Powell Unraveling

[Jack_Dawson]

Our Secretary of State sees the writing on the wall. Just admitted the "insurgents are winning." Thank for the info, Mr. Olbermann.

[LSparkle]

1. Powell knows he's outta there ...

... and he's trying to salvage some cred on the way.

[WolverineDG]

3. too late

i've dumped him in the trashcan of history along with mccain. had a chance to stand up & resign when he knew we were being lied to about iraq. instead, he chose to keep his mouth shut & 1100+ military & countless iraqis are deader than doornails. too much blood on his hands to ever make me look in his direction ever again.

dg

[Jack_Dawson]

4. Agreed

He has as much cred as McCain and Giuliani

[Carolina]

21. actually worse than keeping his mouth shut

he lent his voice and sold his credibility through his UN speech which bolstered the selling of this horrendous invasion and occupation to the sheeple.

Fuck him and his FCC-destroying son.

[SharonAnn]

35. * wouldn't have gotten elected (sic) without Powell supporting him.

Powell's support convinced a lot of moderates to vote for GWB even though he was right-wing and inexperienced in foreign policy.

[xpat]

42. He has no credibility

Remember, Powell is the guy who engineered the My Lai cover-up until Sy Hersch exposed it.

[BootinUp]

2. Glad KO reported that.

I saw a post here yesterday with that quote.

Most Americans will never hear it though.

[YDogg]

5. Powell is a ...

... tool. Too bad. He had some redeeming qualities, until he sold his soul to the devil.

[Jack_Dawson]

6. Welcome to DU, YDogg

:hi:

:toast:

:beer:

[YDogg]

41. Thanks ... Great to really be here ...

... after lurking for about a year. :party:

[MichiganVote]

7. There's an old denigrating name for Powell- dink

Powell is a dink.

[eauclaireliberal]

8. RE:"Powell Unraveling"

"But...but...I worked for the CLINTON administration!"

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,264666,00.jpg


"WH-WH-WH-WAAAAAAHHHHH!"

[90-percent]

9. powell

could have been a great man if he had the courage to resign instead of serve the bush admin by lying to the un during the run up to this illegal war.

we now know hes just a whore with no principles except serving his master.

shows you the importance of having principles and sticking to them. hes toast and deserves to be. This generations Robert McNamara

-85%

[SOS]

45. At the very least

Powell should have refused to deliver that boatload of lies to the UN.
He could have said "It's Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz who planned this idiotic invasion, let them present it to the UN".

[SoCalDem]

33. Poor naive Baby.. I remember his Shirley Temple moment in congress

He was so sweet and innocent back in those days.. Pastiche made these for me..summed him up to a tee..

General Lollipop

[tsuki]

10. Don't flame me,

but I think that Powell stayed on long after his welcome was gone. Long after he had been pushed aside. I feel he stayed to try to reason with the unreasonable. To talk sense to the unsensible. I feel like his statements these past few days have been to alert others that the present regime is bankrupt.

[Robbie67]

11. yes, but will anyone listen?

most people need to be hit over the head with a baseball bat to "hear" anything

[Kanary]

12. That may be. Too Little WAaaay too late.

He deserves all the contempt that comes his way the rest of his life.

He'll NEVER be able to wash the blood off his hands.

Fuck him.

Kanary

[left is right]

13. Nope! Nope! Nope!

He stayed only because it guaranteed his son would have a job in this tight economy. Powell must have been afraid that he would have to support his son and grandchildren.

[NewJeffCT]

14. I actually agree

I think he was also afraid that if he left, then it would really be only neocons - the inmates running the asylum, so to speak.

[tsuki]

16. I think that also.

He is first, and foremost, a soldier, and who would be left to speak for the soldiers?

[DivinBreuvage]

34. Who would speak for the soldiers? Not the Colin Powell who denied

Gulf War Syndrome. He is first and foremost a sellout, an opportunist, and a tool.

[American Tragedy]

39. Oh right, a lot of good he did

I will never forget his performance in front of the United Nations, when he displayed those blurred pictures of trucks and gave that ridiculously weak presentation. Nobody tried harder and pressed their own credibility to make the case more than Colin Powell.

I am sick of people trying to apologize for him. He deserves as much blame as anybody in this.

[SarahB]

43. I won't either.

Where were his principles then? That was the time to speak up and speak the truth.

[sendero]

18. Powell...

.... could have really made a difference BEFORE the war. He could have either fought the plans tooth and nail and gotten "resigned", or he could have resigned and said he didn't believe in the Bush* administrations plans.

He did neither, and instead took to lying his ass off in front of the UN and elsewhere.

I have even less respect for him than I do the delusional neocons - they actually believed their own bullshit, Powell had the knowledge and experience to know better but did nothing.

The decision to go along has now ended his career IMHO, and will haunt him forever. As well it should be.

[Kanary]

24. That's exactly what he did..... he SUPPORTED THIS WAR!

I'm fuming when I see this crap about what a great soldier he was, so he supported this war so he could be a voice for soldiers?

It just doesn't get any crazier than that.

No wonder this country is completely fucked up. Some people will swallow anything.

Kanary

[Carolina]

25. He would have made more of a statement

and had far greater impact had he resigned in the lead up to the war and explained, as he said confidentially: this is bullshit!

