Hmm...maybe these leaks indicate W is winnowing out some contenders for the 08 nomination? Or maybe it's Condi?

Reading now. Found the first error:

"Powell called for a halt on further military actions. This preserved Hussein’s power as well as key components of his military forces."

Uh, "further military actions" were halted to appease the Saudis, who were begging us not to go all the way to Baghdad. Powell would have had little to do with the final decision even if he had held the same views.

Hey... it's a blog-piece, yannow?

Yeah, I thought they were a little sloppy and unfair trying to pin that to him, too, but... he certainly agreed with the decision.

But then, so did just about everyone in the political establishment. Like, for example, the President at the time.

Yeah. Well, I've never liked State and I have practically zero inside information on the dealings there. It all sounds plausible but I have to reserve judgement barring something more concrete than broad-brush accusations like the following summary:

"A man who betrays a mentor and plagiarizes his idea, a man who says one thing in front of a camera and the opposite behind the scenes, a man who refuses to risk his reputation by engaging in military activity, a man who counsels appeasement to dictators, who permits Shiites to be sacrificed to the genocidal Hussein."

Specific citations and references to prove the plethora of specific accusations and assertions would be nice. I'm not saying the author is wrong, but I'm definitely not willing to take his word for all of this either.

Frankly, and this is my biggest problem with it, barring the facts it asserts on which I reserve judgement - the tone is a bit hysterical. It seeks to condemn Gen. Powell from all sides and angles all at once, painting him as a repulsive human being in every conceivable light.

That sounds a bit of a long shot to me.

Well, he is. And he left out the screwing-up-Iraq stuff: backing 'can't get a single seat in Parliament' Pachachi, vetoing Pentagon plans to Iraqify the postwar fairly quickly, etc.

I was with the author until the end, though. I mean, duh. They're giving him a free pass because they like his paleocon, anti-freedom agenda. Period.

Heck, Cedartroll would love him if he weren't black.

Not to mention the biggest, most unforgivable mistake of all:

Trusting the French.

I agree with Megan's assessment. Aside from the factual errors (e.g. Wolfowitz ordered troops to protect the Shiites following the first Gulf war. Not being in the chain of command, he was precluded from doing so), Lasky relies too much on innuendo to be taken seriously.

Whatever points he makes are tarnished by the hard-on for Powell's demise.

Btw, I tries to post earlier and was rejected because my blog is through Microsoft's Spaces. Questionable content, indeed.

This is misleading.

"Uh, "further military actions" were halted to appease the Saudis, who were begging us not to go all the way to Baghdad. Powell would have had little to do with the final decision even if he had held the same views."

While it may be true, it was also true the UN resolution only called for Saddam's expulsion from KU, and not total destruction of his military or his removal from power.

Another feckless UN decision.

Meh. What's misleading - oh, hell, downright false; I don't have it in me to be that cloyingly polite - is implying or stating that any part of what we did was influenced by any UN decision at any time. The Gulf War was an American operation from start to finish, and we deserve all the blame for it as well as all the credit. Multilateral my cute little ass.

C'mon. If we'd felt like paving over Baghdad in 1991, we would've done it - we weren't going to check the damn UN resolution to see if we were allowed to. Even under the first President Bush, we weren't exactly taking our orders from the boys in the precious baby-blue berets.

I was on active duty during Powell's rise to stardom, and frankly, most of the officers I served with were skeptical of someone who operated far more like a politician than a commander. If you look at his bio, you'll find that he was functioning in political circles as far back as the early 70's when he was a major. His field assignments tended to be as short, but key in terms of career progression, and then right back to DC. The term used in the field that described officers who did this was "ticket punchers." Frankly, I am not suprised by any of this.

H'm. D'you know anyone who might be able and willing to back up some of the things in that piece, then?

All I know is every time Bush does anything big in the world it seemed that the media immediately went to see if Saint Colin gave his blessing.

That seems a little fucked up for a sitting Sec State, doesn't it? Does he not serve the sitting President?

If he had any heart, any substance at all, he would have resigned if he disagreed so strongly with Bush on so many issues. Why was it that it was leaked TIME AND AGAIN that within the Administration, we had conflicts between cabinet members?

It was always laid out as, "Bush, Rice and Wolfowitz believe X. But rumors are that Sec State Powell believes Y".

WHO GIVES A SHIT WHAT HE BELIEVES? His opinions were given weight in the press equal to that of the President, as if they were 2 government equals squaring off for debate.

He was a sandbagger from the start. Just another line on the resume.

Oh, and don't forget back in the late 90's we had a very Wesley Clarke moment...a moment that stretched for 2 or 3 years while Powell played the "Is he a Democrat or Republican game?"

How anyone could take him seriously after that I do not know.

I always thought Colin was more a follower than a leader. I always saw him as someone who would sway with the wind of public opinion. He was probably capable of following direct orders , but he seems to always hedge his bets when he has to think on his own. I don't think he's a bad guy, just better at making decisions that will look good than decisions that are good for the nation. That's my 2 cents.

Reporters can't let go of that Magic Negro thing.

Hey, Andrew, I'm not contesting at all the fact that Powell leaked like a bloody sieve. But that's old news, if it ever was news, and this piece Ace linked to makes far more serious allegations than that.

This all a whitewash.....we all know why Powell was really pushed out. He was the only voice of reason against the Zionist shadow government that truly runs the White House at the discretion of the House of Rothschild. Fight the power

Okay, the email link made me laugh.

Exactly, he is a tool of the zionist pig-dogs.

Okay, the article got several details wrong, and it went too far in characterizing Powell as basically a big POS. It still seems to be correct on a few big points: 1) Powell is an incorrigible multilateralist; 2) he’s a master at advancing his own career through bureaucratic infighting; 3) he’s got a very poor record when it comes to achieving policy goals.

In Legacy, Rich Lowry described the conflict between Clinton and Powell when Powell was Chairman of JCS, and said the military thinking of both men had been warped by Vietnam. Clinton wanted to slash defense spending while using the military indiscriminately, as long as it wasn’t used to protect US security interests. Powell was Clinton’s polar opposite: he favored a strong, well equipped force that would never be used. Basically, in Powell’s view no security threat (including the invasion of Kuwait) was great enough to justify the use of military force.

I could go on, but I’ll restrain myself. Suffice it to say that I can easily imagine Powell torpedoing Bolton’s nomination as payback to a restive underling. Lasky’s picture of Powell is unfairly negative, but as a corrective to the MSM picture of Powell as a walks-on-water kind of guy, it’s long overdue.

I've long thought Powell a lightweight and a good example of someone who got where they are simply because they were black, like Houston's former mayor Lee Brown. He just plain was never competant to be a Secretary of State or any other high level job.

I want a man like former Secretary Baker, or even better Henry Kissinger who his Soviet counterpart Andrei Grokomyko called in his memoirs: "a slippery jew who could fool the devil himself." That's the man I want.

Hey, Cedarford Jr! Think you're pretty funny, huh?

Well, so does Porky.

With all of his faults, I must give him a pass soley on the success of pushing Pakistan to our side which arguably was the most crucial part in the beginning of our war on terror.

Ace. "Colin . . . Overdue Re-examination"

HAHAHAHAHAHA