You have learned a lot about the heuristics, biases, and cognitive shortcuts that can lead any of us to wrong conclusions. And you have now watched a substantial portion of Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations, presenting evidence of weapon of mass destruction in Iraq prior to the Iraq War. As we know, there turned out not to be any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Which of the heuristics, biases, and cognitive shortcuts you have learned about might have lead Powell and others to believe so strongly that the weapons were there?
18 thoughts on “Colin Powell’s Speech to the UN”
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This speech seemingly proved to Americans that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while also linking Saddam Hussain to al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, Americans and US representatives did not scrutinize the evidence presented, and instead relied on peripheral cues to shape their attitudes.
Powell and his audience clung to mental shortcuts while forsaking evidence and reliable details. Powell constantly referred to Iraq as a whole in his speech. Unfortunately, due to 9/11 and other tragedies, Americans stereotype Iraqis and other middle easterners as a threat and even as terrorists. Those proven to be terrorists have become representatives of the nation as a whole. When this happens, confirmation bias kicks in. Evidence is collected to match that representation and related beliefs. All contradictory evidence is dismissed.
A very powerful principle of influence is the reliance on authority. This cognitive shortcut led to the uncomfortable results of Stanley Milgram’s experiment, and may have also influenced Colin Powell’s audience. Titles and positions of power give credibility. Average Americans trust cabinet members and high ranking government officials, because it is assumed that they have greater access to information than anyone else. Powell’s audience surely fell victim to his authority. He was secretary of state, so he was believed.
Of the heuristics, biases, and cognitive shortcuts we have learned about, an illusion of validity and biases of imaginability may have lead Powell and others to believe so strongly that the weapons were in Iraq. In terms of the illusion of validity, its likely that the evidence selected and used in Powell’s UN address was believed to support the argument for WMD’s being located in Iraq. In communications among Iraqi military officers, its implied that they are hiding something suspicious or behaving suspiciously, but the listeners are unsure of what that is or why. Listeners were confident that the conversations pertained to WMD’s, but had no actual evidence to support their claims.
Regarding these communications, I would also believe that the concept of biases of imaginability plays an important role. Due to the frequency and number of communications made among Iraqi military officers that pertained to “suspicious behavior”, this lead to the assumption that WMD’s were being secretly hidden in Iraq. It was implied or assumed that these communications were connected and related to the same subject of hiding WMD’s from UN inspectors. The existence of suspicious behavior should not have lead to the conclusion that WMD’s were located in Iraq in the same way that if a person is behaving suspiciously, they therefore must be up to no good.
From his speech to the United Nations, we can see that Collin Powell uses intercepted phone calls as evidence that the Iraqi government is hiding WMDs from inspectors. This constitutes a confirmation of bias – a tendency to look for information that confirms your beliefs and dismiss facts that proves us wrong.
From the intercepted phone calls, we hear the individuals saying “we evacuated everything”. Does that mean that they are hiding the weapons from the inspectors? According to Collin Powell, yes. In reality, it could truly mean that they intact got rid of all their WMDs like required.
We also hear another conversation were they say “we have a modified vehicle”. Again, according to Powell, that means they are trying to hide the WMDs from the inspectors.
It is clear that they are looking for information that will conveniently fit their idea that Iraq still had weapons of mass destruction and the U.S had to intervene.
Not only were they convinced, they also sold this idea to the American public and congress to gain permission to invade Iraq.
Colin Powell repeatedly defines ambiguous phrases to fit his own definition. In part 2, he states that every claim he brings is reinforced by evidence and they are not assertions. Given the American government’s disposition towards Iraq at the time, the government made strong assumptions about what the Hussein regime was hiding given their history with disobeying UN resolutions and the distrust the US already had for the Iraqi government. Colin Powell utilized peripheral cues and confirmation bias to back up his claims by pointing out the Iraqi government’s refusal to adhere to UN resolutions and by focusing on the ambiguity of certain terms used in taped phone calls.
Leaving all other logic behind, the heuristic approach that the United States took, via public approval following Powell’s speech, was effective and perhaps justifiable. The U.S. believed that there was a possibility that an enemy was developing weapons that would endanger America’s citizens and allies. Powell, though he stated he could be to rally public support, did not know if the plan of action was fully supported by evidence of Iraq’s WMDs. However, the administration clearly felt that the mere suspicion of the weapons was a justifiable reason to ask the international community for its support.
