The Wolves Start Turning On Each Other

I was reading Michiko Kakutani's review of Bob Woodward' book State of Denial. I quickly remembered Condoleezza Rice's interview with the New York Post. It was her response to Bill Clinton's interview with Chris Wallace.

So I would make the divide September 11, 2001 when the attack on this country mobilized us to fight the war on terror in a very different way. But the notion that somehow for eight months the Bush Administration sat there and didn’t do that is just flatly false. And you know, I think that the 9/11 Commission understood that.

That quote made this excerpt from Kakutani's review seem so outlandish.

For instance, Mr. Woodward writes that on July 10, 2001, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism coordinator, J. Cofer Black, met with Ms. Rice to warn her of mounting intelligence about an impending terrorist attack, but came away feeling they’d been given “the brush-off” — a revealing encounter, given Ms. Rice’s recent comments, rebutting former President Bill Clinton’s allegations that the Bush administration had failed to pursue counterterrorism measures aggressively before 9/11.

The Washington Post has an excerpt of the book. The short version is that none of Woodward's sources take personal responsibility. There is also a lot of contempt for Donald Rumsfeld. He seems as hated within the White House as with the left.

The Post also has an excerpt from an upcoming book on Colin Powell. The not-so-shocking news is that Powell was fired. The section explaining the intelligence the Office of Special Plans gave Powell for the the infamous United Nations speech makes me wonder why Powell ever agreed to the whole mess. My only answer is power. My else would Powell stay in an administration that constantly undermined him.

Personally, I have always felt that Powell was a pathological liar. Here is an old post I wrote about Powell on my old blog. I am reprinting it.

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Fred Kaplan asked the question, "Is Colin Powell melting down?" Kaplan was writing about Powell's behavior while testifying in front of the House International Relations Committee. Powell got testy with Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) over whether or not President Bush was "AWOL" from the National Guard. He then proceeded to yell at a Hill staffer for inappropriately nodding his head.

"Are you shaking your head for something, young man, back there?" Powell asked. "Are you part of these proceedings?"

Brown defended the staffers rights to have an opinion.

Powell snapped back, "I seldom come to a meeting where I am talking to a congressman and I have people aligned behind you giving editorial comment by head shakes."

Fred Kaplan wrote, "It's hard to come up with another explanation for his jaw-dropping behavior last week before the House International Relations Committee." Ezra Klein marveled, "Powell's plummet from internationally respected statesman to muzzled tool has been extraordinary."

Pop quiz: name five things that Powell has done to be considered an internationally respected statesman. I certainly can't think of five instances. The White House had Powell testify to the United Nations because polls showed that the American people feel that the Secretary of State is more honest than Bush. Again, I wonder what Powell has done in his career to earn such a record for integrity.

My Lai

Meadlo told about it later: “So we pushed our seven to eight people in with the big bunch of them. And so I began shooting them all. So did Mitchell, Calley … I guess I shot maybe twenty five or twenty people in the ditch … men, women and children. And babies.”

Some of the GI s switched from automatic fire to single-shot to conserve ammunition. Herbert Carter watched the mothers "grabbing their kids and the kids grabbing their mothers. I didn’t know what to do.”

Seymour Hersh

My Lai 4

1970

Bob Bankard writes a glowing article about Powell. His admiration for the man is obvious. Even though he feels that Powell (then a major) was wrong to try and bury a soldier's letter about My Lai.

Powell's damage control efforts soon proved fruitless and the My Lai massacre burst onto the world stage like an atomic explosion, severely damaging the U.S. war effort in Vietnam.

What made matters more disturbing was that the accused soldiers were serving under Powell's command in Vietnam. Powell interviewed "a few officers" and did not ask Tom Glen (the soldier who came forward) for more information. More than 300 Vietnamese civilians more murdered on March 16, 1968.

Iran-Contra

Former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger was indicted for his role the Iran-Contra scandal. Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh used Weinberger's diary to convict him. Powell was Weinberger's top aide and gave conflicting remarks about diary. Powell said under oath in 1987, "The secretary, to my knowledge, did not keep a diary." After Weinberger's journal was discovered by Walsh in 1991, Powell said that it was no secret that his old boss kept a diary.

Desert Storm

In 1990, Powell cited classified satellite photos that showed 265,000 Iraqi soldiers positioned at the Saudi border. Iraq had just invaded Kuwait and Powell was implying Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to Saudi Arabia. Congress rushed to support the first Iraq war.

St. Petersburg Times reporter Jean Heller investigated Powell's claims of Iraqi troop movemnt along the Saudi border. She purchased satellite photographs for $3,000. She did not find a single Iraqi soldier.

"It was a very big deception," Times reporter Heller told me. "It brings into question how convincing Powell's evidence really is."

Powell did not even believe America should have fought Desert Storm. Ramesh Ponnuru wrote "(Powell) emerged as a national hero from the first Gulf War, even though, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he had opposed showing force to deter Saddam Hussein from invading Kuwait — and then resisted the use of force to undo the dictator’s conquest." Ponnuru feels that Powell got to where he is by "playing the Washington game." He believes that Powell "has never been associated with any brilliant military move or diplomatic breakthrough."

Powell once again backed another Iraq war that he did not believe in. He went to the U.N. with intelligence that has largely been been debunked. He felt that much of the intelligence presented to him was "bullshit." Yet, instead of make a stand, like former former Sec of Treasury Paul O'Neill, Powell marched into the United Nations to give bogus intelligence.

Powell has taken part in some of the worst scandals in recent history. He has been the alleged source of leaks in both Bush administration. The man has shown a political spine that is made of jello. What we are watching now is Powell's history of lies and misdeeds catching up with him.