Powell: The Iraq "Nuclear Threat" Was a Fraud

If this article by Robert Scheer doesn't wake people up, I'm not sure what will. Colin Powell admits that he knew the so-called Iraq "nuclear threat" was a load of garbage, but he kept quiet about it. Key section:

I queried Powell at a reception following a talk he gave in Los Angeles on Monday. Pointing out that the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate showed that his State Department had gotten it right on the nonexistent Iraq nuclear threat, I asked why did the president ignore that wisdom in his stated case for the invasion?

“The CIA was pushing the aluminum tube argument heavily and Cheney went with that instead of what our guys wrote,” Powell said. And the Niger reference in Bush’s State of the Union speech? “That was a big mistake,” he said. “It should never have been in the speech. I didn’t need Wilson to tell me that there wasn’t a Niger connection. He didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. I never believed it.”

When I pressed further as to why the president played up the Iraq nuclear threat, Powell said it wasn’t the president: “That was all Cheney.” (Emphasis added.)

Your country is in the hands of a fanatic--Cheney--who is manipulating a lazy, detached, weak-minded fool. Colin Powell willingly cooperated with this fanatic and this fool, and in so doing has disgraced himself and perhaps irreparably harmed our country. If Powell had called out Cheney BEFORE the 2004 election, think of the disasters that could have been averted. Now, it's too late.

In a lot of ways.