{"id":54260,"date":"2020-07-19T08:52:51","date_gmt":"2020-07-19T13:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54260"},"modified":"2020-07-19T08:52:57","modified_gmt":"2020-07-19T13:52:57","slug":"scott-ritter-powell-iraq-regime-change-not-disarmament-the-fundamental-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54260","title":{"rendered":"SCOTT RITTER: Powell &#038; Iraq\u2014Regime Change, Not Disarmament: The Fundamental Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2020\/07\/18\/scott-ritter-powell-iraq-regime-change-not-disarmament-the-fundamental-lie\/\">SCOTT RITTER: Powell &amp; Iraq\u2014Regime Change, Not Disarmament: The Fundamental Lie<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Regime change, not disarmament, was always the driving factor behind U.S. policy towards Saddam Hussein. Powell knew this because he helped craft the original policy.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><strong>T<\/strong>he New York Times Magazine<\/em>&nbsp;has published a puff piece soft-peddling former Secretary of State Colin Powell\u2019s role in selling a war on Iraq to the UN Security Council using what turned out to be bad intelligence. \u201cColin Powell Still Wants Answers\u201d is the title of the article, written by Robert Draper. \u201cThe analysts who provided the intelligence,\u201d a sub-header to the article declares, \u201cnow say it was doubted inside the CIA at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Draper\u2019s article is an extract from a book,&nbsp;<em>To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq<\/em>, scheduled for publication later this month. In the interest of full disclosure, I was approached by Draper in 2018 about his interest in writing this book, and I agreed to be interviewed as part of his research. I have not yet read the book, but can note that, based upon the tone and content of his&nbsp;<em>New York Times Magazine<\/em>&nbsp;article, my words apparently carried little weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Regime Change, Not WMD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I spent some time articulating to Draper my contention that the issue with Saddam Hussein\u2019s Iraq was never about weapons of mass destruction (WMD), but rather regime change, and that everything had to be viewed in the light of this reality\u2014including Powell\u2019s Feb. 5, 2003 presentation before the UN Security Council. Based upon the content of his article, I might as well have been talking to a brick wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SCOTT RITTER: Powell &amp; Iraq\u2014Regime Change, Not Disarmament: The Fundamental Lie Regime change, not disarmament, was always the driving factor behind U.S. policy towards Saddam Hussein. Powell knew this because he helped craft the original policy. The New York Times Magazine&nbsp;has published a puff piece soft-peddling former Secretary of State Colin Powell\u2019s role in selling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[14274,6963,442,21074,10632,19998,827,11121],"class_list":["post-54260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-colin-powell","tag-consortium-news","tag-iraq","tag-new-york-times-magazine","tag-saddam-hussein","tag-scott-ritter","tag-united-states","tag-weapons-of-mass-destruction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54261,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54260\/revisions\/54261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}