Powell may have blown lid off debate over war - SpecialsWarOnIraq - www.smh.com.au:

"It began with a simple question during a meeting of Mr Powell and The Washington Post's editorial board on Monday. If the CIA director, George Tenet, told him a year ago what we now know, that there were no stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, would he have advised President George Bush to go to war?

'I don't know,' Mr Powell said. 'I don't know because it was the stockpiles that presented the final piece that made it more of a real and present danger.' And, he added: 'The absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus.'

Democrats were stunned by Mr Powell's blunt response and even some Republicans on Tuesday accused him of trying to walk away from Mr Bush's decision to go to war. "