Now, we know that the operation fulfilled its mission, yet created the consequence of a power vacuum. Today, we are battling much greater demons in the region like ISIS. However, even if our fears of Iraq’s development of the weapons turned true, Powell’s speech proved bias. He appealed to the international community to join the U.S. (in some cases literally), but his sincerity for world safety was not well founded. Rather, his biased, and perhaps justified interest was securing the safety of the U.S. It is his ambiguous statements that point to incontrovertible evidence that makes his speech so infamous, as he didn’t appeal to other powers by articulating the concerns stated above. Instead, he misinformed the international community, not trusting (consciously or subconsciously) other nations to consider what was in their best interest.
In Colin Powell’s speech to the U.N., there is a constant urging that “these are facts,” and “this is not speculation.” But the facts presented, the individual pieces of information, were precisely that—cherry picked bits of information from sources he could only verify by saying they were verifiable. It strikes me as something from the DHMO exercise from last week, such that evidence of something’s existence seems like evidence enough to come to some detached conclusion.
Confirmation bias is the first thing that comes to mind as I watch the speech. These cherry-picked facts seem all too convenient when considered on whole. Each example pointed to something that was not happening, which somehow justified that something was happening. The fact that Iraq had misled us in the past and had operated outside the bounds of their misleading was brought forth as fact that it was happening again.
I can only imagine the cognitive dissonance Colin Powell might be going through now, knowing the ramifications of these beliefs and subsequent behavior.
When watching Colin Powell’s speech to the UN on evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, both obedience to authority and availability came to mind.
At the beginning of the speech, Powell referred to testimony from doctors at previous UN sessions. Calling back to this testimony, he is using the authority of these academic experts in their fields to convince the UN of Iran’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. Similar to the Milgram Experiment, the authoritative figures’ opinion is taken as truth because they have put it forward with confidence and credentials.
Powell’s belief in the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq may link back to the concept of availability. This speech took place in 2003, so the events of 9/11 were still within recent memory. Powell, like many Americans, might have been more willing to jump to generalized conclusions about the Middle East and it’s desire to destroy western culture based on both availability and the “representatives” that carried out the attacks on 9/11.
After watching these three clips and reading Tversky and Kahneman, I think that the representativeness heuristic is applicable. In particular, the section that sheds light on this speech is the insensitivity to prior probability of outcomes and how the quality or absence of evidence has an impact on how outcomes are ignored or considered. The section on the misconceptions of regression is also helpful in understanding how these decisionmakers believed that weapons existed.
I also think that the judgment heuristic of availability also explains the biases that affected decisionmaking here. The bias of imaginability is helpful in understanding how risks are framed. I also think phenomenon anchoring had a role to play in this decisionmaking process, because if decisionmakers are given the starting point for discussion, then their thinking tends to be less flexible and not as open to debate, discussion, or questioning.
Colin Powell went into the discussion with a well established view of Iraq. He mentions numerous previous problems, and endless extra chances provided to the regime. Confirmation bias is present throughout – Powell knew that Iraq was not cooperative in the past, he was looking for information that would prove ongoing violations.
Powell also uses his authority in making emphasis. Repeating bits like “No effort” multiple times to convince the public that everything is even more plausible because he’s an authority on the subject. Also, according to Cialdini’s 6 Principles, there’s a lot of Powell using consistency to prove his point repeatedly.
In terms of Tversky and Kahneman’s Heuristics, there is a lot of bias for recent events (crucial for current event decisions) and judging a few conversations as a basis for asserting the presence of an entire stockpile of WMDs.
“Every statement I make today is backed up by sources. Solid sources.” -Colin Powell
Colin Powell’s UN speech is a great example of the US government both exhibiting and taking advantage of heuristics, biases and cognitive shortcuts to make the case to go to war in Iraq. Whether you believe the Bush administration itself was limited by faulty evidence and reasoning or that the administration actively misrepresented their motives for going to war, the UN speech helped to bring the American public on board utilizing heuristics, biases and cognitive shortcuts. Congress had already approved war in Iraq by that time, with little oversight & deliberation, going on the authoritative persuasion of the administration. Since a behavior decision had already been made, the American public may have been looking for evidence to address cognitive dissonance and have their beliefs/attitudes match their behavior. This is similar to the example of how a child might not originally think their blue-eyed neighbor as a bad person but could begin to believe it simply because of the behavior rules enforced by their parent not allowing them to play together. Since war was already at hand, the administration could use flimsy, cherry-picked evidence to create cognitive consistency – the idea that Saddam Hussein had WMD’s and was involved with al Qaeda (and in effect, shared responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, deserving to be taken to war).