[DrBB]

26. Bullshit. If he had RESIGNED instead of giving that lying UN speech

...he could have derailed the WORST FOREIGN POLICY DECISION IN US HISTORY. It could only be done with him on board, and they used him and treated him like a patsy and he let them do it.

It is the DUTY of a Sec. State to resign under such conditions. There is a long and honorable tradition in Britain of this, and it could have been done--should have been done--in this case, for the good of the country and the world.

Instead he played the Good Soldier, just like he did when he played along with the whitewash of My Lai. Good team player, that Colin Powell. Real loyal guy.

Fuck him. He had a chance to make a historic difference, and he fucking blew it.

[txindy]

29. To change things from the inside? Possible.

I doubt Powell ever imagined an admin. so corrupt that it couldn't be reasoned with even over simple things. Sadly, he found one.

[mitchum]

32. No, he stayed on and continued to do their bidding in order to feather...

the nest for his worthless son. Blood IS thicker than the blood of others' sons. He has no dignity or credibility.

[ProfessorGAC]

44. Then, He Should Just Say It

If he thinks that, he should just say so. Quit, like O'Neill did, and say, "I quit because the lunatics are running the asylum."

He didn't. That makes him complicit.
The Professor

[greblc]

15. I truly believe he tried to bring common sense to the president.

But just like all the others who tried to do so he was shut out of the circle.
I imagine he lost the presidents ear long ago. Who knows why he hasn't resigned?

[Disturbed]

19. Bulshit!!!

Powell is and has always been a Right Wing lackey. He knew the garbage that he spewed at the UN was fabricated crap from the OSP. If he valued honor he would have refused to lie to the world and resigned. He made his choice. He is a disgraceful person.

[greblc]

30. 2 L's and I disagree with you that he's a lackey.

[JohnyCanuck]

36. From his days in VietNam he has been a brown nosing toady.

Read how he helped cover up war crimes in Viet Nam here.

www.consortiumnews.com/archive/colin3.html

But a test soon confronted Maj. Powell. A letter had been written by a young specialist fourth class named Tom Glen, who had served in an Americal mortar platoon and was nearing the end of his Army tour. In a letter to Gen. Creighton Abrams, the commander of all U.S. forces in Vietnam, Glen accused the Americal division of routine brutality against civilians. Glen's letter was forwarded to the Americal headquarters at Chu Lai where it landed on Maj. Powell's desk.

"The average GI's attitude toward and treatment of the Vietnamese people all too often is a complete denial of all our country is attempting to accomplish in the realm of human relations," Glen wrote. "Far beyond merely dismissing the Vietnamese as 'slopes' or 'gooks,' in both deed and thought, too many American soldiers seem to discount their very humanity; and with this attitude inflict upon the Vietnamese citizenry humiliations, both psychological and physical, that can have only a debilitating effect upon efforts to unify the people in loyalty to the Saigon government, particularly when such acts are carried out at unit levels and thereby acquire the aspect of sanctioned policy."

Glen's letter contended that many Vietnamese were fleeing from Americans who "for mere pleasure, fire indiscriminately into Vietnamese homes and without provocation or justification shoot at the people themselves." Gratuitous cruelty was also being inflicted on Viet Cong suspects, Glen reported.

<snip>

The letter's troubling allegations were not well received at Americal headquarters. Maj. Powell undertook the assignment to review Glen's letter, but did so without questioning Glen or assigning anyone else to talk with him. Powell simply accepted a claim from Glen's superior officer that Glen was not close enough to the front lines to know what he was writing about, an assertion Glen denies.

www.consortiumnews.com/archive/colin3.html

[American Tragedy]

40. Why hasn't he resigned?

The same reason that the men who sat in the bench at Nurnberg did not resign. Cowardice.

[welshTerrier2]

17. Former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

sheesh ... now he decides to tell the truth ...

this is a major national news story that came just a little too late ...

[Jack_Dawson]

20. Too Little Too Late

He had his chance for integrity - he blew it.

[KlatooBNikto]

22. Harry Belafonte had Powell pegged right at the beginning of the Iraq

fiasco.He used the Uncle Tom label on Powell and was immediately castigated for saying that by the toadies in the mainstream media.But Belafonte has been proven right by events.

[leftofthedial]

23. he thought he'd be the first black President of the US

now he's just hoping to stay out of prison

[walldude]

27. I was thinking he could roll over

on the administration to stay out of jail.

[leftofthedial]

28. that might work

although he is not in the inner circle

[mitchum]

31. Powell is a whore with a heart of tinfoil

[American Tragedy]

37. As ever, it's a little late to be reflective, isn't it?

Just like McNamara is finally waking up and facing the truth in the ensuing decades. Repentance is wonderful, but really, thousands of people are still dead. They paid the ultimate price for mistakes that could have been prevented, if powerful men had only listened to those of us who knew and saw what was to happen. Nothing deters further action more than the dereliction of an authority figure, the Milgram studies proved that, and that is how much power Powell wielded and squandered.

There is simply no excuse. These are adults, very powerful and wealthy adults with access to the greatest minds and the highest education. What's the worst that could have happened to them personally, if Powell or McNamara or the dozens of others who just went along with it had resigned years earlier? They would still be alive, and still living far better than most Americans. The stakes for them were mere abstractions manifested by their own cowardice, unlike the very concrete costs that we suffer in Iraq.

The pride and profession of one is a lot cheaper than the blood of many.

[deadparrot]

38. So when's his tell-all book coming out?