Intro: "Has there been a more vastly overrated person in the past 50 years than Colin Powell? He helped cover up My Lai. He did his part to make sure that the Iran-Contra mess never came fully to light. He buckled under to chickenhawk bullies in the Bush White House and did his part to lie us into a destructive war with a speech to the U.N. that he knew was based on stovepiped bullshit from people he already didn't trust."
Colin Powell addresses the UN Security Council five weeks before the US-led invasion of Iraq, 02/05/03. (photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Colin Powell Owes Us an Apology
15 May 12
as there been a more vastly overrated person in the past 50 years than Colin Powell? He helped cover up My Lai. He did his part to make sure that the Iran-Contra mess never came fully to light. He buckled under to chickenhawk bullies in the Bush White House and did his part to lie us into a destructive war with a speech to the U.N. that he knew was based on stovepiped bullshit from people he already didn't trust. And still, people trust him and revere him and, I have no doubt, if he came to them shilling another war, they'd salute and agree with him as devoutly as they did back in 2003, when he was before the UN talking about those lagoons of anthrax consomme that didn't really exist.
And now, of course, he's back with another book in which he polishes his own apple to a high gloss while ducking his responsibility for the greatest foreign-policy foul-up of our time. And he's still talking like a hapless apparatchik:
"By then, the President did not think war could be avoided," Powell writes. "He had crossed the line in his own mind, even though the NSC [National Security Council] had never met - and never would meet - to discuss the decision."
The president "didn't think war could be avoided"? Jesus H. Christ on a 10-day contract, at what point in his presidency did George W. Bush try to avoid a war with Iraq? Paul O'Neill has told us that he was spoiling for that fight almost immediately after the theft of the elect... er... the inauguration was complete. Donald Rumsfeld was talking about it while the towers were still burning. Dick Cheney was parceling out Iraqi oil fields almost from jump. The Downing Street Memos track it back to 2002. There was no "decision" made to go to war with Iraq because the entire administration was the decision. The passive voice is the sound of a true career underling trying to keep his job.
But the tap-dancing on his UN speech, the one that had liberal hawks like Richard Cohen all swoony, is an insult to history. Powell 'fesses up that the speech was "one of my most momentous failures, the one with the widest-ranging impact," but it is also not his fault. "Any public official" would have made that case, especially if they wanted to keep their phoney-baloney jobs. Remember that Cheney told Powell he should give the speech because Powell could afford to lose a few points off his approval numbers and, instead of spitting in that vile old vampire's eye, Powell went out and... gave the speech. There apparently is almost nothing a superior can do to this guy that makes him angry, but nasty bloggers piss him off.
"I get mad when bloggers accuse me of lying - of knowing the information was false. I didn't."
Even assuming that's true, which I don't, not entirely, anyway, the question remains why in the hell didn't he know the information was false. He knew that some of what he was being fed by the White House was absolute moonshine. There are accounts of him literally tearing up intelligence reports and throwing them on the floor, and calling them "bullshit." So at that point, he knew he was being pushed to put his credibility on the line before the world on behalf of a case for war that he knew already was at least partly cooked. Is he the least suspicious person on the planet?
Sorry, you don't get a do-over on this one. You gave the speech. You made the case. It was all a lie, which you must have at least suspected at the time. Hundreds of thousands of people died, or were wounded, or were displaced. An apology is in order. In fact, several.
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He was Golda Meir's bodyguard. She appointed him to track down and bring to
justice the Palestinian terrorists who took the Israeli athletes hostage and
killed them during the Munich Olympic Games.
In a lecture in New York City a few weeks ago, Aviv shared information that
EVERY American needs to know----but that our government has not yet shared
with us.
Aviv predicted the London subway bombing on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox
News stating publicly that it would happen within a week. At the time,
O'Reilly laughed and mocked him saying that in a week he wanted Aviv back on
the show. But, unfortunately, within a week the terrorist attack had
occurred.
