Reaction to Powell’s UN speech has been pretty muted so far. Certainly, it doesn’t seem as if anyone is going to change their position as a result of it. On the whole, I thought Jack Straw did a better job of presenting a case for war. Powell had some significant new evidence but the speech had a lot of weaknesses. Of course, there was no ‘smoking gun’, but the speech was disappointing even relative to the diminished expectations of the recent past.

First, Powell (or the Administration) was unwilling to retreat from, or even pass over, those elements of the US case that have already been made public and have failed to stand up to critical scrutiny, most obviously Saddam’s supposed links to Al-Qaeda, but also claims about Iraq’s nuclear program. Given the weakness of these claims, it’s reasonable to be skeptical about new and untested evidence. Powell would have been better off admitting that the link is unclear, and pointing out that it’s not directly relevant to 1441.

Second, he led off with a telephone intercept which contained no direct evidence about weapons and relied critically on the translation of a single word, which he rendered as ‘evacuate’ (as in ‘weapons were evacuated’). Powell says this means ‘hidden, not destroyed’. I don’t know any Arabic, but we (those of a certain age, anyway) can all remember the fuss about the translation of words like ‘recalcitrant’. I’ll bet dollars to dinars that this will end up in a tangled debate that will confuse even Arabic speakers.

Third, the speech undermined the claim that the really good stuff can’t be revealed because it might tip the Iraqis off with respect to surveillance techniques etc. In what appears to be the most damning intercept (two Republican Guards officers talking about nerve gases) one warns the other that the Americans will be listening. In other words, as I pointed out in a comment that is probably lost forever in the Haloscan, everyone with a telephone and a secret must already be aware that Echelon (the US electronic surveillance system) is listening. The speech itself doesn’t include a full translation of the intercept, so it’s unclear how damning it actually is.

Overall, the speech doesn’t change things much. In the absence of a substantial backdown from Saddam on things like U2 flights and scientist interviews (both mentioned in Powell’s speech) the UNSC will very probably back a US invasion in some form or another, even if there is a delay of six weeks or so.. But this means that such a backdown is more probable than most commentators seem to think.

Update William Safire notes the possibility of a Saddam backdown. He also asserts, as he has done repeatedly, that the CIA has been lying and concealing evidence against Saddam. If Safire doesn’t believe US intelligence evidence, why should anyone else?

Another striking feature of Powell’s speech is that very little of the evidence predates Resolution 1441. This is surprising given the dossier of evidence that was previously circulated. Since that evidence is six months old, most of the problems with releasing it should have been resolved by now. And it was supposedly enough to convince Blair, Howard and others. It would have been good to see this dossier.