Richard Armitage: Pre-9/11 Powell pushed for Iraq sanctions - some in admin feared it would work

http://www.stanfordreview.org/Archive/Volume_XL/Issue_3/News/news2.shtml

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Interview with Richard Armitage

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SR: How hard did you and Colin Powell—the media’s “realists”—try to convince the president?


RA: We thought we had convinced the president. Prior to 9/11, Secretary Powell was able, over the objections of many in the administration, to get smart sanctions on Iraq. The reason, I think, some in the administration didn’t want this is they were afraid it would work. But then 9/11 came along and kind of shuffled the deck again. We went back as hard as we could to avoid war, not to oppose the war…It was not that Powell or I opposed the war; we both tried to avoid it. And that’s why Powell prevailed over the president in September of ‘02 to go back to the United Nations and announce that he would seek another Security Council resolution. And the president did that and, after, the secretary told him that if Saddam Hussein accedes this resolution, there is no war, there’s no military action. The president said he understood. You don’t think that was a fight? It was a horrible fight.