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Colin Powell's Private Email Account Has Been Hacked (theverge.com)
According to The New York Times, Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has been hacked and a password-protected archive of his personal emails has been published by DC Leaks. The Verge reports: DC Leaks is the same site that first published emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee, which many took as an explicit effort to influence the U.S. election process. Many experts in the U.S. intelligence apparatus have attributed that attack to the Russian government, although no public attribution has been made. Thus far, there's no evidence tying Powell's hack to Russia, and similar hacks have been carried out by mischievous teens without government affiliation. The immediate result of the hack has been political fallout for Powell himself. Last night, BuzzFeed News reported on an email in which Powell called Republican nominee Donald Trump a "national disgrace," and another in which he said the candidate was "in the process of destroying himself."
He refers to Hillary as "unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational, with a husband still dicking bimbos at home." That didn't bore me at all!
They did produce evidence. The UN inspectors had free run of the country for several months prior to the war. In their own words, the US evidence was "shit". Of course they found no evidence of an ongoing weapons program, because there was none.
In any case, the US never has produced any real evidence, before or after for their WMD claims.
They had cryptic radio intercepts.
They had satellite pictures of trucks leaving buildings.
They had unknown chemical processing trucks (turned out to be hydrogen production. The design was known, but not by Powell.).
They had aluminum tubes.
For hard evidence, that's all they had.
Play Command HQ online
You asked "why?"
why did UK, run by a Left wing government run by Tony Blair, back that?
1. Because warhawks are warhawks, and allies are allies, regardless of party affiliation. After 9/11, Europe sympathized with the US.
everybody's intelligence agencies seemed to suggest that Saddam had chemical and/or biological weapons
2. Actually, the intelligence agencies didn't suggest this. The politicians claimed that the intelligence agencies said this, but they really didn't. The agencies don't really speak publicly, they speak through the elected officials that they report to. We now know that what they told the president and prime minister isn't the same as what the president and prime minister said publicly.
For example: We now know that for example, at the time that George W. Bush gave a speech about the supposed "yellow cake uranium," that he knew it was falsified evidence but proceeded with the speech anyway. The UK did the same thing, leading up to the invasion, asking BBC reporters to basically make-up phony facts.
If you look back at the evidence, it was clear that the evidence was being used to justify an already decided-upon conclusion. For example: The UK and US cited a shipment of aluminum tubes as evidence that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons. It turns out that the tubes were used for the much more mundane purpose of rockets. If you saw an aluminum tube that could be used for rockets or nuclear weapons, and you knew the country was developing rockets, why would you assert that these tubes are evidence of nuclear weapons? Certainly, it is possible. But they didn't present it as "well, it was probably used for rockets, but maybe it is for nukes (shrug)." It was presented as "OMG This is proof that they are developing nukes!" A lie of omission is still a lie.
You asked "Why?" It is important to understand why. It is because well-intentioned people can sometimes lie to support what they believe is right. The populus and the media in particular, must be vigilant against such things. The New York times, has since, apologized for being the white house's mouthpiece.
Many did.
One from Australia quit his intelligence job (preparing reports on Iraq) and ran for the Senate with the argument that Iraq did not have WMDs and the war was based on a lie. He was not just some Snowden but had served for twenty years reached the rank of lieutenant colonel and had also worked for Raytheon.
He was in the Australian Senate for a few years and is in now Member of the Australian Parliament for Denison and his name is Andrew Wilkie.