Posted on 09/10/2007 6:14:58 PM PDT by lowbridge
http://men.style.com/gq/features/full?id=content_5900
(Link only due to copyright complaint)
Resilient Iraqis ask what civil war?
Yet the whole question of whether Iraqis are engaged in a "civil war" ultimately turns on a Western press conceit. Because the elite Western press began predicting such a conflict almost from the beginning, the ensuing debate in the U.S. has taken place within such politically loaded terms. Iraqis, on the other hand, know who is shooting at whom.
http://iraqpundit.blogspot.com/2007/03/iraqis-what-civil-war.html
But what would those silly Iraqis know?
Caesar was stabbed, in the end, by one of his closest and most loyal friends, Brutus. And George Bush was betrayed throughout the course of the entire Fitzgerald inquisition by his one time friend and close confidant, Colin Powell, who knew all along the involvement of Richard Armitage, and chose to keep quiet. Loyalty runs between many extremes.
...snip...
With Colin Powell, as with Mr. Armitage, loyalty has finally gone the way of the Model-T. And sadly, Mr. Powell's damage will be enshrined forever by the left in what appears to be their longest running hit piece of modern times. Et tu, Colin?
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/burtis090306.htm
Powell in 2003:
Stahl: “The Powell Doctrine in military terms is that you throw a massive force, if you’re going to go to war, make it huge. There are now criticisms, we’re beginning to hear, that this force isn’t massive enough.”
Powell: “It’s nonsense. It’s the usual chatter, I mean we have commentators everywhere. Every General who ever worked for me is now on some network commenting on the daily battle and, frankly, battles come and wars come and they have ups and downs, they have a rhythm to it. The Powell Doctrine was you use decisive force, and the plan that General Franks and his commanders have put together is a decisive force that will get the job done. So don’t let one day’s ups and downs suggest that the battle isn’t going well. The United States armed forces with our coalition partners, the British principally and the Australians, have gone 300 miles deep into Iraq in a period of five days. That is a heck of an achievement.”
Stahl: “Yeah, but our, the rear is exposed.”
Powell: “It’s not. Exposed to what? Exposed to small- ”
Stahl: “Exposed to fedayeen, exposed- ”
Powell: “Fine. So? We’ll get them in due course. They are not exposed to a massive Iraqi army that is operating in a coordinated way that can assault our flanks and stop our assault.”
Stahl: “Are you saying you’re not worried or concerned about guerilla warfare?”
Powell: “Of course we are, and that, and we’re trained to handle this, but this chatter for the last 24 hours that everything is coming apart because on Sunday we took a few casualties. The casualties for this operation have been low. You don’t want to slow your advance to go into a particular city and spend all your time rooting out people that you will get in due course. They’re not threatening the advance.”
Stahl: “But you can’t get your supplies, well you can’t- ”
Powell: “Who says?”
Stahl: “ - can’t get the humanitarian- ”
Powell: “Who says?” — CBS “48 Hours,” March 27, 2003, 12 days before the collapse of the Iraqi regime.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/898388/posts
There was a time when I had a lot of respect for this man.
Yep. That captures it for me...
“Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.” ~ Colin Powell
*SMIRK*
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Colin_Powell
And here’s his “Oprah Moment:”
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” ~ Colin Powell
Im sorry. Powell is the biggest pu$$ie to ever grace the state dept
I did also then had some reservations several years ago. The final straw was he and Armitage staying mute on the Plame thing, that was inexcusable.
Racism is when you promote someone because of their race!
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” ~ Colin Powell
Afirmative Action helps too.
Exactly.
Poor Colin, how embarrassing for him.
I never trusted him. For a General, he was much too timid. Much like a General McClellan.
Q: How concerned that the President was receiving, not only conflicting advice, but very strong advice from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in America, General Colin Powell, who was saying "let's give sanctions the chance to work?"
Thatcher: We had sanctions because the United Nations resolution prescribed that we have a period of sanctions and you have to give them a chance to.... sanctions you know don't usually work.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/thatcher/1.html
Q: Lots of people have talked about it...that you became concerned that containment--sanctions--wasn't receiving proper consideration. Tell me what the President said back to you when you laid out this particular option.
