WAR ON TERROR

Slate: Baghdad Back Flip
Colin Powell's cynical reversal.

If you want to know why people don't trust what the United States says about Iraq, get a load of what Secretary of State Colin Powell said this morning.

On Oct. 7, 2001, Arab TV superstation Al Jazeera aired a video in which Osama Bin Laden suggested that he was fighting for Iraq and Palestine. "One million Iraqi children have thus far died in Iraq although they did not do anything wrong," Bin Laden protested. "Israeli tanks and tracked vehicles also enter to wreak havoc in Palestine … and we hear no voices raised.".....

...That was then; this is now. Tuesday morning, Powell testified before the Senate Budget Committee. He warned that Al Jazeera would soon air a new Bin Laden statement in which "once again he speaks to the people of Iraq and talks about their struggle and how he is in partnership with Iraq. This nexus between terrorists and states that are developing weapons of mass destruction can no longer be looked away from and ignored."...

...The punch line? Bin Laden was talking about hypocrisy.