Powell said Afghanistan is moving in a similar positive direction and has made "incredible" progress since late 2001, when the Taliban regime, hosting Al Qaida terrorists, was toppled. The secretary said the Afghan warlords are slowly but surely yielding power to the central government led by President Hamid Karzai.
"[T]he electricity is higher than it was before the war, the oil is starting to flow, the people are getting back to work, newspapers are flourishing, women have entered the workplace and the business place and political life. Kids are back to school. Schools are springing up. The hospital system is coming back to life. The marshlands are filling back up with water in the south. The Kurds are happy with their place in life and are willing to be part of this new nation that is being created. And all of these are good signs. Town councils are forming. Parent-teacher associations are forming," Powell said.
The failure to find WMD stockpiles notwithstanding, Powell said the invasion of Iraq was justified because the operation has put Iraq on a path toward a better future.
He said regardless of the fact that WMD stockpiles have not been found, Saddam Hussein undoubtedly had the intention and capability to produce WMD if he had been able to get out from under the international sanctions on Iraq.
In dealing with questions about the intelligence assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) before the invasion, Powell said the decision to invade was made based on the best information available at the time.
The secretary said the United States was justified in holding the detainees at Guantanamo, observing that they were picked up in Afghanistan, which was then a terrorist country, and that the United States was engaged in protecting itself and other civilized nations from terrorism.
Powell said the United States will examine the charges of mistreatment by the detainees and will "refute them as appropriate."
McDonald questioned Powell about the charges leveled by a recently released British detainee, Jamal al-Harith, who was held at Guantanamo for two years before being repatriated to Britain. Powell responded to assertions that the detainees were chained to their seats and shackled and hooded when being transported to Guantanamo, and that the detention authorities shaved the private parts of the detainees.
"I think that unlikely. I think we have discharged all of our obligations under the Geneva Convention to treat people in our custody, our detainees, in a very, very humanitarian way. Now, it is not a resort area in Guantanamo Bay. But at the same time we did not abuse the individuals who were down there, and we have had visits from the ICRC and other organizations, as well as our organizations, and it is not in the American tradition to treat people in that manner," Powell said.
In an interview with British journalist Trevor McDonald March 15, Powell said the allegation that the Guantanamo detainees were beaten is "unlikely."
Secretary of State Colin Powell says the U.S. military is treating the detainees at Guantanamo Bay in a humanitarian way according to the obligations laid out in the Geneva Convention.
On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States directed an appeals court to reconsider its ruling concerning the claims of four former British Guantanamo captives. The lower court had ruled that the four men were not entitled to bring senior Bush Presidency officials to court, because they were not citizens, and were not detained within the United States, they had no recourse under the United States Constitution.

In its direction, the Supreme Court pointed out that in its landmark ruling in Boumediene v. Bush it ruled that overseas captives were entitled to Constitutional protection. Following its ruling on June 12, 2008 all the current Guantanamo captives were entitled to re-initiate their habeas corpus petitions, which had been stayed following the United States Congress passing the Military Commissions Act.

United States District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan, the judge in charge of setting the rules of procedure for captives' habeas petitions has explicitly allowed former captives to seek relief in the US court system. This is the first instance of former captives whose cases had already been turned down being given renewed access.

The four British former captives were Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal al-Harith. All four men claimed they were captured by bounty hunters who falsely claimed the four men were Mujahideen.    

Al-Harith claimed he was attending a religious retreat in Pakistan when he was captured.
Rasul, Iqbal and Ahmed, childhood friends from Tipton, said they had traveled to Afghanistan to render humanitarian assistance, when the war broke out during a trip they made to Pakistan.

The men reported that they were bound, naked, in painful "stress positions", and bombarded with loud music, which they described as a form of religious persecution.

The four men all claimed that, during their captivity, they observed a copy of the Koran being thrown into a latrine.

The four men were repatriated to the United Kingdom in early 2004, where they were set free.