An Important Reminder about Colin Powell from Chris Floyd

[Cronopio]

http://www.chris-floyd.com/

Just to be clear, Barack Obama's brand-new foreign policy advisor, Colin Powell, wants you to know that he continues to support the decision to launch a war of aggression against Iraq in March 2003 -- an act that, according to principles established by the United States and its allies at Nuremberg in 1945, is a war crime punishable by death.

In fact, the only thing that Powell -- the wise and steady statesman, the "grown-up," the "moderate" -- can find to criticize in the conduct of the war he helped launch is the fact that it wasn't savage enough to begin with. We should have "surged" those sand monkeys from the git-go, he told CNN, as he aligned himself with the genocidal philosophy of noted moderate, grown-up legal philosopher Glenn "Gomer Says Hey" Reynolds, noted for his Augustinian endorsement of the "more rubble, less trouble" school of warcraft. From CNN, here are Powell's words from an exchange with reporters following his endorsement of Obama on Sunday:

"I'm well aware of the role I played . My role has been very, very straightforward. I wanted to avoid a war. The president agreed with me. We tried to do that. We couldn't get it through the U.N. and when the president made the decision, I supported that decision. And I've never blinked from that. I've never said I didn't support a decision to go to war."

Here is one outright lie right out of the gate -- a brazen, blazing, breathtaking lie: "We tried to do that . We couldn't get it through the U.N." This is murderous bullshit of the highest order. Before the invasion, Bush and Powell claimed they were being forced to consider war because of Iraq's alleged non-compliance with past UN demands to destroy its WMD arsenal and programs. In late 2002, the UN duly authorized -- and Iraq accepted -- a vigorous program of inspections to verify compliance -- or discover non-compliance. This process was going on, successfully, with cooperation from the Iraqis, when George W. Bush ordered the UN inspectors out of the country, before they finished their work, so that he could launch a military invasion -- which was now unnecessary by the very criteria that he and Powell had set out publicly.

But the kibosh on the UN process was necessary precisely to preclude the possibility that the inspectors would discover the truth: there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, there were no active programs to develop WMD in Iraq, and all such programs had been dismantled years before. (Both the Clinton and Bush Administrations had mountains of evidence to support this conclusion, and almost nothing to refute it. Yet both encouraged this blood libel to increase in hysterical virulence year after year.) For if the UN had been allowed to complete its work in 2003, then the Bush administration's main public casus belli, the threat of WMD, would have evaporated.

So let's be clear about the facts. Bush and Powell did indeed get from the UN a perfect mechanism for avoiding war with Iraq -- if that had been their goal. Instead, Bush destroyed this process in order to launch the invasion -- and Powell supported that position. He still supports it today. He's "never blinked from it."


Sound familiar?

[Dhalgren]

1. I wonder if there are any other war criminals out there

who might endorse a presidential candidate? Between Obama and McCain just about all of the war criminals, war-mongers, Imperialists, and neo-colonial "burden-bearers" out there have already signed-up. Surely there is one more brute out there who can manage a "Yes we can!" while scrubbing the blood of innocents off his hands...

:puke: