Powell: U.S. made 'serious mistakes' in Iraq

Very true my friend...

"Your agenda is to make Powell shine so that his words will drive a wedge between Republicans. Unfortunately for you us Republicans are aware of his complete failure at his job in the State Department and how he allowed the French to run their game at the U.N."

Bingo. Powell was a complete utter failure and Secretary of State. As for the mistakes in Iraq, too bad Naptowne's wisdom was NOT available to us December, 1944. Talk about military mistakes that one cost Americans 80,000 US casualties in six weeks. The war in Iraq is NOTHING compared to the European Theater OR the Japanese Theater. So, all the nonsense spewing forth from the Naptownes here on FR and MSM, UN, and the DNC are just smoke getting in the way of the firefighters.

It makes me laugh reading Powell's words. The only thing I would have changed so far, would have been to totally flatten Tikrit and Fallujah a la Dresden/Berlin in WW2. I would have than held them up as examples to Ramadi, etc.

But then we would have heard Naptowne's et al., complaining that we aren't winning the hearts and minds of the to be insurgents...blah, blah, blah...so forth and so on.

Colin Powell only cares about himself and his image in the press.

Thats not true. Colin Powell is a true warrior. His problems lie with the fact that "we did not impose our will". That is the facts.

Bush came in strong but then decided to change the hearts and minds. The truth is that we should have crushed the whole place, installed Tommy Franks to run the whole show and crushed any resistance brutally. Thats how Colin Powell wants to fight a war and I commend him on it.

Powell is the sell professed "reluctant warrior".

That is until he has accepted a do-nothing-job from the Left in silicon valley even though he has no business training and no computer technical training.

The only reason why he was offered the extremely well paying do-nothing-job is so the Left can fill his pockets with gold and get him to spew garbage about "mistakes in Iraq", which he is now doing. I actually predicted this on these boards when the news broke about his accepting the do-nothing-job.

Since he is now so gung-ho about fighting, how come he did not fight the French at the UN, but instead allowed them to threaten a veto? He did absolutely nothing to threaten the French back.

Powell "the reluctant warrior" is full of BS, he is nothing but the new Richard Clarke.

"But then we would have heard Naptowne's et al., complaining that we aren't winning the hearts and minds of the to be insurgents...blah, blah, blah...so forth and so on."

Haha, that is SO true!

Oh, fer cryin' out loud!!! I'm sick of this mea culpa crapola!! It's WAR, for God's sake!!

Exactly! The Iraqi people are just damned lucky we didn't wish more than regieme change! We could have considered them ALL enemy combatants and started the mass-exterminations on day 1 like Saddam would'a!

"We made some serious mistakes in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad," Powell told a crowd of thousands at the McCormick Place conference. "We didn't have enough troops on the ground. We didn't impose our will. And as a result, an insurgency got started, and . . . it got out of control."

In EVERY war, mistakes are made. I don't, however, agree that any mistakes we made CAUSED the 'insurgency'. It isn't a true insurgency, anyway. The people who are planting IED's and blowing themselves up in crowded markets are NOT Iraqis who don't like the American presence in their country. It is Islamic terrorists from surrounding countries who do not like the idea of anyone but themselves, or their favorite mullahs, controlling the people or Iraq. They want to insure, at any cost, that the people of Iraq, do NOT have any say in how their lives are run. After all, if the Iraqi people are successful in their venture, it might put 'radical idea's into the heads of folks in the surrounding countries, and the crazy mullahs cannot have that!

A reminder of headlines we saw in the runup to the 2004 election (when the media pulled out all stops trying to defeat Bush):

Here is the timeline for some events (many of which Ramsey Clark figured into, but then I started to track Abu Ghraib to recall the name of the operative who helped bring it to the media):
------------------------------
Did we REALLY live through such a sustained period of distortions? No wonder the mainstream media doesn't like us archiving data here. Just the headlines alone are damning.
------------------------------
Ramsey Clark Role in Setting Rather's Saddam Interview Overstated, CBS Now Says (Posted on 03/01/2003)
Bush accused of supporting Haitian rebels (Posted on 02/28/2004)
Picture of Kerry with Ramsey Clark at 1971 "Peace Conference (Posted on 02/11/2004)
Ramsey Clark Endorses John Kerry (Posted on 03/01/2004)
Ramsey Clark: An American Traitor (Posted on 03/08/2003)

Articles of Impeachment of President George W. Bush [Ramsey Clark Alert] (Posted on 03/19/2003)
IMPEACHMENT ACTIONS AGAINST THE PRESIDENT BY John Conyers (D-Mich.)& Ramsey Clark (Posted on 03/13/2003)
Heads Up... from Michael Moore (Posted on 04/26/2004)

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win. Get it, Mr. Bush?....I oppose the U.N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle...the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe -- just maybe -- God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end.

Michael Moore admits Disney 'ban' was a stunt (Posted on 05/06/2004)
U.S. calls for Arab retractions (Posted on 05/09/2004)
The terrorists who killed Nick Berg would have had opportunity to see these images in the press and link them with the "Abu Ghraib scandal":

The day after a WorldNetDaily report revealed that photos circulating in the Middle East that depict GI's raping Iraqi women were fake and had originated from pornography sites, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo issued a statement calling on Arab news outlets to publish retractions.
The embassy statement read, "We have done a thorough investigation of the origin of these photos and have conclusive evidence that they originated on a pornographic web site. They are clearly staged photos, done by actors, as the site itself states."
The Al Wafd newspaper published four photographs on the top of its front page that were alleged show American soldiers sexually abusing female prisoners in Iraq. Al Osboa and Al Mussawer published two of the same photos
The U.S. Embassy called the publication of these pornographic photos, with headlines alleging the involvement of U.S. soldiers, a "fundamental violation of journalistic integrity," and stated that their publication needlessly inflamed an already heated atmosphere.

Abuse photos 'were staged in UK' (Posted on 05/11/2004)
Nick Berg's Father and International A.N.S.W.E.R.(Posted on 05/11/2004) (note this thread agitated the left)
Media ethics, consistency questionable in release of photos" (Posted on 05/11/2004)
DJs Who Laughed At Beheading Are Fired (Portland, Ore.) (Posted on 05/13/2004)
Press calls prisoner coverage 'balanced' (Posted on 05/12/2004)
Anyone see the Berg video yesterday on cable news?(Posted on 05/12/2004)
(Daily Mirror) Editor sacked over 'hoax' photos (Posted on 05/14/2004)

Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan has been sacked after the newspaper conceded photos of British soldiers abusing an Iraqi were fake. In a statement the Mirror said it had fallen victim to a "calculated and malicious hoax" and that it would be "inappropriate" for Morgan to continue.
NOTE: Those were the photos of a "soldier" urinating on a "prisoner". This was done using official equipment (that was not dispatched) suggesting that it was an inside smear job of the British military. I have not read up this story in recent months to see how the investigation is going. No wonder the terrorists got angry enough to cut a man's head off in revenge. The blood of the hostages is on the hands of radicals in the press who blindly pursued an agenda of ousting President Bush.
Those fake rape photos: Boston Globe attempts cover-up of fake rape pix (Posted on 05/14/2004)
See More Hersh (Seymour Hersh) (Posted on 05/14/2004)

This ghost is investigative reporter Seymour Hersh.
In 1969 as a freelance writer Hersh wrote a story for the tiny Left-wing Dispatch News Service run by his neighbor David Obst. The story, based on Hersh’s stateside interviews with soldiers back from Vietnam, was about what came to be called the “My Lai Massacre.”
This story, with its vivid portrayal of alleged American atrocities, was perfect for the propaganda purposes of the anti-war Left. The liberal media echoed and amplified Hersh’s report into front page news – and in the process turned him overnight into a journalist superstar, winner of the first of four career George Polk Awards, the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and other honors.
Such fame is an intoxicating drug. When your story sits atop the world news wires, the telephone rings constantly – are you available to appear tomorrow on the Today Show? On CBS News? To give a speech Saturday for $25,000? It was a magical moment in Hersh’s life that he has tried again and again to recapture with shocking stories – but never quite succeeded.
And so once again Sy Hersh is making news with his investigations “Torture at Abu Ghraib: American Soldiers Brutalized Iraqis. How Far Up Does the Responsibility Go?” in the May 10 New Yorker magazine and “Chain of Command: How the Department of Defense Mishandled the Disaster at Abu Ghraib” in its May 17 issue.

AL-JAZEERA: BEHEADING A FAKE (Posted on 05/14/2004)
Rooting for the Enemy... (Posted on 05/16/2004)

A MAN has his head cut off by al Qaeda in Iraq, and The New York Times aggressively markets the idea - on its front page yesterday - that his death is somehow the fault of the United States...

"Don’t Let Abu Ghraib Overturn Our Success" (Posted on 05/16/2004)

Prior to the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom last year, I wrote that we would not find easy allies among the Iraqi people. It had nothing to do with Muslim disdain for Westerners. It had nothing to do with Iraqi fears of Western colonization. It had nothing to do with oil. It had completely to do with the average Iraqi’s horrific fear of his own government and its vast network of informants and enforcers.
The average Iraqi still possesses that fear. This cannot be emphasized enough. There remain very few Iraqi citizens willing to risk their lives in a public show of support for U.S. and coalition forces given the longstanding tendency of our civilian leadership to cut and run when the political establishment and their news media allies turn up the heat. And despite President Bush’s insistence on staying the course, he has already relented somewhat by promising to relinquish power to the Iraqis on a very premature June 30.
The recent flap over prisoner mistreatment will not help.

Lawmakers Told of POW Abuse Months Ago (Posted on 05/16/2004)

Two months before pictures of Iraqi prisoner abuse became public, the family of one accused soldier wrote to 14 members of Congress that "something went wrong" involving "mistreatment of POWs" at Abu Ghraib prison.
Separately, a suspended Army officer in Iraq wrote to Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania that he was being unfairly punished after "pictures of naked prisoners" were discovered. He sent the letter six weeks before the CBS program "60 Minutes II" first broadcast photographs of the prisoners on April 28.
HERE IS THAT LIST:
Carl Levin (Michigan)
Edward M. Kennedy (Massachusetts)
Robert C. Byrd (West Virginia)
Joseph I. Lieberman (Connecticut)
Jack Reed (Rhode Island)
Daniel K. Akaka (Hawaii)
Bill Nelson (Florida)
E. Benjamin Nelson (Nebraska)
Mark Dayton (Minnesota)
Evan Bayh (Indiana)
Hillary Rodham Clinton (New York)
Mark Pryor (Arkansas)
HARDLY a bunch of Bush defenders.

Sly Sy - A journalist’s latest tricks. (Posted on 05/17/2004)

EDITOR'S NOTE: The man behind many of the most provocative Abu Ghraib stories — Seymour M. Hersh of The New Yorker — is one of the best-known reporters in the business. But that doesn't mean he always gets his facts right. "If the standard for being fired was being wrong on a story, I would have been fired long ago," he once said. Hersh has admitted to lying to his sources and one former editor accused him of blackmailing them. Can he be trusted today? John J. Miller profiled Hersh in the December 3, 2001 issue of National Review.

The media on Nicholas Berg: So what? (Posted on 05/18/2004)

The news of Nicholas Berg's gruesome murder came urgently in mid-afternoon on Fox News Channel. Anchor Shepard Smith didn't -- couldn't -- show the video that had hit the Internet. He handled it gravely, correctly. He explained the deadly facts, how masked Muslim fanatics screamed praise to Allah as they savagely sawed off Berg's head -- the head of an American who came to Iraq to help it rebuild.
How would this story grab the American news media? How would it change the media's obsession with much less graphic photos of sexual humiliation of prisoners? Many suggested that since the media wanted to make such a show out of the Abu Ghraib pictures, they ought to do the same with the Berg murder. An endless spiral into more and more gory images isn't the best way to run a news business -- or a foreign policy. But it's instructive that after news reports had touted the public's "right to know" about Abu Ghraib, to see every picture, suddenly, some images weren't supposed to stick in the public mind.
But there's more to this double-standard story. While NBC aired 58 stories on U.S. prison abuse in the first few weeks of that story, NBC aired only five stories over 16 months on the discovery of Saddam's mass graves. Abu Ghraib holds 1,500 prisoners, a fraction of whom were abused. Saddam's graves held as many as 300,000 people, all of whom were murdered. How is Abu Ghraib 10 times more important than that?
Sadly, the distortions continued. With few exceptions, the Berg beheading was at best a two-day TV story, an obstacle to get around, a white-noise distraction from The Scandal. Berg died. The media's take: sad, but so what? That shouldn't register in public opinion. On the very night the Berg story emerged, ABC's "Nightline" couldn't spend more than a few minutes on Berg before Ted Koppel was back to soliciting John McCain to explain what horrific treatment Americans might dish out next.

Soldier arrested over Mirror hoax photos (Posted on 05/18/2004)
Reaction/Counter-Reaction to the Abu Ghureib Abuses in the Arab Media (Look Who's Talking V3.0) (Posted on 05/19/2004)
NOTE: It would be interesting to see how the "resistance" may have increased after this heavy rotation of "imperial abuse"
Roger Ebert: Ovation for Moore's 'Fahrenheit' lasts longer than Bush dawdled (Posted on 05/19/2004)
Media’s Selective Outrage, by the Numbers (Posted on 05/21/2004)
Court TV meets the war on terror (Posted on 05/21/2004)
(Hunter S. Thompson writing for ESPN) Let's Go To The Olympics (Posted on 05/24/2004)

The long-dreaded 2004 Olympics in Greece will be the ultimate crossroads for sports and politics in this new and vicious century. The recent photos of cruelty at the Abu Grahaib all-american prison in Baghdad have taken care of that.
Yes, sir. We have taken the bull by the horns on this one, sports fans. These horrifying digital snapshots of the American dream in action on foreign soil are worse than anything even I could have expected. I have been in this business a long time and I have seen many staggering things, but this one is over the line. Now I am really ashamed to carry an American passport. Not even the foulest atrocities of Adolf Hitler ever shocked me so badly as these photographs did.

Clarke Testimony Discredits Moore's 'Fahrenheit 911' (Posted on 05/25/2004)
Moore interviewed Berg for "Fahrenheit" [index to thread at reply #1859] (Posted on 05/27/2004)
Media's Mission Accomplished: U.S. Troops Now Called 'Baby Killers' (Posted on 05/28/2004)
Berg talks of Iraq's business potential on Michael Moore footage (Posted on 05/29/2004)
New York Times Streak of Page One Stories on Abu Ghraib ends at 32 Days! (UPDATED: 34 of 37 days) (Posted on 06/01/2004)

Soros: Abu Ghraib same as 9-11 (Posted on 06/03/2004)
Lori Haigh: The Girl Who Cried Wolf? (ChronWatch Investigative Report)(HOAXTER EXPOSED) (Posted on 06/11/2004)
Cuba publishes bogus GI rape photos (Posted on 06/15/2004)
MEDIA IS SHOWN TAPE OF SADDAM'S ABUSES AT ABU GHRAIB (Posted on 06/16/2004)
White House Suggests Media Explain Cover Up of Saddam Atrocity Video (Posted on 06/18/2004)

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan denied that the White House had a role in keeping a gruesome video of atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein's regime from the media. When asked by Talon News on Thursday to explain the virtual news blackout of the horrific images of Iraqis being beheaded, tongues being cut out, and fingers being chopped off, McClellan said that he'd "leave it to the media to address those issues."

Roger Ebert: (Fahrenheit) '9/11': Just the facts? (in defense of Michael Moore documentaries) (Posted on 06/21/2004)
Moore film distributor OK with terror support (Posted on 06/21/2004)
Harry Knowles' "Ain't It Cool News" FAHRENHEIT 9/11 review (Posted on 06/23/2004)

Yes, this film does have tangible real world goals, with every sprocket hole, this flick is asking you to not re-elect that Bush dude. This is propaganda.
I love propaganda, it’s fascinating. The study of propaganda has been a part of my life as far back as I can remember.
[snip]
Meanwhile, if you see FAHRENHEIT 9/11 and wished it had been meaner to George, I suggest picking up Ted Rall’s...

Official Ebert review of Moore film (Posted on 06/24/2004)
ALA hosts special screening of "Fahrenheit 9/11" at Annual Conference (Posted on 06/24/2004)
Fahrenheit''s Embedded Cameraman Revealed (Posted on 06/27/2004)
Moore's Film Is Shocking Propaganda (Good Editorial by Ed Koch!) (Posted on 06/29/2004)
Der ewige Jude - The Eternal Jew (Posted on 06/27/2004)

Der ewige Jude ("The Eternal Jew") is the most famous Nazi propaganda film. It was produced at the insistence of Joseph Goebbels, under such active supervision that it is effectively his work. It depicts the Jews of Poland as corrupt, filthy, lazy, ugly, and perverse: they are an alien people which have taken over the world through their control of banking and commerce, yet which still live like animals.
Though unquestionably vicious, many would say that, by today's standards, it is also crude and transparent. The narrator explains the Jews' ratlike behavior, while showing footage of rats squirming from sewers and leaping at the camera. The film's most shocking scene is the slaughter of a cow, shown in bloody detail, by a grinning Rabbi - and it is followed by, of all things, three innocent (presumably German) lambs nuzzling each other.

More on Hezbollah - Moore Flick: Not everyone thinks they're "terrorists"! It's a "natural" team! (Posted on 06/30/2004)
Hezbollah's Hollywood Hero [Michael Moore] (Posted on 07/10/2004)
Ramsey Clark to Join Panel for Saddam’s Defense (Posted on 08/24/2004)
BushGuard august1 memo - a FAKE (Posted on 09/09/2004)
Was Abu Ghraib a CBS Put Up Job too? (Posted on 09/20/2004) (consider that one of the men involved in the crimes was the one who leaked them to the media with the aid of ; is it really that different from the case of Sgt. Akbar who used a grenade to kill 2 officers and injured another 12?)
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I think that the media certainly knew that eyes would glaze over at the prospect of another "impeachment" and that it might cost Kerry some voters in the end. His was a coalition of conflicting opinions carefully held together, in part by offering flip flopped statements depending on the crowd he was addressings. Harder to pull that off grandstanding discussing impeachment.
The media needs to look at themselves in the mirror and see what they have become. Abu Ghraib was the turning point in the war, where public opinion soured and hostilities increased in Iraq. Any book addressing the media bias in the 2004 election HAS to focus on AG (but by no means the only tale in the story). Yes crimes were committed at AG and they WERE under investigation. A number of congressmen were aware of the situation and said nothing.
Adding pictures made it an exploitable scandal. Some took that exploitation so far that they manufactured their own photos and story.
This is a crime of the highest order, a willful attempt to overthrow a President by sheer media manipulation and constant distortion (Zogbyism).

(relevant thread: Jim Emerson: On celebrities, Politics, and movie critics (shilling for Roger Ebert) < October 14, 2004 - posted 11-6-2006 >)

He is not a reluctant warrior but a soldier who believes if your gonna fight a war go balls to the walls. He had no problem with the Highway of Death, Bush41 and his pr advisor's did. As a man who has been in war, he knows its ugly and if politicians do not have the will to fight it then soldiers lose their lives unnecessarily.

as far as the Sec. State thing goes, the guy was bad at it. He expected people to be men of their words and conduct themselves with honor, not backstabbing slime balls. He is not a politician and so his attempts to be one failed.

I am mostly in agreement with your post. I might not go as far to say he was a bad Sec. of State, but it certainly wasn't the best job for him and he wasn't the best choice for the job. I have no problem with people criticizing that aspect of Colin Powell, but the people on here who are questioning his patriotism and his capablities as a military strategist could not be more mistaken. I think Condoleeza Rice would have been a better choice to put at State from the start and I think Powell would have made an extremely capable Sec. of Defense.

Your posts expose nothing more than a pathetically childish style of argumentation that resorts to straw-man arguments and mane calling. You accuse me of being a liberal democrat. I suppose I am the only liberal on the planet who the believes in a strong national defense and intelligence apparatus, low taxes (I own my own business and resent being fleeced by the Government this time of year), firearm restriction laws that keep firearms out of the hand of everyone except criminals, stronger borders, and I could keep going but feel no need to waste more of my time refuting your idiotic assertions about my political beliefs.

I'll simply point out that Colin Powell probably knows a little more about military strategy than you.

I'll will also note that I find it amusing that someone who would leave America to live in a quasi-Marxist state such as Germany would have the audacity to suggest that I hold socialist beliefs or that I am unpatriotic simply because my opinions are not "told" to me by the talking points memos of any political party. I am not the one pumping capital into the economy of a nation that stabbed us in the back in the process leading up to the invasion of Iraq. You sound more like a liberal than I ever will by blaming Colin Powell for France, Germany, Russia, and China's refusal to support our Iraq policy. That was the same criticism Howard Dean used to attack the Bush Administration; and yes when you attack Colin Powell's performance as Secretary of State you are also attacking the Bush Administration because Bush appointed him and could have removed him at any time he wanted. Quite conservative you to side with Chirac and blame Powell for France's and your adoptive nation's vested economic interests in keeping Sadaam Hussein in power.

Our biggest mistake was allowing Powell to convince W's father to call off the first gulf war.

"It makes me laugh reading Powell's words. The only thing I would have changed so far, would have been to totally flatten Tikrit and Fallujah a la Dresden/Berlin in WW2. I would have than held them up as examples to Ramadi, etc."

So you are agreeing with my position that more overwhelming force should have been used, because that is the only thing I've suggested on this thread, and that seems to be the point of Powell's comments. But then we would have heard Naptowne's et al., complaining that we aren't winning the hearts and minds of the to be insurgents...blah, blah, blah...so forth and so on.

Another straw man. So you don't know me at all and suggest that I hold an opinion exactly opposite to the ones I expressed on this thread. I actually am not concerned with the hearts and minds of the Iraqis. I am concerned with achieving victory. One of the successes of this war have been what I consider relatively low casualties, but the most significant measure success will be when we are able to pacify the entire country. Hearts and minds was something made up by pencil-pushing, bureaucrats at the Pentagon, and it became a catch phrase of the MSM that you claim to despise along with shock and awe and a bunch of other idiotic terms that I find repulsive.

"Our biggest mistake was allowing Powell to convince W's father to call off the first gulf war."

Who was President at that time?

Who was President at that time?

I see you just joined us on April 9, 2006, does that mean you were also born on April 9th?

I was being sarcastic because you seemed to imply that The Joint Chief of Staff made the President's decision for him. I've seen George H.W. Bush explain many times why "he" did not send our troops into Iraq in Desert Storm.

And, the mistake Powell made was not annilalating the Republican Guard when he had the chance.

No, G.H.W. Bush made the final decision, but there is no doubt that Powell and the Joint Chiefs, particularily Powell who it is said was shocked at carnage on the road out of Kuwait, greatly influenced W's father.

"Powell who it is said was shocked at carnage on"

Source?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/appendix/tdeath.html