Powell: The build up continued through all of August and into September. The sanctions policy was in effect by then, we were intercepting ships at sea and we were building up.
The President had a major political problem. How do you keep this coalition together, how do you get public support for whatever we might have to do and how long are we going to be stuck with this problem.
There were a number of people around who were suggesting to the President that--just bomb them a little bit and they'll quit. We were getting this from the Egyptians, we were getting this from the Saudis, we were getting these ideas from a lot of different people and it went counter to my view, counter to the views of the Joint Chiefs of Staff frankly and to Norm Schwarzkopf. We could not just rely on a simple strike as the way to get this taken care of and therefore we should not jump into a war that we were not prepared to prosecute to its conclusion.
But the President had a problem, he wanted to get this on. My concern was that it was going to take us a while to build this force up and the President should not be just looking at a single option of invading at the end of a time....I felt it was important that he look at all options available to him.
The option that was being executed at that time was not a counter invasion or an offensive option, it was a sanctions option. And so I wanted to make sure he understood how we could prosecute that until some point when the force was built up.
I also wanted to make sure he understood that there was yet one more option and it was an option that said "Maybe you don't want to undertake a major regional conflict in the area. You might want to adopt a policy of continued sanctions and strangulation to bring the Iraqis to their senses and reverse the invasion without having to go to war."
And so on during this period in early September, Cheney and I talked about it, I talked about it with Paul Wolfowitz, I talked about it with Jim Baker who had some slight enthusiasm for it. Scowcroft and I also talked about it. He listened to it but Scowcroft, he was, "You know, this just isn't going to work in a timely manner and I don't think the President will buy it."
And then finally on a Monday afternoon, I think it was the 24th of September, it's been reported as some time in October but it was the 24th of September, Cheney and I got to talking about it again and he says, "Well let's just go over and talk to the President."
At this point he was allowing me to give all kinds of advice again having, you know, put me in my box. But Dick was wonderful in that regard. He gave me full opportunity to vent whatever was on my mind that I felt was important.
We go to the White House. It is not a full meeting of the NSC, nobody from the State Department was there, Baker's not there, Eagleburger's not there. It's just sort of a regular afternoon meeting that Cheney occasionally had with the President and the President, myself, Cheney, Scowcroft and Sununu were the only ones in the room.
And we sat around the President's desk, we didn't even go off to the normal seating area, and just leaning over the President's desk I took him through the state of the build up following up from what I said earlier, how the build up was going and from the 15th August now to the 24th of September.
I laid out for him when we'd be ready to go on the attack and then I laid out for him what a sanctions policy might look like and how it would work. And when I was through, he listened intently in that way he has, somewhat slouched in his chair with his chin slightly down. The picture's been published and it's kind of famous. And when I was through he took it all in. We chatted for just a moment or two and his response was "Well Colin, that's all, very very interesting. It's good to consider all options but I just don't think we're going to have time for sanctions to work."
And I said "That is the problem. You don't know how long it takes sanctions to work, you're not seizing the initiative from your enemy, you're essentially hoping that this pressure will cause your enemy to come to a decision rather than you making the decision for him. That's the problem with sanctions but I felt you should hear it all."
Q: In terms of the reluctant warrior, do you object to the characterisation of reluctant warrior?
Powell: No I'm guilty.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/powell/2.html
Doesn’t this run counter to the poll of Iraqis being trumpeted by ABC?
I think the experience of Vietnam put a bit of defeatism in some of the military men who lived through it. “We couldn’t win then, we can’t win now.” I really mean that.
Powell owes everything to the Bush family.
He should have never made it past one star- it’s fitting an affirmative action hire turns on his boss.
Now we see what Powell is made of. He wants to stay loved; Bush will be vindicated in two more years.
God is just testing us now, our victory is coming soon.
There was a time three years ago, I got flamed as racist and bigot by major players here, because I voiced the exact same things you two mentioned.
Amazing how things change when the truth finally comes out.
When Colon Bowell got weak-kneed at the Highway of Death, is when I saw him as an affirmative action puppet.
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