NYT: Plans for a Fast Getaway Take a Detour (Colin Powell)

[kskiska]

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 - If there is a Washington lesson here, it is don't put your Vette ahead of a vetting.

A 2005 silver-gray Corvette had just been delivered to Colin L. Powell when he got home from the office on Wednesday, his last day on the job as secretary of state. Or so he thought.

Moments later, Mr. Powell found out that he would be in office another week after Democrats delayed the vote on his successor, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser. So there went his plans for spending his first days of freedom tooling around town in his new car, said Kenneth I. Duberstein, Ronald Reagan's last chief of staff and a friend of Mr. Powell.

The car was Mr. Powell's gift to himself for his four years in service to Mr. Bush, Mr. Duberstein added. "It was always his dream to own a Corvette," he said.

Ms. Rice, meanwhile, was left with a group of family and friends who had come to town for the president's inaugural, but also what they thought would be her swearing-in on Thursday afternoon. Among them were Gene Washington, a National Football League official and a former All-Pro wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers, and Genoa McPhatter of Norfolk, Va., Ms. Rice's "Aunt G."

more…
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/22/politics/22cabinet.html?oref=login

[orthogonal]

1. Getting around in style!

The car was Mr. Powell's gift to himself for his four years in service to Mr. Bush, Mr. Duberstein added. "It was always his dream to own a Corvette," he said.

Overheard at Walter Reed Hospital: "Powell got himself a shiny new silver Corvette, and all I got was this lousy prosthetic leg!"

[Stuckinthebush]

2. Really????

A Corvette?

That is his dream car?

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

5. Well, he is a career Army officer... their dreams maybe are

not as big as they might be.

[oasis]

3. A Corvette fueled with the blood of innocents. (n/t)

[Dover]

4. Read the fine print: "This article paid for by Cheverolet".

The article's real purpose is not inform but to SELL American made.

All our 'news' these days is bought and paid for advertising...

[Minstrel Boy]

6. "Blood remains on the hands"

Jimmy Breslin wrote this, on the eve of the invasion.

Blood from the body of a baby bombed to death in Baghdad, blood by the pint, running onto the street as fast as a swift river, has magic in its pure infant cells. Of course you cannot scrub the street clean because the blood from the baby already has covered the street and is in the air.

Blood from a bombed baby in Baghdad goes over the wide choking sands and it crosses mountains and then great land masses and then suddenly, over a channel, it is in Westminster, in London, and people look at the sidewalk and wonder where these large blood spots came from, and the officer on duty in front of 10 Downing Street looks at the door handle and worries, how did this get here without me seeing this and having it cleaned? He has a servant rush to the door with cloth and polish and he wipes the blood and polishes the door handles and then walks off and the guard happens to glance at the door handle and the blood is back, smeared bright new red over the polished handle.

The baby’s blood is off to rush over the ocean, a strange red cloud poised to rain and it floats over the green of the Washington parks and goes down a sloping street to the State Department, where as a man opens a car door for Colin Powell he suddenly notices blood on the door handle and he quickly unfurls a handkerchief and wipes the handle and Powell gets in and the car goes off and the man who held the door is left in the driveway and he sees the red that is still on Powell’s door handle.

When he leaves the car, Powell does not notice the door handle as he touches it himself. The blood red cloud goes over the river to the Pentagon and it suddenly pours on the car that takes Rumsfeld to an appearance, and this time the blood is left on the door handles of both sides. A sergeant wipes. The blood is there when Rumsfeld gets home.

...

In Washington, Rumsfeld stares at the red splotches on both his hands and Colin Powell calls out that there must be something wrong with the soap because it does not get the blood off his hands.




http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0331-11.htm

[The Zanti Regent]

7. That rat bastard will never be able to wash my son's blood off his hands

I hope his dream Corvette turns into a lemon. I want it to break down every time Colinoreo puts his sleazy ass in the seat. I want Colinoreo to have a miserable retirement. I want him persecuted by the ghosts of the soldiers he sent to die and the victims of contra cocaine. I want him to take more and more dope to temporarily escape the hell of his dreams. I want him to suffer for all eternity for brainwashing my only child and sending my son to his death at 19. I want that bastard haunted by my son's ghost for the rest of eternity. The hatred I have for Colinoreo and his sidekick Rice a Phony knows no bounds!

[NYC]

8. I hadn't thought about this part.

I guess Rice counted her chickens before they had hatched.

...It was unclear if Ms. Rice's cheering section stayed in town or left to return another day. National Security Council officials would say only that she was dividing her time between her large corner office in the West Wing of the White House and a transition office on the first floor of the State Department...