Colin Powell.......what a waste.

[yourout]

Powell was speaking on CSPAN at some function and I could not help but think what a great Democratic Leader he would have made had he chose to. Instead he will forever be tied to the lie that is Iraq. He is intelligent, articulate, and a presence but now is a paragraph in one of the worst chapters of our history.

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. He also is a Republican....

came out as that about 10 years ago. Pffft.

[Deja Q]

2. A repub, but before lying on Iraq he was eminently respectable.

:cry:

[NEOBuckeye]

5. You lie down with Bushes, you get up with fleas. n/t

[XOKCowboy]

3. He chose his "friends"..

You lay with dogs and you awake with fleas.

He deserves to be remembered as the person that lied to the world and was instrumental in starting the Iraq War.

I have absolutely no pity for him.

[CrackpotAmerica]

4. He also signed the PNAC Charter.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

ON EDIT: His name was there before.... Must have removed it.
Anyone know about that>?

[CrackpotAmerica]

7. Anyway, Any of these names ring a bell?

Elliott Abrams Gary Bauer William J. Bennett Jeb Bush

Dick Cheney Eliot A. Cohen Midge Decter Paula Dobriansky Steve Forbes

Aaron Friedberg Francis Fukuyama Frank Gaffney Fred C. Ikle

Donald Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad I. Lewis Libby Norman Podhoretz

Dan Quayle Peter W. Rodman Stephen P. Rosen Henry S. Rowen

Donald Rumsfeld Vin Weber George Weigel Paul Wolfowitz

[yourout]

12. With luck at least half of that list will....

be indited and convicted of a crime.

[joemurphy]

14. Dan Quayle! What a joke! n/t

[yorkiemommie1]

6. he had his chance to exercise his intelligence

to ask questions. he made his choices. and i have made mine. he gets absolutely no respect from me.

[acmavm]

8. He was tied to his lies about the My Lai massacre long before bush**.

Powell is what he's always been.

[FrenchieCat]

9. If he had chosen to be a Democrat,

he would have been ignored and smeared. Guess he chose the easy way out.....

[neuvocat]

10. He has taken a very, very long and hard fall.

That's what he gets though for his jumping off of the cliff of reasoning. He could have done so much for the black community instead. It is such a shame.

[elfin]

11. He wasted his chance to be

a person of integrity and a true leader - no matter which party.

He should have quit like Eliot Richardson during the Nixon years.

He needs to make a full and abject apology to America for disappointing us and lending his stature to a horrific endeavor.

[frogmarch]

13. Before 9-11

Powell advised PNCers to hold off invading Iraq until a "Pearl Harbor" moment, when the American public would eagerly support the invasion. 9-11 became that moment. Powell's as dirty as the rest of them who used 9-11 as an excuse to invade Iraq.

[BlackVelvetElvis]

15. He was the source?

I've read that before but never could find the source.
Do you have a link somewhere?

On edit: this is addressed to Frogmarch. I'd love to see the source!

[frogmarch]

22. BlackVelvet Elvis

Glad you asked for my source regarding Powell. I was probably wrong to say he was as dirty as the rest of them. Maybe he wasn't...quite.

Here is a one source that might explain my remarks about him. It's a December 12, 2002 article by John Pilger.

http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/WarOnTerror/NewPearlHarbor.asp

Introduction:

Two years ago a project (PNAC) set up by the men who now surround George W Bush said what America needed was "a new Pearl Harbor". Its published aims have, alarmingly, come true.

(snip)

One of George W Bush's "thinkers" is Richard Perle. I interviewed Perle when he was advising Reagan; and when he spoke about "total war", I mistakenly dismissed him as mad. He recently used the term again in describing America's "war on terror". "No stages," he said. "This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq... this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war... our children will sing great songs about us years from now."

(snip)

On the morning of 12 September 2001, without any evidence of who the hijackers were, Rumsfeld demanded that the US attack Iraq. According to Woodward, Rumsfeld told a cabinet meeting that Iraq should be "a principal target of the first round in the war against terrorism". Iraq was temporarily spared only because Colin Powell, the secretary of state, persuaded Bush that "public opinion has to be prepared before a move against Iraq is possible." Afghanistan was chosen as the softer option. If Jonathan Steele's estimate in the Guardian is correct, some 20,000 people in Afghanistan paid the price of this debate with their lives.

It's clear to me that Powell was in on, or at least was aware of, the PNAC plan to attack Iraq - but that he wanted to wait till the timing was right to do it.

[speedoo]

16. The best word to describe him: traitor.

He was a traitor to the troops that were sent to Iraq because of his complicity in starting this war. He is particularly a traitor to those troops sent to Iraq whp previously served under him.

He is a traitor to his country, for playing a major part in starting this war, one that will go down in history as the war that had the greatest negative impact on America's standing in the world, and on our security and economy.

[Ikonoklast]

17. He is now and has always been

a lying ass-kisser. Dishonerable since he was protecting military careers in Viet Nam, and was rewarded for it.

Has not made any good use of his intellect as far as I can see. Just a pleasant face to put before the cameras by his masters.

Knowingly lied to the world about WMD at the UN.

Has good reason to be worried about being indicted re: the Plame affair.

He can go fuck himself.

[La Coliniere]

18. Any person who gets up in front of the United Nations and

intentionally LIES about supposed threats to instill fear and cement the fraudulent cause for war is .......well...........you know what I mean. I have no respect for this man. None.

[Steely_Dan]

19. Remember...

...when a poll was taken on who you had more confidence in Bush or Powell...Powell beat Bush by a wide margin...That was years ago.

-Paige

[zulchzulu]

20. Powell needs to expose Bush and change his historical demise

If Powell would just do what his mind says and not what his soldier's loyalty wants, he could be a real hero historically.

Don't count on it.

[sendero]

21. Exactly..

.... greatness, true historic greatness, was within his reach. He had an opportunity that the vast majority of us could only dream of. But he sold out to his massas.

I can't help but think he will be haunted the rest of his life over what might have been.

Fair enough.

[Tomee450]

23. I no longer have much

respect for Powell. He should have resigned from this administration after he learned what was really going on. I didn't bother to watch him on C-Span.