Opinion: Colin Powell’s most memorable day
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Lefty blogger Duncan ‘Atrios’ Black points out that today is the anniversary of Colin Powell’s presentation in front of the United Nations about Saddam Hussein’s fearsome weapons of mass destruction.... Black then excerpts a bunch of reaction from the commentariat that look quite silly in retrospect.
So how’d the L.A. Times Editorial Board view Powell’s performance? Let’s roll tape:
The United Nations risks irrelevance unless it promptly sets a date on which it will use military force against Iraq if that nation does not disarm. Piling fact upon fact, photo upon photo Wednesday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell methodically demonstrated why Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein remains dangerous to his own people, Iraq’s neighbors and, potentially, the Western world. [...] Although Powell did not directly link Baghdad to Al Qaeda’s Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, he did spell out what he characterized as clear links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. We were not convinced of the Al Qaeda connection. But we agree with Powell that as long as Hussein has anthrax or chemical agents there’s a chance some terrorist will use them -- and that it’s irresponsible for the United Nations to ignore Hussein’s history. [...] The United Nations must then give Hussein one final chance to avoid war -- by complying or fleeing -- and be ready to launch missiles, planes and troops if he again disregards or disrespects the world’s clear disarmament demands.
Despite the tough talk, the Ed Board did not support the war, preferring until the end that the United Nations give Hussein a firm disarm-or-face-invasion deadline, and that the U.S. not invade without U.N. sanction. Some time in the near future we might post some chronoligical excerpts about what we were thinking and when. Having not been on the Editorial Board at the time, I can only offer my own contemporaneous post-Powell reax, which focuses less on the message, more on the messenger.