Another book is on the way. This one by Karen DeYoung from the Washington Post to be released October 10th titled “Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell.”
The Washington Post has a long excerpt today. It describes in detail the lead-up to Powell’s speech to the UN prior to the invasion of Iraq. But I find the first few paragraphs to be the most revealing.
ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2004, eight days after the president he served was elected to a second term, Secretary of State Colin Powell received a telephone call from the White House at his State Department office. The caller was not President Bush but Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and he got right to the point.
“The president would like to make a change,” Card said, using a time-honored formulation that avoided the words “resign” or “fire.” He noted briskly that there had been some discussion of having Powell remain until after Iraqi elections scheduled for the end of January, but that the president had decided to take care of all Cabinet changes sooner rather than later. Bush wanted Powell’s resignation letter dated two days hence, on Friday, November 12, Card said, although the White House expected him to stay at the State Department until his successor was confirmed by the Senate….
The president himself made no contact with Powell after Card’s call. For two days, the only person at the State Department Powell told about it was his deputy and friend of decades, Richard Armitage. Powell dropped off his resignation letter, as instructed, after typing it himself on his home computer. (The White House later pointed out a typo and sent it back to be redone.) Loath to reveal either surprise or insult, he used the letter to claim the decision to leave as his own.
So we add to the news coming from Woodward’s book about the Bush Team’s denial and incompetence that they fired the one person who might have had an ounce of integrity left (I know he had squandered most of his integrity at the UN that day – but compared to Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld, he’s a paragon of virtue).
Folks are talking – that seems obvious. Wonder what’s prompting all of this? My guess would be a real fear that the nutjobs need to be stopped from the colossal mistake that an attack on Iran would be.
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I’ll put my money where yours is, Nanc. That it takes a threat of premptive nuclear war to shake leaders into taking any action to stop a literally insane administration from potentially blowing up the whole world speaks volumes about the lack of personal courage and integrity of the rest of our leadership, and their total lack of any genuine committment to the constitution of the country. And these are the folks the citizens of this country voted into office, and then never held accountable for a damned thing.
Now what? I guess we just sit back and wait to learn if it’s all too little too late.
As I watch the “progressive’s” reaction to this news, I find myself in a bit of a minority. I looked at Steven D’s diary and at one on the recommend list at dkos. Everyone seems to be in the mode of whether or not we should be codemning Powell for not saying anything earlier.
I TOTALLY agree with the criticism of Powell, but I think maybe my reaction to hearing this news was a bit different due to my familial connection to a crowd of kool-aid drinkers.
I would predict that, if this news breaks through at all, it will have an impact on independents and moderate Republicans. They have held Powell in high esteem, and hearing that Bush fired him will not be met with criticims of Powell. It could seriously undermine their support of Bush.
We can all be angry that Powell didn’t step up earlier. But lets also recognize that this makes Bush’s ability to attack Iran MUCH more difficult if he cares about having even a modicum of support from US citizens.
I’m thinking that lots of folks are coming out of the woodwork lately – people with whom we might not have a lot in common. But they are perhaps the ones that can stop another crazy march into a disastrous war. Let’s make sure they get heard!!
I’d like to believe that right wingers are open to reason, and the news of Powell’s firing could have an impact, even with so called moderates. But so many things have happened in the last 6 years that should’ve and have given reasonable people plenty of opportunity to see Bush for what he really is and use their votes to remove him, but scandal after scandal, blunder after blunder, lie after lie, still they support him. Sorry for the pessemism but I have no reason to believe that things will be different now than they have been all along.
I totally understand your pessimism Super. And where I’m sharing it right now is in the fact that I had CNN on tv quite a bit today and didn’t see this piece of information even mentioned. It certainly won’t affect people if they don’t hear about it.
Where I still have some optimism is in the fact that so many “establishment” people are speaking out. I heard Woodward on 60 minutes tonight and he was talking about Pappa Bush being so distraught about his son’s failure in Iraq. And I went to Free Republic today and they were bemoaning the fact that Michael Barone is reporting that the CIA seems to be launching an all out effort to bring Bush down. As with Powell, these are certainly not my heros, but I’ll join them all in their angst and efforts!! And more importantly, if all of this stops another war in Iran – that’s at least a few more lives NOT lost in all this madness.
Now, if we could only fire Bush, Rummy, Cheney, and the rest of the devils that run the White House, everything would be just dandy.