Powell Defends US Stance on Iraq's WMD
Nick Simeone

The Bush administration is coming under renewed attack (再次受到抨击) over whether its claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was backed up by solid evidence. A group of private American weapons experts is now calling for an independent commission to look into the matter（调查此事）. The Bush administration continues to defend its pre-war claims, which were the basis for military action against Iraq.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace（卡耐基国际和平基金）is charging that in the days before the war, the Bush administration misrepresented the threat from Iraq by saying it possessed weapons of mass destruction（大规模杀伤性武器） and was ready to use them.

Jessica Mathews, president of the Washington-based research group, points to a speech last February that Secretary of State Colin Powell made to the U.N. Security Council when that was televised around the world.

"In which he went out of his way to emphasize our certainty, saying, 'every statement I make today is backed up by solid sources. These are not assertions. We are giving you facts and conclusions based on solid evidence. This is evidence not conjecture（猜想）, this is true.' And yet we know that a great many of the major assertions made in that speech turned out not to be true."

But during a news conference（记者招待会） Thursday, the secretary of state stood by（支持） the evidence, "I knew exactly the circumstances under which I was presenting that speech to the U.N. on the 5th of February. Anything that we did not feel was solid and multi-sourced, we did not use in that speech."

And he has not changed his view that Iraq - which had used banned weapons on its own people, as well as during the country's war with Iran during the 1980s - intended to use them again if the allies had not acted.

"Where the debate is, is why haven't we found huge stockpiles（库存） and why haven't we found large caches（储存物） of these weapons. Let's let the Iraqi survey group complete its work. There has been the movement out of some of the individuals from the group. I presume that their particular job is finished. But I am confident of what I presented last year."

But he is less certain than others in the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein had ties to（和……有关系） terrorist groups like al-Qaida. "I have not seen 'smoking gun'-concrete evidence（具体、确凿的证据） about the connection. But I think the possibility of such connections did exist and it was prudent to consider them."

Before the war, some in the Bush administration including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had cited what they called “ bulletproof” evidence（无懈可击的证据） of Iraqi ties to a group linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida