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Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who endorsed President Obama in 2008 and 2012, told the Washington Ideas Forum that there’s a special reason why he doesn’t change his party affiliation. Powell confirmed that he’s still a registered Republican. “I want to continue to be a Republican because it annoys them,” he quipped. “I think the party has shifted much further right than where the country is and it should be obvious to party leaders that they cannot keep saying and doing the things that they were doing and hope to be successful in national-level election in the future, not...

WASHINGTON -- President Bush and his top advisers have decided, for now, against launching a war to overthrow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the next phase of the U.S.-led war on terrorism, according to senior U.S. officials and Western diplomats. With the al-Qaeda terrorist network all but vanquished in Afghanistan, speculation has been growing that Bush would turn his sights on Hussein, a longtime U.S. nemesis who is known to have chemical and biological weapons. Iraq also is believed to be working on obtaining nuclear weapons. But the officials and diplomats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Bush's ...

CHUCK TODD: ...let's start right with Iran. Is this a good deal? COLIN POWELL: I think it is a good deal. I studied very carefully the outline of the deal and what's in that deal. And I've also carefully looked at the opposition to the deal. And my judgment, after balancing those two sets of information is that it's a pretty good deal. Now, I know that there are objections to it, but here's why I think it's a good deal. One of the great concerns that the opposition has, that we're leaving open a lane for the Iranians to...

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell came out in support of President Obama’s agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program, calling it a “pretty good deal.” Powell, a retired general who led the State Department under GOP President George W. Bush, said he had vigorously studied the deal and listened to arguments from both supporters and opponents. “My judgment after balancing those two sets of information is that it’s a pretty good deal,” Powell declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “The great concern from the opposition is that we’re leaving open a lane for Iran to create a nuclear weapon in...

Former Secretary of State and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell backed the Iran deal on Sunday. The retired statesman, who played a key role in the push for war in Iraq, later supported Barack Obama for president. Powell made his announcements on NBC News’ Meet the Press on Sunday. “My judgment…is that it’s a pretty good deal.” Powell said that while Iran could continue working toward a nuclear weapon when the deal expires, the agreement would at least slow that down. “We have stopped this highway race that they were going down.” Powell added that “they get nothing”...

This past week America went to the polls to vote for a president. However, we Americans never get to choose our Secretary of State. Now that President Bush has won a mandate for a second term, it's about time he cleaned house -- paying special attention to the cabinet. To say that many of us are upset with his choice of Colin Powell would be an understatement. Mr. Powell is a relic from two administrations back who helped lead the US into allowing Saddam Hussein to remain in tyranny. Add to Mr. Powell's ignoble history his statement to the Arabs...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's go to General Powell, General Powell on Meet the Depressed yesterday with David Gregory. First question that we have from Gregory: "This time about a year ago, General Powell, you were in a feud with former Vice President Cheney, with Rush Limbaugh about the nature of the Republican Party, and this is what you said in May of 2009: 'Rush Limbaugh says, "Get out of the room."' [sic] The Republican Party was talking to you. Dick Cheney says, 'He's already out,' speaking about you. (SNIP) I have a question regarding all of the illegals running around...

Unprovoked, former Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell Wednesday night slammed GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's focus on barring illegal immigrants. At a Library of Congress lecture conference to promote bipartisanship, he said, "I would like to go to every Trump hotel and ask all the employees not to show up tomorrow. They'd be nobody there, they're immigrants."

In this article on Capitol Hill Blue, there are the following lines:"The report had already been discredited," said Terrance J. Wilkinson, a CIA advisor present at two White House briefings. "This point was clearly made when the President was in the room during at least two of the briefings." Bush's response was anger, Wilkinson said. "He said that if the current operatives working for the CIA couldn't prove the story was true, then the agency had better find some who could," Wilkinson said. "He said he knew the story was true and so would the world after American troops secured...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The former top aide to then-secretary of state Colin Powell has reportedly emerged as an increasingly high-profile and vocal critic of US administration policy at home and abroad. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Powell's chief-of-staff, "says his decision to speak in the open about the policy wars of the first Bush term was slow in coming, but a major factor was the revelations about Abu Ghraib, which he said he realized ... had resulted from decisions on prisoner treatment and intelligence set shortly after September 11, 2001," the New York Times reported. "What I saw was a cabal...

