Powell Admits Iraq Intelligence Flawed

I am pleased that Secretary of State Powell has admitted that the US intelligence on Iraq that he presented to the UN a year ago was flawed. According to reports, he singled out the intelligence on mobile chemical weapons laboratories as some of the most misleading, apparently because the CIA told him that it had several sources for that information, but it did not. I doubt that Powell would have made such a statement if others in the administration, such as Richard Clarke and David Kay, had not begun to break through the cone of silence on the issue. Powell is a team player, as he demonstrated in the run-up to the war on Iraq. The administration paraded him at the UN for a presentation that has ended up making him look foolish and unprofessional, a stark contrast to Adlai Stevenson's presentation during the Cuban missile crisis. However, I think Powell, although he was wronged by this episode, would have stayed quiet, if others had not started screaming their heads off about it. I imagine that Powell is just biding his time until he can leave this administration gracefully, having had his fill of seeing the President do the bidding of wild men like Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, his deputy Wolfowitz, and Vice President Cheney, while Powell recommended a more prudent course of action that the President rejected.