Powell has finished his presentation. I didn’t expect him to present much that was new – the case about Saddam is mostly he is a bad man who should be stopped while it is relatively easy to do so. However, there was some new information. The Washington Post has a nice summary of his presentation, including some surveillance audio.
…the tape was an intercepted conversation between officers in Hussein's Republican Guard. The voices were discussing a modified vehicle one of them had that was made by an Iraqi company, which Powell said was a weapons manufacturer."We have this modified vehicle," one of them said as the two discussed a pending visit by a U.N. weapons inspector.
"I'm worried you all have something left," the second voice says.
"We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left," the other replies.
Enough said. The only remaining questions are:
1) Will France use this new information to save face and back the international coalition to disarm Saddam?
2) When will Saddam be removed from power?
3) How long will it take before the hide-their-heads-in-the-sand crowd comes out and says the world doesn’t have enough evidence to go after Saddam?
Unlike the other two questions, this one is easy. We’ll hear from them today and they probably already had their press releases prepared before Powell spoke.
Update: A full transcript of Powell's remarks is available here. The entire transcript is long, but worth reading if you have the time. Another recording reveals ``Nerve agents. Stop talking about it. They are listening to us. Don't give any evidence that we have these horrible agents.''