TORONTO - March 15 - Will Colin Powell be arrested? That is the question people across Canada are beginning to ask as word spreads of his visit to Toronto on March 15.

WHAT: "Die-In", "Extraordinary Rendition-in", and "Chalk and Awe", to highlight Colin Powell's war crimes

WHEN: 5pm, Wednesday, March 15, 2006

WHERE: Roy Thomson Hall (King Street, just West of University Ave)

WHO: Organized by ACT for the Earth

WHY: Colin Powell Lied: 100,000 Died

According to the principal of Universal Jurisdiction, some crimes are so egregious they can be tried in any court in the world. A case in point is the arrest of Augusto Pinochet in the UK. According to Wikipedia, "The British House of Lords ruled that Pinochet had no right to immunity from prosecution as a former head of state, and could be put on trial." ACT for the Earth contends that the circumstances of Colin Powell's visit to Canada are similar enough to warrant his arrest. The British medical journal the Lancet has estimated that over 100,000 civilians have been killed by the US occupation of Iraq.

According to a 2004 report from the US House of Representatives' Committee on Government Reform, "Secretary Powell made 50 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 34 separate public statements or appearances." The passage of the report pertaining to Colin Powell is included below. The full report which also documents misinformation from George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld is available upon request. ###

Iraq on the Record: The Bush Administration's Public Statements on Iraq
US House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, Minority Staff Special Investigations Division
March 16, 2004

Secretary Powell made 50 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 34 separate public statements or appearances.

Of the 50 misleading statements by Secretary Powell, 1 claimed that Iraq posed an urgent threat; 10 exaggerated Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons; 32 overstated Iraq's chemical or biological weapons capacity; and 7 misrepresented Iraq's links to al Qaeda.

Sometimes Secretary Powell used caveats and qualifying language in his public statements. For example, on March 9, 2003, he said, "Well with respect to the aluminum tubes, we still believe the case is out. The CIA has done a great deal of analysis on those tubes. They are not persuaded they were just for rockets. And, in fact, another nation this week, a European nation, came forward with some additional information that still, I think, leaves it an open question as to what the purpose of those tubes was."[124] Secretary Powell's acknowledgement of differences in this example was not an unqualified statement that only mentioned one side of an intelligence debate.

On numerous other occasions, however, Secretary Powell made unconditional statements about the threats posed by Iraq without disclosing the doubts of intelligence officials. Some of the misleading statements he made included the following:

• "Iraq is now concentrating . . . on developing and testing smaller UAVs. . . . UAVs are well suited for dispensing chemical and biological weapons."[125]
  
  
• "The more we wait, the more chance there is for this dictator with clear ties to terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, more time for him to pass a weapon, share a technology, or use these weapons again."[126]
  
  
• "So far, we have found the biological weapons vans that I spoke about when I presented the case to the United Nations on the 5th of February, and there is no doubt in our minds that those vans were designed for only one purpose, and that was to make biological weapons."[127]

[124] Meet the Press, NBC (Mar. 9, 2003).
[125] U.S. Department of State, supra note 39.
[126] U.S. Department of State, Secretary of State Powell, Remarks at the World Economic Forum (Jan. 26, 2003).
[127] U.S. Department of State, supra note 90.

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