Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Former Secretary Colin Powell is Not Consistent Except in Being an Opportunist

Former Secretary Colin Powell is Not Consistent Except in Being an Opportunist

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Meet the Press endorsed for President Senator Barack H. Obama II. What should we make of it?

See http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/10/19/colin_powell_endorses_obama.html
See Wall Street Journal October 21, 2008 column by Bret Stephens at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122455043537052547.html “Powell Catches the Beltway Breeze”

■ “To what extent is Mr. Powell's endorsement of Mr. Obama a case of sour grapes?” “what are we to make of a resignation that arrives nearly four years after its author was let go by the president -- despite his widely reported desire to stay on in the second term?”
■ “Tom Brokaw might have usefully asked Mr. Powell … If America's reputation needs fixing, what part does the former secretary think he played in its malfunction?”
■ “What responsibility does Mr. Powell assign himself for the four-year Beltway drama that involved the leak of CIA analyst Valerie Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak?” “Mr. Powell knew all along that the original leaker was his own deputy, Richard Armitage, a fact the two of them didn't publicly reveal for years.”
■ “Also of interest: Exactly what advice did Mr. Powell give President Bush about the advisability of invading Iraq?”
■ “At a conference in Aspen in 2007, Mr. Powell reportedly claimed that he ‘spent 2½ hours vainly trying to persuade President George W. Bush not to invade Iraq and believes today's conflict cannot be resolved by U.S. forces’."
■ But earlier, Secretary Powell had said "I said to the president in 2002, we should try to solve this diplomatically and avoid war. The president accepted that recommendation, we took it to the U.N. But the president, by the end of 2002, believed the U.N. was not going to solve the problem, and he made a decision that we had to prepare for military action. I fully supported that. And I have never said anything to suggest I did not support going to war."
■ “he later oppose the surge, telling Tim Russert in June 2007 that ‘the only thing it can do is put a heavier lid on this boiling pot of civil war stew’?”
■ “His endorsement of Mr. Obama sends his reputation aloft again, floating high above a record that stands for nothing.”

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