ONE of the reasons so many people admire Richard Armitage, the outgoing Deputy Secretary of State, is his well-earned reputation for fierce honesty. He is George Orwell-like in his ability to face hard facts straight up, and deal with them. Although he always manages to do this with a smile, he'll tell you the things you don't like to hear as well as the things you do. With his best friend and boss Colin Powell, Armitage, according to Bob Woodward's account of the period leading up to the war in Iraq, was the member of the Bush administration who urged...
