Did Secretary of State Colin Powell tell his British counterpart two years
ago that the U.S. government's three top hawks were "f--g crazies"?
Respected Brit journalist James Naughtie reports that in private talks with
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw before the war in Iraq, a deeply frustrated
Powell used just those words to describe Vice President Cheney, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz,
Powell's chief rivals in the Bush administration.

Yesterday, Powell - through a spokeswoman - predictably denied Naughtie's
account, which appears in a new book, "The Accidental American: Tony Blair
and the Presidency."

"This is nonsense," Powell said. "I never said anything like that to Jack,
nor him to me. Anyone who says I did is wrong."

Likewise, after fevered consultations between the State Department and the
Foreign Office Wednesday night and yesterday, a British official E-mailed
me: "These allegations are without foundation. Secretary Powell has never
used these words to the Foreign Secretary."

But Naughtie - a well-known BBC radio personality whose contacts in the
British government are deep and wide - refused to back off.

"I did not use these words lightly," he told me yesterday. "I had
information which convinced me utterly that they had been used. Whatever the
statements issued from the two offices concerned, I stand by the quote."

Naughtie declined to discuss his sources, but he is known to enjoy a
longstanding close relationship with Straw, who teamed with Powell in the
United Nations in a foiled attempt to prevent military action in Iraq.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/230663p-198121c.html

they've been denying the waldorf transcripts forever

Transcripts of a private conversation between Jack Straw and Colin Powell
expressing serious doubts about the reliability of intelligence on Iraq's
banned weapons programme are being circulated in western government circles
where there is a growing feeling that officials were deceived into
supporting the Iraq war.

A document known as the "Waldorf transcripts" - after the New York hotel
where the US secretary of state was staying before making a crucial speech
to the UN security council earlier this year - is described by an official
of one Nato country as "extremely useful".

The description is used in a paper seen by the Guardian as part of an effort
among Nato allies to "rein in some of the less acceptable policies of the
Bush administration".

Mr Straw yesterday denied he had had a private meeting with Mr Powell on
February 4, the eve of the security council meeting where Mr Powell gave a
dramatic presentation of intelligence material purporting to reveal hard
evidence that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons.

The foreign secretary said he did not arrive in New York until the day of
the crucial security council meeting.

Diplomatic sources remain adamant, as the Guardian reported on Saturday,
that Mr Straw did have a private conversation with Mr Powell in which both
men expressed their concerns about the quality of the intelligence they had
been given and how it was being used to bolster their governments' case for
war against Iraq.

The Guardian reported how a meeting between the two men took place at the
Waldorf Astoria hotel shortly before the key security council meeting. On
Saturday, the Foreign Office insisted "no such meeting" took place.

Yesterday the foreign secretary was asked on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost
Programme if there was "any truth to this: did you in January or February
have any conversation with the secretary of state where you shared your
doubts about the strength or probability of the evidence for the claims you
were both making about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? Did you have any
such conversation?"

Mr Straw replied: "Let me deal with that. No I didn't about the quality of
the evidence. What is the case is that I've always been very anxious to test
the evidence and so, I know, was [Colin] Powell and President Bush and our
prime minister, Tony Blair."

The "Waldorf transcripts" document being distributed among Nato capitals
raises new questions about Mr Straw's denials. It is being circulated amid a
flurry of leaks in Washington about Mr Powell's concerns about how
intelligence was being used to try to persuade reluctant Nato allies -
notably France and Germany - to sanction an attack on Iraq.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,968605,00.html

the new RNC mantra:
"EVERYBODY'S LYING ABOUT US"

when will people wake the ***** up and say "BUSHIT" back.