Lawrence Wilkerson is a contradictory figure. Wilkerson is a career military man, who served as chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell; but he has also voiced reluctance to involve American forces in foreign conflicts, and slammed the Bush administration for its handling of the Iraq War. He is also a lifelong Republican who, far from just criticizing his party, has actually gone on the warpath against it at times. When Powell was attacked by conservatives in 2012 for endorsing Barack Obama for reelection — Mitt Romney surrogate John Sununu famously suggested that the endorsement was motivated by...

In a book just released, The Story: A Reporter's Journey, Judith Miller, a key witness in the Libby prosecution, states that Patrick Fitzgerald had offered repeatedly to drop all charges against Lewis Libby if he would "deliver" Vice President Cheney to him. In addition, she charges that Fitzgerald manipulated her into incorrectly testifying about a critical conversation she had with Libby and withheld exculpatory evidence from both her and the defense in order to induce her mistaken testimony – testimony the prosecution knew was made because she was acting under a false belief....[must read snip]....Rizzo, of course, is focused only...

Updated March 27 to include responses from the FBI and the State Department. Emails disclosed by a hacker show a close family friend was funneling intelligence about the crisis in Libya directly to the Secretary of State’s private account starting before the Benghazi attack. Starting weeks before Islamic militants attacked the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, longtime Clinton family confidante Sidney Blumenthal supplied intelligence to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered by a secret network that included a former CIA clandestine service officer, according to hacked emails from Blumenthal’s account. The emails, which were posted on the internet...

mailgate: Spokesperson Jen Psaki now says that the State Department has no record of Hillary Clinton signing Form OF-109, and it could find no record of Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice signing it either. Why check that? 'We have reviewed Secretary Clinton's official personnel file and administrative files and have no record of her signing the OF-109," Psaki said Tuesday, not bothering to explain why that seemingly simple check wasn't done earlier. Of course, there's no evidence or statement from Hillary that she did not sign the form, though Psaki added, "I think we are fairly certain she did not...

The Republican Party, says former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell, suffers from a “dark vein of intolerance.” We salute Powell’s service. He is a heavily decorated vet who served two tours of duty in Vietnam when things were hot and heavy over there. But General, care to name names? Who are these “intolerant” Republicans? Why engage in accusation by innuendo? By all means, name them, shame them – make them famous. In the meantime, while Powell composes his list, we compile some questions to some possible left-leaning “dark veins of intolerance”: What color was Rep. Maxine Waters’, D-Calif., “vein”...

The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars from a former deputy prime minister of Lebanon known for defending Hezbollah, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis. Issam Fares, a Lebanese billionaire who has established himself in the United States as a prominent philanthropist, has given between $1 and $5 million in donations to the Clintons’ foundation with donations coming as recently as last year, according to a public donor disclosure list on the foundation’s website.. *SNIP* “It seems the Zionist lobby in the United States and its agents in the region were displeased and worried that...

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell told ABC News’ George Stephanopolous that he still sees a “dark vein of racism” in his party and America at large, part of the country’s protracted transformation from its institutionalized racist past. “I still see it in the Republican Party,” Powell said. “And I still see it in other parts of our country. You don’t have to be Republican to be touched by this dark vein.” “America is still going through this transformation from where we were 50, 60 years ago,” Powell said. “You have to remember it was just 60 or 70 years...

The Talk Shows March 8th, 2015 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. ; former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.; Lewis.FACE THE NATION (CBS): Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Tim Scott, R-S.C.; Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C.; Benjamin Crump, lawyer for the family of Michael Brown, the unarmed black 18-year-old shot to death by a white police officer in Ferguson.THIS WEEK (ABC): Mayor James Knowles of Ferguson, Missouri;...

Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski have wondered out loud whether Michael Schmidt, the New York Times reporter who broke the story about Hillary using private email during her time as Secretary of State, might be fearing "retribution" from Hillary's camp. When Joe and Mika interviewed New York Times Schmidt on today's Morning Joe, Scarborough had to work to get Schmidt to say something that was in his own article: that while Colin Powell also used private email as Secretary of State, there were no rules prohibiting that at the time. Later, Joe and Mika later remarked that they were "taken...