Colin Powell, a trillion dollars short and four years too late:
(CBS) The United States is losing the war in Iraq but sending more troops to Baghdad is not the best way to change course, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Face The Nation.
Powell said he agreed with the assessment of the Iraq Study Group co-chairmen, Lee Hamilton and James Baker, that the situation in Iraq is “grave and deteriorating,” and he also agreed with recently-confirmed Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that the U.S. is not winning the war.
Powell also says its not too late to turn things around if we put the right strategies in place. Sorry, Colin, but that’s dead wrong. There are no “right strategies” left. And even if there were, you know full well President Bush and Dick Cheney would not implement them. They wouldn’t know a good foreign policy if it came up and bit them in the ass. Basically we have two options left: stay and be a part of an ongoing catastrophe which continues to kill and maim thousands, and displace millions of Iraqis, or leave. Either way, its too late to stop the blood bath which Bush and his cronies unleashed when, with Powell’s willing connivance and full participation in the administration’s disinformation campaign to deceive gullible Americans, they foolishly invaded Iraq in the first place.
Powell is now in full “save my reputation” mode. I wouldn’t listen to anything he has to say about Iraq at this point, because it’s merely self serving bullshit meant to point the finger at anyone other than himself for what went so tragically wrong there. He should have publicly resigned as Bush’s Secretary of State when he lost the battle with the neocons regarding how best to prosecute the “War on Terror.” He knew back in 2002 that invading and occupying Iraq would be a monumental mistake by Bush, and that this error in judgment would be severely compounded by the grossly incompetent ideologues who were given free rein to manage that war.
If Powell had resigned under protest in early 2003, he might have made a difference. At this point, however, his appearances in the media are simply feeble attempts to wipe the bloody stain of Iraq off the carefully crafted marble bust of himself as noble warrior, visionary statesman and ultimate patriot which he and his friends have sculpted over the course of his long career. Unfortunately some stains are permanent. No amount of scrubbing can remove them once the damage has been done.
Powell could have been a hero. He could have stood up to the President and said “Hell no.” Now he’s just another has been who will pop up periodically on our television screens to utter vapid and inane commentary about the state of our country, a country to which he has brought shame and dishonor in spades.
