Because Powell knows as well as anyone that the press in these countries is government controlled and there is no freedom of the press there. He was asked a specific question why the US doesn't ask those governments to stop the incitement. To claim freedom of the press to allow them to print anti-American, anti-semitic incitement as the answer is a big copout. Powell is playing games by making it look like these countries are free etc. when in reality nothing gets printed unless the government approves it.

You ask "Why WOULD they want to say what they think the US wants to hear in English and what they really meant in Arab or something? "

The answer is very simple, money and US support. The US gives Egypt more then 2 billion dollars a year, therefore the government makes nice to the US and in English sounds moderate. The same with Saudia Arabia, Arafat, etc. They don't want to lose US support so in English for the Western media they try to sound moderate.

As to why they don't "double speak" among themselves, the answer is simple, it is easy to doublespeak to the US because very few people in the US speak or read Arabic and therefore it is easy to hide from the West. However, their neighbors do understand Arabic and therefore how would you like them to "doublespeak"?

This is the same person who was against the Gulf War and was largely responsible for leaving Saddam Hussein in power in 1991. Here is a good analysis of Powell's Lousville speech [link|http://www.thenewrepublic.com/120301/editorial120301.html|Louisville Slugger]

"The banality of Colin Powell's address on American foreign policy in Louisville last week was breathtaking.
...
And Powell's comment confirms yet again the premise of his sense of American strategy: so as never to fight the Vietnam way, he wishes always to fight the Gulf way. For the secretary of state, it is 1991 or nothing. But Powell's statement betrays also more concrete errors: that the war in the Gulf, for example, was a "successful war." If we were successful in Operation Desert Storm, it was because we defined our way to success, by excluding the overthrow of Saddam Hussein from our definition of it. In the real world of authoritarian regimes and weapons of mass destruction, we failed. "

What would you have done? The bottom line is that 10 years later Saddam hussein is still in power and still trying to obtain nucear weapons, and may have been the source of the anthrax. I wouldn't call that success.

I agree with you 100% about nuclear weapons. As long as the US maintains nuclear weapons I don't see any justification for teh US objecting to others having them as well. However, the point about Iraq is very simple. 10 years after the Gulf War, Iraq is still a dangerous threat in the region.