Did Powell damage his reputation for presenting crap in front of the UN?

[Alexander's Horse]

The modified vehicle was probably an icecream truck - most Iraqis are working 3 jobs.

[JCG]

and the nerve gas? what was that supposed to mean, oh so wise decoder?

[Alexander's Horse]

You can call fertiliser nerve agent if you like. People will laugh at you, but its your right to look like a fool.

[Adam Smith]

Mary McGrory's COLUMN in the Washington Post this morning, mentioned by LOTM. McGrory is a widely read liberal columnist.

I don't know how the United Nations felt about Colin Powell's "J'accuse" speech against Saddam Hussein. I can only say that he persuaded me, and I was as tough as France to convince. ....

Powell took his seat in the United Nations and put his shoulder to the wheel. He was to talk for almost an hour and a half. His voice was strong and unwavering. He made his case without histrionics of any kind, with no verbal embellishments. He aired his tapes of conversations between Iraqi army officers who might well be supposed to be concealing toxic materials or enterprises.

He talked of the mobile factories concealed in trains and trucks that move along roads and rails while manufacturing biological agents. I was struck by their ingenuity and the insistence on manufacturing agents that cause diseases such as gangrene, plague, cholera, camelpox and hemorrhagic fever....

The cumulative effect was stunning...

I wasn't so sure about the al Qaeda connection. But I had heard enough to know that Saddam Hussein, with his stockpiles of nerve gas and death-dealing chemicals, is more of a menace than I had thought. I'm not ready for war yet. But Colin Powell has convinced me that it might be the only way to stop a fiend, and that if we do go, there is reason.

Slowhand:
Thanks for the Adlai Stevenson quote.

[Sava]

Sorry Gatekeeper... scare tactics won't work on me. I'm still not buying any of the BS evidence that the Bush admin has provided. And one of my best friends from high school has been deployed in the MidEast (a marine). My parents also have many friends and co-workers that are reservists that have been called up. I have no desire to see them gased by weapons "made in the USA" that Reagan gave Saddam. That's why I don't want to see a foolish ground assault on Baghdad.

[Gatekeeper]

They're not scare tactics, Sava. Merely possibilities rooted in cold, hard reality. And, I, too have some acquaintances who are now being called up for duty.

Gatekeeper

[Sava]

Well, you're making the mistake of thinking there are only two options to Iraq. War or do nothing at all. I'm against war at this point because I don't believe Bush's crap. But that doesn't mean we leave the MidEast and do nothing about Saddam. With the 100 billion dollar price tag, and the human cost, war is not the best course of action. If Saddam does something aggressive, like attack us, Israel, or any of his neighbors, then we attack. Until then, nothing justifies a pre-emptive strike.

[Mikhail]

There was a lot more evidence there thasn just "fuzzy photos". The facts still remain that Iraq had WMD, and has yet to account for them, as which was required by resolution 1441 (and the 16 before it)....

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Sava
Well, you're making the mistake of thinking there are only two options to Iraq. War or do nothing at all. I'm against war at this point because I don't believe Bush's crap. But that doesn't mean we leave the MidEast and do nothing about Saddam. With the 100 billion dollar price tag, and the human cost, war is not the best course of action. If Saddam does something aggressive, like attack us, Israel, or any of his neighbors, then we attack. Until then, nothing justifies a pre-emptive strike.

It's what Powell did not show the UN that you should be concern about and not what he did show. You can be sure this President is not revealing everything they have because of past even when people leaked thing to the press and we loss our advantage.
Case in point; some big mouth told the press that we were tracking OBL using his cell phone. Guess what OBL stopped using his cell phone. The same with the Soviet during SALT talks many years ago. Brezhnev was using a radio phone and we were listening in. As soon as some big mouth told the press, he stop using it.

[St Leo]

I'm a eurocommie Yankistani hatah and I don't trust Powell one bit.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
I'm going to get a satellite photo of my local sports oval and label the toilet block "chemical weapons laboratory", the dressing sheds "missile storage" and the oval "missile launching pad" and see if anyone can tell the difference.

aaglo did that in the other thread, asking folks to identify the buildings.

I'm still waiting for him to tell me how I did.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
I'm going to get a satellite photo of my local sports oval and label the toilet block "chemical weapons laboratory", the dressing sheds "missile storage" and the oval "missile launching pad" and see if anyone can tell the difference.

Yeah, I'm sure those would fool RAF photo intelligence...

This is another 'it's illegal in Australia cause I say so' argument, isn't it?