Colin Powell defends the Iraq War

Aljazeera English has posted an interview it did with Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell as part of its 9/11 tenth anniversary coverage. He's very defensive about the role he played in starting the Iraq War and defends the war itself.



The two brief articles accompanying the video, Colin Powell regrets Iraq war intelligence 09/11/2011 (which features a somewhat shorter version of the Powell interview) Talk to Al Jazeera: Colin Powell 09/19/2011, doesn't convey the extent to which Powell's responses are defensive of his and the Cheney-Bush Administration's actions in the Iraq War.

Here are a few high points to listen for.


7:30 Al Qa'ida not still a significant threat (my version of the implication of what he says)

9:00 How to measure Al Qa'ida's capabilities

13:00 "Imagine how I felt ..." This is the whiniest part of the interview

15:00 The Democrats were wrong about Iraq's WMDs, too!

16:00 The chaos, killing and destruction in Iraq were "caused by an insurgency," not by the Anglo-American invasion

17:00 The Iraqis would have adored us if we had just gone in with a larger force

24:00 Takes on the "why do they hate us" question; mentions foreign policy grievances, but fall back on the Bush they-hate-us-for-our-values meme

24:40 Refuses to say what he thinks about secret US prisons ("black sites")

Tags: 9/11, colin powell, iraq war

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