I suspect that:
A) Of course he USED to have them, we sold them to him, he admitted it - Gulf War 1 timeframe.
B) He finaly got rid of them, as the pressure from the international comunity mounted - at our constant proding.
C) The discrepancy over what he used to have Vs. What were aledged he had, were pertabated by what
quantities had been captured and destroyed by us at the end of Gulf War 1. We destroyed many bunkers of the
weaponry without taking inventory, and making very ambiguous reports, and stated as much. (Swartzkoff)
D) Does a countries leader really know exactly how much of anything the Military Machine really has ?
I don't think Bush even has knowledge of what our arsenal consists of, Top Secret materials are on a 'Need to Know"
basis, so if you specifically do not need to know, there is absolutely no data passed.
There are hundreds of Military Program Specifics that Bush does NOT need to know, now or possibly ever.
E) I seriously doubt that anything of substance will be found, as they probably did - under their cultural understanding -
destroy, eliminate, and comply with what Their understanding of the UN requirements were.
Our government is the one that kept moving the goals and changing the compliance milestones.
F) If Colin Powell has been left hung out to dry as a result of presenting false evidence to the UN - and the world community,
the Inteligence Comunity needs to find out where these false sources came from - and take them down.
As a matter of fact, there was a large section of both the FBI and the CIA that let it be known that false evidence was deliberately
being cooked up from within Administrations sources - looks like someone deliberately was lying for specific Political goals.
G) This in turn brings up the question of what was to be gained - and by whom - in making Colin Powell less creditable?
He is the ONE person within this administration that I thought was on the mark with substance and knowledge.
If his credibility is damaged, the gain is to Dubya himself, as Powell is the ONLY threat to 'Bush - the Candidate'
from within the Republican Party for the 2004 elections.
Given a primary to chose a candidate, Powell is more appealing to the the nation and especially to the Minority comunity,
and the 'Moderate' Republicans - which make up the biggest part of the party. The 'Extremes' only make up 20% to 25%,
but are able to force their doctrine on the rest with attacks on credibility and charactar assassinations - which they honed to a fine
edged weapon all through the Clinton Presidential years, and are now using it on anything and anyopne who questions them.
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