[They're getting anxious...........]
"The essence of all power is the right to define with authority, and the major stake of the power struggle is the appropriation or retaining of the right to define." [Zygmunt Bauman] =============================== Powell, Rice Defend U.S. Intelligence on Iraq By Vicki Allen Reuters Sunday, June 8, 2003; 4:01 PM WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Top Bush administration officials on Sunday rejected accusations they exaggerated threats posed by Iraq's weapons, calling the charges "outrageous" and the results of "revisionist history." Appearing on morning news programs, Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice said there was broad consensus in the intelligence community that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and they believe that intelligence was sound. "We have no doubt whatsoever that over the last several years, they have retained such weapons or retained the capability to start up production of such weapons," Powell said on CNN's Late Edition. "We also know they are masters of deceit and masters of hiding these things, and so a little patience is required," he said. Powell called it "really somewhat outrageous on the part of some critics to say that this was all bogus." Concerns have been rising worldwide that the arsenal of weapons of mass destruction described by the administration has not been found in the weeks after the war that toppled former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Critics questioning whether the administration used faulty or manipulated intelligence as grounds for war point to a Defense Intelligence Agency report from September of 2002, disclosed last week, that said the agency did not have enough "reliable information" on Iraq's alleged chemical weapons. Powell and Rice said that quote was taken out of context, giving a misleading impression of the report. A line "talked about not having the evidence of current facilities and current stockpiling. The very next sentence says that it had information that (chemical) weapons had been dispersed to units," Powell said on Fox News Sunday. Rice, on ABC's This Week, said a national intelligence estimate in October -- which the DIA signed -- said Iraq likely had as much as 100 to 500 metric tons of chemical agents. "There's a very large body of evidence here that connects together to paint a picture of a very dangerous regime with very dangerous weapons that had deceived the world for 12 years, that had allowed international sanctions to stay on, rather than come clean about what it was doing," she said. Rice several times said critics were using "revisionist history" to question whether Iraq had weapons that threatened the United States. Powell also defended U.S. charges that two mobile laboratories were for biological agents, saying on Fox that "my best justification" for that was "if they were not biological labs, I can assure you, the very next morning, the Iraqis would have pulled them out and presented them" to U.N. weapons inspectors and the international press corps.
