Out Damn Blot: A Letter to Colin Powell (a should read)

[ensho]

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/081508a.html


You have said you regret the “blot” on your record caused by your parroting spurious intelligence at the U.N. to justify war on Iraq. On the chance you may not have noticed, I write to point out that you now have a unique opportunity to do some rehab on your reputation.

If you were blindsided, well, here’s an opportunity to try to wipe off some of the blot. There is no need for you to end up like Lady Macbeth, wandering around aimlessly muttering, Out damn spot…or blot.

It has always strained credulity, at least as far as I was concerned, to accept the notion that naiveté prevented you from seeing through the game Vice President Dick Cheney and then-CIA Director George Tenet were playing on Iraq.

And I was particularly suspicious when you chose to ignore the strong dissents of your own State Department intelligence analysts who, as you know, turned out to be far more on target than counterparts in more servile agencies.

It was equally difficult for me to believe that you thought that, by insisting that shameless George Tenet sit behind you on camera, you could ensure a modicum of truth in your speech before the U.N. Security Council. You were far savvier than that.

That is certainly the impression I got from our every-other-morning conversations in the mid-80s, before I went in to brief the President’s Daily Brief to your boss, then-Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, one-on-one.

I saw the street smarts you displayed then. The savvy was familiar to me. I concluded that it came, in part, from the two decades you and I spent growing up in the same neighborhood at the same time in the Bronx.

On those Bronx streets, rough as they were, there was also a strong sense of what was honorable —honorable even among thieves and liars, you might say. And we had words, which I will not repeat here, for sycophants, pimps, and cowards.
-snip-
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read on - the facts are laid out

lay your bets on what Colin will do.

[Warpy]

1. Powell has always been a company man

and will do whatever he thinks the company wants.

Don't expect him to rat out the boss, in other words.

[Octafish]

2. With all DU respect, ensho. That's a must-read.

Consortiumnews, as Bartcop used to say, is the most important site on the web.

Parry and Co. have long-pegged Powell for the smarmy bootlicker history has shown him to be.

McGovern shows respect to the guy's four stars, but Powell needs to wake up and smell the fascism.

[rusty fender]

4. Powell was also present at the torture meeting in the WH

along with Ashcroft, Rice, and others. Powell is a total scumbag. Don't expect him to do anything honorable.

[malaise]

5. Ditto

Great read. I won't hold my breath for Powell to speak the truth

[bertman]

8. It's only "fascism" when you get the shitty end of the stick.

When you get the clean end it's free market democracy.

[PearliePoo2]

3. Holy Crap!

I read the entire letter.
McGovern nails him!
He even asks him if he is too long gone from the Bronx? You did not let anyone use you or make a fool of you and you did not run away when some guy messed with your sister!
Make some popcorn and pass the salt.
Colin...ball's in your court, as they say.

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

6. Wow ! Just wow!

[lunatica]

7. the blot is permanent but

But atonement will ensure that the blot isn't all that's left of his reputation. Without some effort to finally show a shred of decency in his character it will be like the final period at the end of a sentence. That little tiny dot that says 'the end' on the last page of a book.