Juval Aviv gave intelligence (via what he had gathered in Israel and the
Middle East) to the Bush Administration about 9/11 a month before it
occurred. His report specifically said that they would use planes as bombs
and target high profile buildings and monuments. Congress has since hired
him as a security consultant.
A CIA Asset named Michael Riconisueto (sp) also gave Colen Powell the names of the hijackers at least one month before the attach of 9-11 Why wasn't anyone interested?
The whole "WTC 7 didn't get hit by an airplane, so why did it fall down if it wasn't controlled demolition" argument is an intentional distraction meant to obfuscate the real questions that have never been answered.
Anyhow, i guess when you get caught up in an administration like Bush/Cheney's it is very hard to break out, and you end up lying, maybe eloquently, and getting all these people killed.
Sad, but i guess the righteous anger of Charles Pierce is right on point.
Behind Colin Powell's Legend -- My Lai
By Robert Parry & Norman Solomon
[...]
While a horrific example of a Vietnam war crime, the My Lai massacre was not unique. It fit a long pattern of indiscriminate violence against civilians that had marred U.S. participation in the Vietnam War from its earliest days when Americans acted primarily as advisers.
In 1963, Capt. Colin Powell was one of those advisers, serving a first tour with a South Vietnamese army unit. Powell's detachment sought to discourage support for the Viet Cong by torching villages throughout the A Shau Valley. While other U.S. advisers protested this countrywide strategy as brutal and counter-product ive, Powell defended the "drain-the-sea" approach then -- and continued that defense in his 1995 memoirs, My American Journey. (See The Consortium, July 8)
[...]
Powell reported back exactly what his superiors wanted to hear. "In direct refutation of this [Glen's] portrayal," Powell concluded, "is the fact that relations between Americal soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent."
Powell's findings, of course, were false. But it would take another Americal hero, an infantryman named Ron Ridenhour, to piece together the truth about the atrocity at My Lai.
[...]
As far as the "worst" administrations in history, hindsight has given me an increasingly positive appreciation of Jimmy Carter as president. Please don't lump him in with Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan.
Someone will read his words and accept it as something near the truth.
He knows, as he always has known, what he's doing.
Aim, instead, for the The Head of the Beast; lest This Beast simply sacrifice ignorant Patsies (Throw the Public a Sacrificial Bone), and easily replace them with 'Other Diversionaries' .
I'm looking to go to a place where he's speaking and fattening his wallet and stand up and tell him he has the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on his hands! I'll keep it up until they drag me out of the damn place and I think everyone with an ounce of integrity should do the same thing. Find out where he's speaking and shout him down.
It's the least we can do.
Joining the military one must give up essential moral fiber and agree to kill anybody, anywhere when commanded to.
Cheney & Bush still cannot give up their insane, murderous, inconsiderate, selfish ways.
2. DO NOT attend lectures where he is lining his pockets while venting his spleen. You will not be allowed to shout him down but if a liar speaks at a forum and nobody is there to hear him, do they make a sound?
We saw that, that was certainly true. The poor Iraqis, in a country with 130 + degrees heat in the summer, they had only a couple of hours electricity a day??
They still do not have a properly functioning electric grid, and their water supply is also in bad shape. The Bushes have destroyed the country.
Not to mention all the children born with horrible deformities because of the munitions used in Fallujah and other places. And millions of displaced Iraqis, inside and out of the country.
I wonder HOW many Iraqis were killed. I know that the numbers we were told, are not true, and the number of seriously injured Iraqis must also be incredibly high. There has been so many bombings and suicide bombings, and the hospitals were also damaged.
That poor country is in such a horrible mess. We have a lot on our conscience.
Then they get thrown out, or simply run their course, and the chattering classes spend the next several years pointing out in sarcastic, edgy columns, books and TV interviews how effed up they actually were; what low, self-absorbed liars and con artists lay beneath their masks of "leadership" and self-righteous probity. A lot of good it does, because the next crew of sleazebags comes in, full of hot air and the mindless admiration of millions of ordinary morons, and the whole cycle begins anew.
