.

Mr Powell, who was in Jordan during the interview, was heard saying that NBC anchorman Tim Russert was "still asking me questions," to which a woman's voice answered, "No, he's not".

Mr Powell, still off camera, said: "Tim, I'm sorry, I lost you," and added: "Emily, get out of the way." Mr Russert, slightly irate, responded: "I think that was one of your staff, Mr Secretary. I don't think that's appropriate." After a few seconds the camera returned to Mr Powell and he finished the interview.

Mr Powell said the CIA and other US agencies were sometimes deliberately misled about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the war. The comments represented the first public admission from a senior US official that Washington had fed unchecked and unreliable information to the international community about Saddam Hussein's suspected arsenal of chemical and biological weapons.

"It turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading," Mr Powell said. "For that I am disappointed, and I regret it."

Mr Powell told the Security Council in Feb 2003 that the US administration had credible evidence that Iraq was making weapons of mass destruction. He insisted that the US government had "first-hand descriptions" of mobile biological weapons factories that he said presented a threat to international security.

Mr Powell disclosed that the information came from an Iraqi defector, a chemical engineer who supervised one of these mobile facilities, and corroborated by "other sources".

The speech, however, failed to persuade Security Council members to authorize the US-led military action against Iraq. But on Sunday, Mr Powell, acknowledged: "Unfortunately, that multiple sourcing over time has turned out to be not accurate. So I'm deeply disappointed."

The Iraqi defector in question has not been publicly identified. Mr Powell said he was "very concerned" about the fact that he was fed misleading information but insisted that this UN speech was based on "the best information that the CIA made available to me".

Report: Rumsfeld Pre-Approved Abuses

By J.R. Engeriser, Milwaukee Urban Star

Today The New Yorker released information connecting top-level U.S. officials, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to a secret operation that "encouraged physical coercion and the sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners."

Known as Copper Green, among other code words, the Special-Access Program allowed for practices far more severe than Geneva Convention provisions, according to statements from intelligence officials in a report by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour M. Hersh.

The Special-Access Program was initiated in 2001 in the early stages of the hunt for al-Qaida in Afghanistan, and expanded by Rumsfeld to the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad last year. National security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, approved the program and President Bush knew of its existence.

The abuses that occurred under this operation received world attention earlier this month when photographs depicting physical and sexual mistreatment were leaked to the public. According to the report, photographs were taken as part of the operation to scare prisoners into spying on associates for fear that the embarrassing images would be disseminated. Similar pictures that were obtained by Rumsfeld and Pentagon officials in January via the Army’s Criminal Investigations Division went unreviewed because “they thought what was in there was permitted under the rules of engagement,” an intelligence source said. Some more severe methods that were not specifically approved were encouraged and uncontrolled. “The rules are ‘Grab whom you must. Do what you want.’" said the source.

The information comes just six days after an Islamist website posted a video portraying the beheading of American businessman Nicholas Berg in retaliation of the abuses shown in leaked photographs. Several GI’s face prison abuse charges in connection with the scandal, as the Bush administration has maintained that the incidents were the unapproved criminal actions of a handful of individuals. The Pentagon has strongly denied the allegations released yesterday on the New Yorker website, labeling them "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture." Recent statements from the Red Cross and family members of charged GI’s, however, support the implications that sources of abuse practices were further up the chain of command.