In addition to consistency, the UN speech utilized Caldini’s authority & liking principles to make their case. Not only was Colin Powell the Secretary of State, but he also had more of a reputation of being a reasonable person, skeptical and not war-hungry. He was chosen to deliver the message to both speak with authority and strengthen the optics of appearing to present a rational argument (as opposed to George Bush who had more of a global reputation as being a cowboy ruled by passions, exemplified by the post 9/11 phrase “you’re either with us or with the terrorists.”). Powell actively furthered the optics by repeating phrases about how what he was presenting were facts and not conjecture or speculation.
Powell’s argument pointed to past behavior, information about what chemicals Iraq possessed more than 20 years previously, and intercepted conversations that indicated that Iraq was hiding something from UN inspectors. None of these presented proof that Iraq was actually in the possession of and hiding serious weapons of mass destruction. In that sense, the speech also utilized the heuristic examples of representatives, availability and adjustment and anchoring. Powell presented evidence from lone Iraqi “defectors” as though it is ok to trust the evidence just because it is coming from a defector (implying defectors as a representative class could be thought of as trustworthy). He pointed to the amount of chemicals in Iraq’s possession during the Iran/Iraq war in the 80’s and the Persian Gulf War in the 90’s (pre-sanctions & UN monitoring), which basically used adjustment and anchoring to make the public overestimate the current levels of chemical possession. He also exploited the availability principle by holding up a little vial of anthrax, having the public remember recent scares to again overestimate the threat posed by Iraq.
The mode of cognitive shorthand which seems to be most at play here is consistency. Many people within the administration and Powell himself had already decided that WMDs must exist in Iraq. Once they had convinced themselves it was no stretch to bend what may have been otherwise innocuous intelligence to their will. A phone call about a modified truck is interpreted as a sign of deception and proof that they must be hiding something (and we all know what that must be).
The other factor at play here is scarcity. Particularly, a perceived scarcity of time. Powell at several points make reference to how quickly Iraq’s WMDs could be developed and implemented, giving the misperception of urgency, and the need to remove Saddam Hussein.
Watching these speeches was a great demonstration of how human beings have limitation on human reasoning can have major affect on decisions that affects the lives of many. This speech led many people in the United States to believe that there was Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. As human beings we are limited when it comes to reasoning many biases, heuristics and cognitive shortcuts were used to mislead the country.
Colin Powell relied on many forms of evidence that never conclusively showed people that Iraq had WMD’s. One of the main reasons we believed many of the evidence that were presented to us was because he relied on his authority and the authority of others and his own authority. He was able to mislead us because of his own use of authority as an expert on this issue or a four star general in the United States Army and the 65th Secretary of State. These titles of authority caused many of us to depend on him for his expertise. A good example of this was the photo he used. He claimed that these photos were extremely complicated and it would take years of training for anyone to understand it so he would take the liberty of explaining it for us. With his authority he was able to build what seemed to be logical arguments on a vague amount of information that could have been used to explain anything. This is observed from the intercepted phone calls we can hear that individuals saying “we evacuated everything”, to Powell it means that WMD’s were evacuated but in fact this could mean everything and anything was evacuated. If he was not a well respected General or person in the eyes of the American public at the time he made this speech there is a possibility that this could been ignored or examined more carefully.
In his speech to the UN, Secretary of State Colin Powell allows his position to speak for itself while arguing Iraq was in possession of WMDs.
The Secretary of State heavily relies on cognitive shorthand to support his argument. No only does he refer to Anthrax scare of 2001 to keep its memory fresh in his audience’s mind, he also uses a simple proof formula to support his cause: America fights the bad guys with WMDs, Iraq has WMDs, therefore America must fight Iraq.
It is important to note how clear his language and speech are, so much so that the average American watching the speech in her television would have no trouble following. Powell does not use an advance vocabulary nor is he verbose. Clearly this is a very well-written, strategic plan.
Consistency is described in our cognitive shorthands reading as “…the impulse to bring our beliefs, values, and attitudes into line with what we have already done or decided.” Cognitive consistency was used to support the perception that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because the intelligence Powell presented to the United Nations was selected strategically to showcase the illusion of validity.
