Powell blames bad intelligence in Iraq invasionPaul Richter, Los...

Powell blames bad intelligence in Iraq invasion
Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times
April 3, 2004IRAQ0403



WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday for first time directly criticized the intelligence community for giving him apparently flawed information he used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Powell said that the "most dramatic" of his allegations, that Saddam Hussein's regime had mobile germ labs, was based on questionable U.S. intelligence. He called on the commission investigating prewar intelligence to examine how the data were gathered.

The comments were an abrupt reversal for Powell, who had previously acknowledged disagreements among analysts but had not criticized the intelligence community.

Powell acknowledged the widespread current doubts about Iraqi informants who told U.S. officials before the war that Saddam had built mobile germ weapons laboratories. The allegations were central to the evidence Powell dramatically presented to the Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, as he urged a skeptical world body to confront Saddam.

Powell said that as he prepared for his U.N. presentation, intelligence officials gave him data from four sources on mobile weapons laboratories. He insisted that he had pushed them to make sure their analysis was correct.

"Now it appears not to be the case, that it was solid," he said. "If the sources fell apart, then we need to find out how we've gotten ourselves in that position."

In Baghdad, a U.S. soldier was killed and another was wounded in a prosperous section of the Iraqi capital, and a Marine was shot dead in western Iraq, the U.S. military announced Friday.

In the city of Fallujah, meanwhile, clerics used their Friday sermons to denounce the mutilation of the bodies -- but not the slayings -- of four American civilians who were killed there Wednesday, U.S. officials said. The Marine Corps, which recently assumed security duties in western Iraq, was reported to be circling the city with units and planning a forceful response, but by nightfall no major action was disclosed.

In western Iraq -- where five U.S. soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing Wednesday -- a member of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was fatally shot late Thursday night in the far west of Al Anbar Province, military officials said.

In northern Iraq, a suicide bomber killed himself and two others at the entrance to the town hall in Riyadh. The attack occurred during a reconciliation conference between former members of the outlawed Baath Party and U.S. soldiers, officials said.