As Secretary of State in late ‘02 and ‘03 Powell was forced to argue the case to invade Iraq in the U.N. He hated having to do that dedicated himself to avenging his humiliation on Bush from that moment on, Armitage/Plame was the first such opportunity. By this time GWB had completely lost his mojo and gave us conservatives fits for the next four years as he refused to defend himself and his cabinet against all the scurrilous attacks.
Who cares what his perceived reasons were and I don’t buy it in the first place. Remember, everyone was singing the same tune on the situation in Iraq. They did find the 500+ tons of yellow cake and disposal of chemical and biological precusors was as simple as dumping them in the desert.
US Intel, British Intel, Israeli Intel, French Intel, German Intel and the list goes on. Baseline he was an oportunistic coward and the Plame scandal just iced the perception many had opined on.
GW never stood his ground politically or personally to answer the lies and misunderestimation of his character. I could give you a long list of Progressive policies he helped to foist on us and I cannot absolve him for those, especially TARP.
As the saying goes; It only takes one Aw Shoot to erase a boatload of atta boys.