New one. Powell warned not to use aluminum tube story before UN

Just like when Bush cited the phony Niger uranium story to frighten people in his State of the Union, Powell was warned about the bogus aluminum tube story and chose to use it in a major UN speech.

Again the question is why the mainstream media waited on this story so long, but better late than ever. Teflon Colin is getting a little scratched along with Condoleeza Rice, who some stories say might resign.

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Colin Powell, US secretary of state, was advised that the evidence he cited in his speech to the United Nations in February concerning Iraq's nuclear weapons programme was questionable.


The bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), the State Department's in-house analysis unit, and nuclear experts at the Department of Energy are understood to have explicitly warned Mr Powell during the preparation of his speech that the evidence was questionable.

In the presentation, in which the US laid out its case for a pre-emptive war on Iraq, Mr Powell accused Iraq of importing special aluminium tubes as evidence that Baghdad was still working on a programme to produce atomic weapons.

But the INR disputed claims by the CIA and the Pentagon that the tubes were intended for a nuclear weapons programme. While the INR and the Energy Department had already made their opposition known in a footnote to the top-secret National Intelligence Estimate prepared in October 2002, the bureau is understood to have again told Mr Powell during the preparation of his February speech that its analysts were not persuaded that the tubes could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium

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