Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Powell's UN Fiasco


Fresh and Festering

By RAY McGOVERN
Former CIA Analyst
CounterPunch

"Yesterday was a difficult day for Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. It was hard to celebrate the fifth anniversary of our first corporate memorandum, a same-day critique of Colin Powell's Feb. 5, 2003 UN address, when we could not escape the reality that this speech greased the skids for death and destruction in Iraq and brought unprecedented shame on our country. We found no solace in the realization that those who saw our analysis should have seen disaster coming.

A handful of former CIA intelligence officers joined me in forming the VIPS movement in Jan. 2003, after we concluded that our profession had been corrupted to "justify" what was, pure and simple, a war of aggression. Little did we know at the time that a month later Colin Powell, with then-CIA Director George Tenet plumped down conspicuously behind him, would provide the world with a textbook example of careerism and cowardice in cooking intelligence to the recipe of his master......"

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