Posted on 07/01/2025 4:36:39 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
No, this column is not asserting that Colin Powell, who stands as one of the worst mistakes of the Bush Republican era, has any relevance. Quite the contrary, but what I will argue here is that one of the chief benefits of President Trump’s successful airstrikes, which have done grievous damage to the Iranian nuclear program, if not particularly laying waste to the Iranian regime itself, is to make clear that Powell can be discarded once and for all.
Powell was a terrible Secretary of State for many reasons. The most flagrant of those being that he utterly, and consequentially, failed when assigned a critical task during George W. Bush’s signature presidential action, that being the invasion and conquest of Iraq in the years following the 9/11 attacks. (RELATED: Let’s Hope Trump’s ‘Spectacular Military Success’ Is Not Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished’)
The war plans for that invasion called for a pincer movement; namely, that U.S. troops would penetrate Iraq from the south, invading from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, but also from the north, coming from our NATO ally, Turkey. As Iraq had attacked both the Kuwaitis, briefly occupying and looting that country, and Saudi Arabia, it was easy to get the position from those two countries to stage from their territory. But the Turks were recalcitrant, and real negotiating skill was needed to bring them aboard.
Forget about the wisdom, or lack thereof, of the Iraq War for a moment. We’ll get to that subject shortly. The war was decided upon at a level above Powell’s pay grade — Bush made the decision to go, and Congress made the decision to authorize it and to pay for the Iraq adventure. As such, the war was then U.S. policy, and as the secretary of...
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Was this written in 2005?
Does it turn straight down? That would be appropriate.
Good read.
Colin Powell was DEI early..
I’d give him a break. Did a good job for ‘41’. As for 43 the Halliburton fella was calling the shots-Cheney. Between Cheney and Powell who was deep state? I think his reaction to not getting taken seriously was to support Obama in ‘08.
Rush once did an entire monologue in which he called him the “Colin Colonel Powell”.
There’s not much else to say.
With the successful bombing of targets in Iran from Missouri, I’m wondering if bases between here and there could be closed.
Turkey can hardly be considered an ally. More like a nemesis.
911 was an attack organized by Yemen, Pakistan, Iran and probably funded by USAID and Saudi Arabia.
GWB attacked Iraq in retaliation and sent $$$ to Pakistan.
Tells you all you need to know about GWB and his State Dept.
Those bases house the planes that refuel the B1s on their way to and from theater. They don't carry nearly enough fuel to make the round trip without refueling multiple times.
911 was an inside job.
June 30, 2025, 10:04 PM
“911 was an inside job.”
Huh?
prove it ...
Scary thing is, Colin Powell is what the Republican party establishment hoped and dreamed the party would be in 2025, a party of inside the beltway democrat-lites who were all for open borders and DEI initiatives.
The war began with the United Nations Security Council passing Resolution 678, which did not order the coalition to simply expel Saddam’s forces from Kuwait but used a more expansive term for which precedence exited. The term ”restore international peace and security in the area” used language the UN and our Congress understood from the Korean War, after the Inchon landing, to authorize the invasion of Iraq as it had then affirmed military operations above the 38th parallel to invade North Korea.
A point to emphasize is that the resolution language was accepted by all five permanent members of the Security Council who had veto powers. Great Britain and often France could be relied upon to support United States initiatives, but Russia and the PRC could have promised a veto and demanded the more restrictive language to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Therefore, at the margin those two countries made the invasion of Iraq possible. To believe invasion was not authorized in the case of Iraq requires breathtaking, premeditated ignorance, because each phrase of Resolutions 678, 687, and 1441 were laboriously parsed by diplomats and politicians whose lives are dedicated to precise meaning of words and precedents.
The war against Saddam Hussein was resumed because Bush #2, as UN Commander in Chief, finally obeyed the UN and confirming Congressional mandates. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill envisioned the re-establishment of collective security when the UN was founded in San Francisco. Finally, in 2003 the United States, heading a coalition exceeding that Churchill and Roosevelt assembled to confront Hitler’s Germany, toppled Hussein’s regime, and forced the UN to recognize the reason for its’ existence.
The Security Council approved Resolution 687, incorporated 678 and 19 previous resolutions without amendment, and offered Hussein a conditional, unilateral ceasefire in 1991. The resolution’s key words were to guarantee, reaffirm, accept, submit, declare, yield, forgo, agree, inform, comply, and cooperate. Once again remember none of these resolutions were cobbled together like a middle schooler’s term paper. Diplomats and politicians laboriously parsed each phrase for clear focus on actions instead of possessions; behaviors, not stockpiles.
It's worse than that. He stood silent and allowed them to charge and convict Scooter Libby when he knew Libby was innocent and Powell had the receipts.
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