The use of authority in Powell’s speech is also clear. Powell, a powerful authority figure, was poised to influence by just by his sheer position as secretary of state. Furthermore, Powell cites evidence from different countries and experts, attempting to add the effects of the authority shorthand to further validate his argument.
Resolution 1441, Eye witness testimony, satellite imagery coupled with multiple nations UN security counsel endorsement of Col. Powell convinced the world of a threat that never existed to begin with thus reaffirming a strong belief held even back then; that this was a classic case of heuristics and cognitive shortcuts meant to deceive and promote distrust to achieve a political goal.
The language throughout, although clearly understood lacked depth and meaning. The references very vague and not concrete. it encapsulates Traversky’s and Kahneman statement of the ‘illusion of Validity’ perfectly in the sense that this dialogue even before it had ended had one purpose, to sway minds as opposed to reach at any mutual or productive end.
Colin Powell uses confirmation bias, which is a tendency that people use to look for information that confirms the bias that they are already pre-dispositioned for. In this case Powell believed that there were weapons of Mass destruction in Iraq. He had been pre-disposed due to past events where Iraq did have weapons they were hiding. In this speech he is using a dialog between 2 Iraqi soldiers and interpreting the dialog to fit his predisposed opinion that there were weapons being hidden. He also used maps that he claimed showed where the weapons were presumed to be, and then no weapons found upon a search. He was using Americas vulnerability from the September 11 attacks to mend any information he had to confirm his belief that Iraq was hiding weapons. He also uses one of Caldini’s principles of influence, authority to justify his belief that the weapons of mass destruction are being hidden by Iraqi’s. He uses his political influence as a person in charge to show this so called proof of these weapons existence and shows to the average American how he is correct and how all of the evidence points to these weapons being hidden. Even most of the representatives at the U.N are seen shaking their heads in awe of this theory. He even mentions how he has “solid sources” to back up all of his claims, but never actually reveals what those sources are. He also says there is undisclosed information, information that cannot be revealed to the public, showing how his position is leading him to more information that proves his theory and the public should believe him because he has access to that information.
Secretary Powell’s speech to the United Nations can be viewed in several ways, depending on how we classify the exercise he was engaged in on behalf of the Bush Administration. If we classify the speech as a predictive effort to honestly assess the likelihood that Saddam Hussein’s regime was hiding illegal weapons of mass destruction, then certainly the speech displays many of the biases and cognitive shorthands that we read about this week, for example, the “consistency” cognitive shorthand, by which a decision had already been made to order an invasion of Iraq based on minimal hard evidence, and Secretary Powell was just assembling disparate pieces of information to bring everyone into line with that decision. We can also observe the authority cognitive shorthand, since Powell repeatedly referred to expert weapons inspectors (even though at least one of them, Hans Blix, said shortly after the US invasion of Iraq that there were likely no WMDs). But another way to look at Powell’s speech is not as a demonstration of bias, but as a demonstration of deliberate deception. In this interpretation, the decisionmakers were not just subject to cognitive forces that obscured their logic, but consciously constructed a false narrative to justify a preconceived political and military plan. Either way, historians will not judge these leaders too kindly.
The first thing I think of is the peripheral cues that americans relied on while they were still emotional from 9/11. Colin Powell also uses confirmation bias when interpreting the conversation between the two soldiers. He seemed to be interpreting it in his own way and even adding the tone of the coversation. He also used past behaviour when he discussed what Iraq admitted to in 1995 and how they were surely doing the same thing now. Authority would also have to be the key use in this case because he was such a powerful figure and any evidence he suggested must be correct. The discussion about the satellite images was also very vague and didn’t exactly state how and why the so called experts exlpained their theories of the inspection sites from what they saw. It seemed that Mr. Powell was using recency bias based on prior pictures of sites in this account as well, because he didn’t say that the picture experts felt the same way.
That being said, Just a side note……..
I agree that he cherry picked information and used multiple heuristics, biases, and cognitive shortcuts, but I have to play devils advocate here and say that something in my gut tells me that all of Iraqs 169,000+ square miles that is slightly larger than California, was searched thoroughly by a few inspectors and unimpressive satellite images, Especially since it was well known Saddam did use such weapons on kurds in the early 1990s, and as was said in the video, Iraq did disclose how large of a quantity of chemical weapons they had to the UN in 1995……….just a thought.
Something from the video about needing to play devils advocate when everyone feels the same way.