Decatur Daily Democrat: Double-time march to war

Decatur Daily Democrat: "One aspect of Michael Moore's documentary film, 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' that you won't hear Republicans denouncing is a 2001 video clip of Colin Powell calling Saddam Hussein no threat.

Audiences react with shocked murmurs. The film doesn't explain the context, a Feb. 24, 2001, diplomatic meeting in Cairo. Pressed by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak about the Iraqi people's suffering under U.S. economic sanctions, Powell reminded his audience that they existed to check Saddam's ambitions.

'And frankly,' he added, 'they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.'

Not only was Iraq no danger to the United States, it had no capacity to menace such powerhouses as Jordan and Kuwait. So why are we reading news accounts like this in July 2004: 'Saddam's army posed little threat, Senate panel says' and 'Panel describes long weakening of Hussein army.'

Almost 1,000 American and an estimated 10,000 Iraqi deaths and a strategic nightmare later, we have come full circle. But Michael Moore had to tell you. So how come nobody important in what The Nation columnist Eric Alterman calls the 'so-called liberal media' pressed the secretary of state to explain himself before the war, when it might have made some difference? Good question."

By GENE LYONS
Decatur Daily Democrat