Powell: White House not told of pre-war intelligence doubts

[Epitome22]

LONDON (AFP) - The US administration was never told of doubts about the secret intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq, former secretary of state Colin Powell told the BBC in an interview.

Powell, who argued the case for military action against tyrant Saddam Hussein's regime at the United Nations in 2003, said he was "deeply disappointed in what the intelligence community had presented to me and to the rest of us."

"What really upset me more than anything else was that there were people in the intelligence community that had doubts about some of this sourcing, but those doubts never surfaced to us," he told BBC television.

Powell's comments follow US President George W. Bush's acceptance earlier this week of responsibility for going to war on intelligence, much of which "turned out to be wrong".

Powell said: "What we were right about is that Saddam Hussein had the intention of having such weapons. What we got wrong was the actual existence of stockpiles of chemical weapons or biological weapons.

"As we looked into it further we found that some of the sources for the information ... were not accurate and they should not have been believed."

Powell said he was not happy "when I started to receive word from the intelligence community that said 'Oops, this source was not good. But we still have three other sources,' and then suddenly the three other sources turned out not to be good."

US involvement in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion has led to the loss of 2,140 of its troops and badly hit Republican President Bush's popularity.

The opposition Democrats have increased calls for a timetable for a military withdrawal.

But ahead of Thursday's parliamentary elections in Iraq, Bush insisted he was still right to order the invasion and argued a hurried withdrawal would be "a recipe for disaster".

Britain, key US allies in the invasion, has similarly refused to give a withdrawal date for its 8,000 or so troops in Iraq, although it has said it might start next year.

Powell thought the US military could not be deployed in Iraq at its current strength for years to come, raising the possibility of withdrawal from next year.

But he said that "essentially just to walk away, to say that we're taking all of our troops out as fast as we can, would be a tragic mistake". A US presence would be required in Iraq for "years", he added.

"We've invested a great deal in this country, and the Iraqi people deserve the democracy and the freedom that they were promised when we got rid of Saddam Hussein and we have to stay with them... until they decide that they can get it now on their own, they don't need us any longer," he added.

"And even then, I suspect, there will be a continuing relationship and presence of some significance for some years to come."

Powell said the United States lost time in Iraq by not cracking down on looters in the aftermath of Saddam's downfall, fuelling the insurgency.

"The plan was after just a couple of months, we would be able to leave. I didn't share that view," he said.

"I think we lost a lot of time by not imposing our will throughout the country quickly."

Powell confirmed that White House "hawks" Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had bypassed him and other colleagues.

His former chief-of-staff, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, made the allegations last month, accusing Cheney and Rumsfeld of running a "cabal" and hijacking US military and foreign policy.

The pair "would take decisions into the president that the rest of us weren't aware of. That did happen, on a number of occasions," Powell said.

Discussions with Rumsfeld about dealing with the aftermath of the Iraq invasion were "not pleasant", he admitted.