U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell today said he regrets the Bush administration claimed that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in its argument for war, but he believes the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. "The only thing where we got it wrong and where our presentation [to the United Nations Security Council] did not hold up was the actual stockpiles," Powell told reporters after a speech Atlanta Press Club. "We've seen nothing to suggest that he had actual stockpiles. That was not right." He added, "As we've gone back and looked through the intelligence, there are indications that we had bad sourcing that we should have caught. For that I am disappointed and regret that that information was not correct." A Senate Intelligence Committee's report on prewar intelligence about Iraq found that much of the information provided or cleared by the CIA for inclusion in Powell's speech to the United Nations "was overstated, misleading or incorrect." Nevertheless, Powell noted that the war has led to the ouster of Saddam and has made the world safer. He noted that Saddam had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people and Iraq's neighbors. "So, he had a history, the intention of doing it, he was hiding things, he was not responding to the demands of the international community," Powell said.