Now and then actual courage or even heroism shows itself, like JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or LBJ and the Voting Rights Act, or Ford pardoning Nixon (Oops! How did that get in here?). Sadly, you can count these real acts of leadership and counter-intuiti ve political cujones on one hand, while their opposite, large and small acts of spineless pandering and demogogery, could be strung together in a chain reaching to the moon. Frankly, what Powell did was par for the course; in his case, actually an "eagle". Harry Belafonte was right about him from the get-go. Obama has a boatload of charm, but has he lied to us any less?
What about loyalty to the human race? The blood of millions of dead and displaced Iraqis is on his hands.
Let's look at this and ask the salient question, "did you even bother to find out if it was false?". Here is the problem. He was Secretary of State, not some intern. As Pierce says, it is no secret that Powell called some of the documents he was given "bullish-t".
How do we reconcile the past with his current "beliefs"? We are left we several choices:
1. Colin Powell is a very stupid man who is incapable of researching something as horrible and brutal as warfare.
2. Colin Powell has a very bad memory, much like Alberto "I don't recall" Gonzales.
3. Colin Powell lies as soon tells the truth. To him lies are only bad if you're caught. Some people call these types sociopaths.
4. Colin Powell is ignorant about warfare and is incapable of distinguishing between countries that pose a threat and those that do not.
Powell is a couple of years younger than my father and I can tell you one thing: my father saved more lives by opposing the Vietnam war and helping kids avoid the draft (through legal means).
Today, my father thinks about social justice.
Powell thinks about how to make his past look good.
where were their principals when it counted? why didn't they quit in righteous indignation and go to the press BEFORE it was to late?
hindsight, mr powell, will get you nothing
It's quite simply another power-clutching (Powell?) dynasty like the Bushes and fairly closely linked to them at that.
We lost 5000 lives and went into massive debt for the illegal Iraq invasion.
I agree he not only needs to make an apology but also needs to be investigated along with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the war's architect, Paul Wolfowitz. They have all scooted free and never been held accountable.
Will Obama or the US Congress ever have the courage to do their sworn duties and investigate?
His assistant, Lawrence Wilkerson, who wrote some of the speech has apologized for the lies and admitted his own guilt in starting an illegal war. The fact that Powell won't do the same reflects on his character. He is rotten to the core.
Powell never had honor or credibility to give up.
He was a lying weasel BEFORE he helped whitewash the My Lai massacre.
He was a lying weasel when he delivered TOW missiles to Iran in Reagan-Bush's "arms for hostages" deal that didn't even get the hostages back.
He's still a lying weasel today.
But, thank you for reminding me of how bilious I felt by the end of the Bush admin.
I guess the key takeaway is that if you're still concerned about whether repubs or dems are ahead.. you still have the wool pulled over your eyes.
Ron Paul 2012
It's an easy fix, all he has to do is stop lying.
Get out of here!
At the very least - all war criminals must either crawl into a hole and stay there or be put in one forever.
Then - shamelessly strutting around on fat pensions and paid big money for speaking engagements while America starves, bleeds and grieves.
Really cute - NOT!
The Dem party leadership did not have the courage to bring to the stand of a proper hearing anyone who could have shown the light of truth on the situation. I hold Nancy Pelosi responsible for this failure, being party whip at the time.
This sharing of responsibility does not exonerate Powell or any of his lying crew. Or the people who put him forward.
Meanwhile, we need to be watching the Iraqi Special Forces revealed by Shane Bauer in the Nation. What are they up to now? And how closely are they still linked to the U.S. Special Forces.
Check out www.epicalc.org for the Iraq article in the newsletter Planted by the Waters. We go into detail on Iraq's current situation as well as other places where the U.S. empire is wreaking havoc.
Question: Is it any wonder the US is despised? This is one hugely corrupt country. Any ideas out there on what we individually can do about it?
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