I think he sold his oul - Miriam V.

Powell Calls His U.N. Speech a Lasting Blot on His Record
By
STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - The former secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, says
in a television interview to be broadcast Friday that his 2003 speech to the
United Nations, in which he gave a detailed description of Iraqi weapons
programs that turned out not to exist, was "painful" for him personally and
would
be a permanent "blot" on his record.

"I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the
United States
to the world," Mr. Powell told Barbara Walters of ABC News, adding that the
presentation "will always be a part of my record."

Asked by Ms. Walters how painful this was for him, Mr. Powell replied: "It
was painful. It's painful now." Asked further how he felt upon learning that
he had been misled about the accuracy of intelligence on which he relied,
Mr. Powell said, "Terrible." He added that it was "devastating" to learn
later
that some intelligence agents knew the information he had was unreliable but
did not speak up.

Mr. Powell also implied in the interview that the United States did not go
to war in
Iraq
with sufficient troops to secure the country and failed to keep sufficient
Iraqi forces to help stabilize the country.

"What we didn't do in the immediate aftermath of the war was to impose our
will on the whole country with enough troops of our own, with enough troops
from
coalition forces or by re-creating the Iraqi forces, armed forces, more
quickly than we are doing now," he said.

But with Iraq still violent and plagued by sectarian conflict, the United
States has "little choice but to keep investing in the Iraqi armed forces
and
to do everything we can to increase their size and their capability and
their strength."

Since leaving office in January, Mr. Powell has declined interview requests.
But his expressions of regret about the weapons intelligence and the lack of
troops were consistent with many of his statements in office, especially
after it became clear that Iraq had none of the weapons that Mr. Powell had
said
it was stockpiling.

He acknowledged several times that intelligence failures lay behind his
presentation on the eve of the Iraq war two years ago, but he has never
expressed
any regret about the war itself. Asked by Ms. Walters, "When the president
made the decision to go to war, you were for it?" Mr. Powell said, "Yes."

Asked about editorials asserting that he had put loyalty "ahead of
leadership," Mr. Powell parried the question. "Well, loyalty is a trait that
I value,
and yes, I am loyal," he replied. "And there are some who say, 'Well, you
shouldn't have supported it, you should have resigned.' But I'm glad that
Saddam
Hussein is gone."

Mr. Powell said he did not blame George J. Tenet, then the director of
central intelligence, for the failures and did not believe that Mr. Tenet
tried to
mislead him.

"No, George Tenet did not sit there for five days with me, misleading me,"
he said, referring to the week he spent at the Central Intelligence Agency
reviewing
the evidence on Iraq before making his presentation to the United Nations.
"There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time
that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn't be relied upon, and
they didn't speak up. That devastated me."