"These elegantly dressed statesmen were constructing the framework that would allow them to kill quite a lot of people," charged Fisk

LONDON, February 6 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Prominent British writer Robert Fisk ridiculed the so-called hard-core evidence against Iraq presented to the U.N. Security Council Wednesday, February 5, by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and charged the U.S. diplomat of heating up “old soap”.

“Colin Powell's terror talk to the United Nations Security Council yesterday sounded like one of those government-inspired reports on the front page of The New York Times – where it will most certainly be treated with due reverence in this morning's edition,” wrote Fisk Thursday, February 6, in an article published in the online version of the British daily newspaper, The Independent.

“It was a bit like heating up old soup. Haven't we heard most of this stuff before? Should one trust the man? General Powell, I mean, not Saddam.”

“Powell's presentation was a mixture of awesomely funny recordings of Iraqi Republican Guard telephone intercepts à la Samuel Beckett that just might have been some little proof that Saddam really is conning the U.N. inspectors again,” said Fisk.

“I am still waiting to hear the Arabic for the State Department's translation of "Okay Buddy" – "Consider it done, Sir" – this from the Republican Guard's "Captain Ibrahim", for heaven's sake – and some dinky illustrations of mobile bio-labs whose lorries and railway trucks were in such perfect condition that they suggested the Pentagon didn't have much idea of the dilapidated state of Saddam's army.”

“Jack Straw may have thought all this "the most powerful and authoritative case" but when we were forced to listen to Iraq's officer corps communicating by phone – "yeah", "yeah", "yeah?", "yeah..." – it was impossible not to ask oneself if Colin Powell had really considered the effect this would have on the outside world” noted the prominent British writer.

“From time to time, the words "Iraq: Failing To Disarm – Denial and Deception" appeared on the giant video screen behind General Powell.

“Was this a CNN logo, some of us wondered? But no, it was CNN's sister channel, the US Department of State,” wrote Fisk.

“Because Colin Powell is supposed to be the good cop to the Bush-Rumsfeld bad cop routine, one wanted to believe him.

“But a dramatic picture of a pilotless Iraqi aircraft capable of spraying poison chemicals turned out to be the imaginative work of a Pentagon artist,” stressed Fisk.

He asserted that when “General Powell started blathering on about "decades'' of contact between Saddam and al-Qaeda, things went wrong for the Secretary of State.

“Al-Qaeda only came into existence five years ago, since Bin Laden – "decades" ago – was working against the Russians for the CIA, whose present day director was sitting grave-faced behind General Powell,” Fisk said.

“Colin Powell's new version of his President's State of the Union lie – that the "scientists" interviewed by U.N. inspectors had been Iraqi intelligence agents in disguise – was singularly unimpressive,” he underlined.

Commenting on repeated American claims it was sharing Iraqi intelligence with U.N. inspectors, Fisk said “it was clear yesterday that much of what he had to say about alleged new weapons development – the decontamination truck at the Taji chemical munitions factory, for example, the "cleaning" of the Ibn al-Haythem ballistic missile factory on 25 November – had not been given to the U.N. at the time.

“Why wasn't this intelligence information given to the inspectors months ago? Didn't General Powell's beloved U.N. resolution 1441 demand that all such intelligence information should be given to Hans Blix and his lads immediately? Were the Americans, perhaps, not being "pro-active" enough?”

According to Fisk, the “worst moment came when General Powell started talking about anthrax and the 2001 anthrax attacks in Washington and New York, pathetically holding up a teaspoon of the imaginary spores and – while not precisely saying so – fraudulently suggesting a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 2001 anthrax scare.”

The prominent British writer asserted that when Powell “held up Iraq's support for the Palestinian Hamas organization, which has an office in Baghdad, as proof of Saddam's support for "terror'' …the whole theatre began to collapse.”

He lambasted Powell for making “no mention of America's support for Israel and its occupation of Palestinian land.”

“There are Hamas offices in Beirut, Damascus and Iran. Is the 82nd Airborne supposed to grind on to Lebanon, Syria and Iran?” Fisk wondered.

He recalled that there was “an almost macabre opening to the play when General Powell arrived at the Security Council, cheek-kissing the delegates and winding his great arms around them.

“Indeed, there were moments when you might have thought that the whole chamber, with its toothy smiles and constant handshakes, contained a room full of men celebrating peace rather than war.

“Alas, not so. These elegantly dressed statesmen were constructing the framework that would allow them to kill quite a lot of people,” charged Fisk.

He said that Powell’s “play” recalled to the mind “the same room four decades ago when General Powell's predecessor Adlai Stevenson showed photos of the ships carrying Soviet missiles to Cuba”, but stressed that Powell’s “pictures carried no such authority” and “Colin Powell is no Adlai Stevenson”.