May 15, 2001: Powell Tells Congress that Saddam Hussein Is ‘Contained’ and ‘Militarily… Weak’

Secretary of State Colin Powell, in testimony before the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, says that Saddam Hussein has been effectively contained by sanctions. He says, “The sanctions… have succeeded over the last 10 years, not in deterring him from moving in that direction, but from actually being able to move in that direction. The Iraqi regime militarily remains fairly weak. It doesn’t have the capacity it had 10 or 12 years ago. It has been contained. And even though we have no doubt in our mind that the Iraqi regime is pursuing programs to develop weapons of mass destruction—chemical, biological and nuclear—I think the best intelligence estimates suggest that they have not been terribly successful. There’s no question that they have some stockpiles of some of these sorts of weapons still under their control, but they have not been able to break out, they have not been able to come out with the capacity to deliver these kinds of systems or to actually have these kinds of systems that is much beyond where they were 10 years ago. So containment, using this arms control sanctions regime, I think has been reasonably successful. We have not been able to get the inspectors back in, though, to verify that, and we have not been able to get the inspectors in to pull up anything that might be left there. So we have to continue to view this regime with the greatest suspicion, attribute to them the most negative motives, which is quite well-deserved with this particular regime, and roll the sanctions over, and roll them over in a way where the arms control sanctions really go after their intended targets—weapons of mass destruction—and not go after civilian goods or civilian commodities that we really shouldn’t be going after, just let that go to the Iraqi people.” [US Congress, 5/15/2001; Mirror, 9/22/2003]