Fisk: You Wanted to Believe Him – But It Was Like Someth
"And when General Powell started blathering on about "decades'' of contact between Saddam and al-Qa'ida, things went wrong for the Secretary of State. Al-Qa'ida only came into existence five years ago, since Bin Laden – "decades" ago – was working against the Russians for the CIA, whose present day director was sitting grave-faced behind General Powell. And Colin Powell's new version of his President's State of the Union lie – that the "scientists" interviewed by UN inspectors had been Iraqi intelligence agents in disguise – was singularly unimpressive. The UN talked to scientists, the new version went, but they were posing for the real nuclear and bio boys whom the UN wanted to talk to. General Powell said America was sharing its information with the UN inspectors but it was clear yesterday that much of what he had to say about alleged new weapons development – the decontamination truck at the Taji chemical munitions factory, for example, the "cleaning" of the Ibn al-Haythem ballistic missile factory on 25 November – had not been given to the UN at the time. Why wasn't this intelligence information given to the inspectors months ago? Didn't General Powell's beloved UN resolution 1441 demand that all such intelligence information should be given to Hans Blix and his lads immediately? Were the Americans, perhaps, not being "pro-active" enough?"

Fisk: You Wanted to Believe Him – But It Was Like Someth
"And when General Powell started blathering on about "decades'' of contact between Saddam and al-Qa'ida, things went wrong for the Secretary of State. Al-Qa'ida only came into existence five years ago, since Bin Laden – "decades" ago – was working against the Russians for the CIA, whose present day director was sitting grave-faced behind General Powell. And Colin Powell's new version of his President's State of the Union lie – that the "scientists" interviewed by UN inspectors had been Iraqi intelligence agents in disguise – was singularly unimpressive. The UN talked to scientists, the new version went, but they were posing for the real nuclear and bio boys whom the UN wanted to talk to. General Powell said America was sharing its information with the UN inspectors but it was clear yesterday that much of what he had to say about alleged new weapons development – the decontamination truck at the Taji chemical munitions factory, for example, the "cleaning" of the Ibn al-Haythem ballistic missile factory on 25 November – had not been given to the UN at the time. Why wasn't this intelligence information given to the inspectors months ago? Didn't General Powell's beloved UN resolution 1441 demand that all such intelligence information should be given to Hans Blix and his lads immediately? Were the Americans, perhaps, not being "pro-active" enough?"