Quote of the Day

“I am not an expert in health care, or Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, or however you choose to describe it, but I do know this: I have benefited from that kind of universal health care in my 55 years of public life. And I don’t see why we can’t do what Europe is doing, what Canada is doing, what Korea is doing, what all these other places are doing.”

Colin Powell

This a rare time I actually agree with Colin Powell. To think that Powell is to the left of President Barack Obama on health care. I look forward to Powell being called a socialist by tea party bloggers.

Support For Chuck Hagel

Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole has endorsed Chuck Hagel to be the next Defense Secretary.

Chuck Hagel has spent his entire life in service to his country. He volunteered to fight in Vietnam and did so bravely, side-by-side with his brother and earning two Purple Hearts. He served as Deputy Administrator of the Veterans Administration for President Ronald Reagan and was President & Chief Executive Officer of the World USO.

He represented the people of Nebraska in the Senate with honor for twelve years and was a coauthor of the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill. Hagel's wisdom and courage make him uniquely qualified to be Secretary of Defense and lead the men and women of our armed forces. Chuck Hagel will be an exceptional leader at an important time.

Retired Maj. Gen. Roger Blunt has also endorsed Hagel.

Among seasoned security professionals, there is little question Hagel is the right man for the job. He has received broad support from leaders on both sides of the political spectrum, including more than 50 U.S. ambassadors and numerous former national security advisers, including Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Jones and Frank Carlucci. Retired Gen. Colin Powell noted that he’s “a guy who knows veterans, knows the troops.”

This is not idle praise. Hagel’s understanding of the military is informed by his service to this country. He earned two Purple Hearts as a volunteer infantry squad leader in the Vietnam War. When a land mine exploded and nearly killed his younger brother, Hagel dragged him to safety, suffering blown eardrums and severe burns. Reflecting on that experience, he noted, “I’m not a pacifist. I believe in using force, but only after a very careful decision-making process.” Contrary to some of his critics, Hagel will not shoot first and ask questions later on issues of war and peace.

Sen. John McCain admitted that holding up Hagel's confirmation was political payback for Hagel's criticism of President Bush's handling of the Iraq war. Senate Republicans are now using an alleged Hagel link to the terrorist group Friends of Hamas. The only problem is Friends of Hamas doesn't exist. It is a bogus organization created by Andrew Breitbart lackey Ben Shapiro. Dave Weigel fact-checked Shapiro's story and could find no proof that the organization actually exists. That didn't stop right-wing media and bloggers from once again being suckered by the people at Andrew Breitbart's blog empire.

Republicans are so obsessed with blocking Hagel's confirmation that they are resorting to conspiracy theories. Hagel is likely going to get confirmed. Republicans made fools out of themselves for nothing.

Quote of the Day

"My party, unfortunately, is the bastion of those people -- not all of them, but most of them -- who are still basing their positions on race. Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists, and the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander-in-chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin, and that's despicable."

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff.

Wilkerson was responding to John Sununu's statement that Powell only endorsed President Obama because he is black.

Colin Powell on Obama

Colin Powell gives President Barack Obama mostly thumbs up on his first two years.

Write A Caption: Colin Powell

Colin Powell joins David Gregory as Washington, D.C. men that should never shake their booty in public.

Hat tip to Tas.

Colin Powell Endorses Barack Obama

Colin Powell grows a spine and endorses Barack Obama.

On the Obama side, I watched Mr. Obama and I watched him during this seven-week period. And he displayed a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge and an approach to looking at problems like this and picking a vice president that, I think, is ready to be president on day one. And also, in not just jumping in and changing every day, but showing intellectual vigor. I think that he has a, a definitive way of doing business that would serve us well. I also believe that on the Republican side over the last seven weeks, the approach of the Republican Party and Mr. McCain has become narrower and narrower. Mr. Obama, at the same time, has given us a more inclusive, broader reach into the needs and aspirations of our people. He's crossing lines--ethnic lines, racial lines, generational lines. He's thinking about all villages have values, all towns have values, not just small towns have values.

Update: the Meet the Press panel discusses how the Powell endorsement hurts John McCain. Joe Scarborough makes a strong case on how the endorsement will help Obama with Florida's retired military voters.



Update: Pam Spaulding has quotes of Freepers dissing Colin Powell. The General partly endorsed Obama because the GOP has become less inclusive. Free Republic is proof of the fringe taking over the Republican Party.

The Neocon Damage

Esquire has a must-read piece about Bush administration Middle East experts Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann efforts to engage Iran. Both were able to get Iranian leaders to talk about opening up relations with the United States. They were defeated at every turn by the administration's neocons. Stephen Hadley outlined a policy that is designed to make Iran not come to the negotiating table.

After the meeting, Hadley wrote up a brief memo that came to be known as Hadley's Rules:

If a state like Syria or Iran offers specific assistance, we will take it without offering anything in return. We will accept it without strings or promises. We won't try to build on it.

It gets worse. Hadley killed Colin Powell's attempts for peace in Israel.

Then the phone rang. It was Stephen Hadley on the phone from the White House. "Tell Powell he is not authorized to talk about a political horizon," he said. "Those are formal instructions."

"This is a bad idea," Leverett remembers saying. "It's bad policy and it's also humiliating for Powell, who has been talking to heads of state about this very issue for the last ten days."

"It doesn't matter," Hadley said. "There's too much resistance from Rumsfeld and the VP. Those are the instructions."

So Leverett went back into the suite and asked Powell to step aside.

Powell was furious, Leverett remembers. "What is it they're afraid of?" he demanded. "Who the hell are they afraid of?"

"I don't know sir," Leverett said.

The road map temporarily got back on track when Crown Prince Abdullah challenged Bush in an amazing exchange.

In the spring, Crown Prince Abdullah flew to Texas to meet Bush at his ranch. The way Leverett remembers the story, Abdullah sat down and told Bush he was going to ask a direct question and wanted a direct answer. Are you going to do anything about the Palestinian issue? If you tell me no, if it's too difficult, if you're not going to give it that kind of priority, just tell me. I will understand and I will never say anything critical of you or your leadership in public, but I'm going to need to make my own judgments and my own decisions about Saudi interests.

Bush tried to stall, saying he understood his concerns and would see what he could do.

Abdullah stood up. "That's it. This meeting is over."

One thing the Bush administration doesn't do is blow off Saudia Arabia. The White House would later scrap the road map plan because Ariel Sharon didn't want to hurt the Likud Party's election prospects.

Rice sat impassively behind her broad desk. "If we put the road map out," she said, "it will interfere with Israeli elections."

"You are interfering with Israeli elections, just in another way."

"Flynt, the decision has already been made," Rice said.

Read the whole article. It's a fascinating study on how the neoconservatives have hurt American foreign policy. The next president will spend his or her time trying to clean up the mess.

Open Letter to George Tenet

Former CIA officers wrote a public letter to George Tenet. They accuse the former CIA Director of using his book to whitewash his role in helping the White House make the case to invade Iraq.

You were not a victim. You were a willing participant in a poorly considered policy to start an unnecessary war and you share culpability with Dick Cheney and George Bush for the debacle in Iraq.

The former CIA officers compare Tenet to Alberto Gonzales. They accuse Tenet of being "a grotesque mixture of incompetence and sycophancy shielded by a genial personality." That is a nice way of saying that Tenet is a useless ass kisser.

The letter also throws the dreaded Curveball at Tenet. The informant got his codename because of his history of lying. An intelligence analyst made an attempt to warn about Curveball's unreliability. He was brushed off.

All those sources are suspect or unreliable, especially the key one nicknamed "Curve Ball," warned the analyst, the only U.S. intelligence official who had met Curve Ball.

The analyst received a dismissive reply. "This war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say, and . . . the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about," replied the deputy chief of the CIA's Iraq task force. The warning was never passed on to Powell or his top aides.

That didn't stop the White House from using Curveball's bogus claims of bioweapons. Tenet and John E. McLaughlin were warned about this information.

Tyler Drumheller, former chief of the CIA European Division, said he and other senior officials in his office — the unit that oversees spying in Europe — had issued repeated warnings about Curveball's accounts.

"Everyone in the chain of command knew exactly what was happening," said Drumheller, who retired in November after 25 years at the CIA. He said he never met personally with Tenet, but "did talk to McLaughlin and everybody else."

Drumheller scoffed at claims by Tenet and McLauglin that they were unaware of concerns about Curveball's credibility. He said he was disappointed that the two former CIA leaders would resort to a "bureaucratic defense" that they never got a formal memo expressing doubts about the defector.

"They can say whatever they want," Drumheller said. "They know what the truth is …. I did not lie." Drumheller said the CIA had "lots of documentation" to show suspicions about Curveball were disseminated widely within the agency. He said they included warnings to McLaughlin's office and to the Weapons Intelligence Non Proliferation and Arms Control Center, known as WINPAC, the group responsible for many of the flawed prewar assessments on Iraq.

The letter points out that Tenet did not stand up to the administration and stop the use of faulty intelligence. Tenet was an active enabler. He could have lobbied members of Congress not to vote for the war resolution. He could have resigned and spoke out. Instead, he sat behind Colin Powell during the Sec. of State's disgraceful United Nations presentation.

Wilkerson said Powell “turned to the DCI, Mr. Tenet, and he [Powell] said, ‘everything here, everything here, you stand behind?’And Mr. Tenet said, ‘absolutely, Mr. Secretary.’ And he [Powell] said, ‘well, you know you’re going to be sitting behind me tomorrow. Right behind me. In camera.”

Tenet had the opportunity to tell Powell the WMD case was not solid. He stood behind. I believe Powell still would have made bogus claims to the U.N. The source is Lawrence Wilkerson and he has been a harsh critic of the administration and publicly disagreed with his friend Powell.

Tenet's book is revisionist history. We will be seeing more of it from other Bushies.