his answer saddens me. No accountability and still another conservative in denial about Iraq. ... Then again he could be projecting it is okay to support Iraq and vote for Obama to moderates and republicans. Still no accountability tho.

CNN
Reporter: Mr. Secretary, there were a number of chinks in your own armor, actually, because of the lead-up to the Iraq war and the events. How much did that play into your decision about this? And will it be taken perhaps by some, because of your previous high-profile position, won't it be taken by some as a repudiation of the Iraq war?

Powell: I don't know why. The Iraq war is the Iraq war. We now see that things are a lot better in Iraq. Maybe if we had put a surge in at the beginning, it would have been a lot better years ago, but it's a lot better now, and we can see ahead to where U.S. forces will start to come out. And so, my concern was not my past or what happened in Iraq, but where we're going in the future. My sole concern was where are we going after January 20 of 2009, not what happened in 2003.

I'm well aware of the role I played. My role has been very, very straightforward. I wanted to avoid a war. The president agreed with me. We tried to do that. We couldn't get it through the U.N. and when the president made the decision, I supported that decision. And I've never blinked from that. I've never said I didn't support a decision to go to war.

And the war looked great until the 9th of April, when the statue fell, everybody thought it was terrific. And it was terrific. The troops had done a great job. But then we failed to understand that the war really was not over, that a new phase of the war was beginning. And we weren't ready for it and we didn't respond to it well enough, and things went very, very -- very, very south, very bad.

And now it's starting to turn around through the work of Gen. Petraeus and the troops, through the work of the Iraqi government, through our diplomatic efforts, and I hope now that this war will be brought to an end, at least as far as American involvement is concerned, and the Iraqis are going to have to be responsible for their own security and for their own political future. ...

And the war looked great until the 9th of April, when the statue fell, everybody thought it was terrific. And it was terrific. The troops had done a great job. But then we failed to understand that the war really was not over, that a new phase of the war was beginning. And we weren't ready for it and we didn't respond to it well enough, and things went very, very -- very, very south, very bad.

No, actually it didn't look great at all. It looked like a shambolic disaster in the making from day one. Anyone with any brains knew you'd win the blitzkrieg phase - your own generals like Shinseki were telling you you had nowhere near enough troops to deal with the aftermath.

The best option was "don't go in" and the second best, which would have been equally illegitimate but not as starkly, grotesquely, criminally irresponsibly inhumane was "at least go in with enough troops and a plan to keep Iraq from sliding into the chaos that anyone with a spoonful of brains predicted, a chaos for which you share direct personal responsibility, a chaos that caused hideous misery and death in the six or seven digits for Iraqi civilians."

And utterly screw your utterly self-serving "let's not look back". My father's generation didn't accept that crap at Nuremburg, my generation didn't accept it from Slobodan Milošević, and I personally don't accept it from the administration you ran PR pointman for. And we aren't done with you yet.

1) Of course, take the endorsement, it's insane not to.

2) If you already know you have to do bipartisanship to make headway in reuniting a torn-apart nation, then pick the right creatures to do it with. Powell's humbled and extremely vulnerable - so there's an understanding right off the top. He can be *easily* controlled.

3) Despite what I just wrote, I don't dislike Powell personally. There was a time when I thought he'd be America's first black President, and I was fine with him as a choice at that time. Personally, I think the job he held demanded a person with character, and when his test of character came he was revealed as "not being up to it". A weak man, granted - but not proven to be an evil one.

Wanting him *tried* is not the same as wanting him *hung*; if those days come, I sorta hope he catches a break. I want something approaching justice - no, not in the naive "the universe must balance" sense but pragmatically, to set a price tag on moral cowardice - and the real names on my "to do" list are much bigger than Powell's.

and forgetting for a moment the rest of the questions, I really think Powell nailed McCain and the Republican party. It was "John, you can't have it both ways: the maverick and the robocaller.

It's funny to me that I felt his endorsement presentation for Obama was so strong (especially in the anti-part- all the reasons he didn't want the Republicans to continue in power).

I don't even like Powell. I just hope this "intellectual rigor" he says he saw in Obama during the financial crisis is not some hallucination, cause it wasn't on public view:-)

Condi would go for McCain, but I don't know the rules about "Secretaries" and endorsements.

It's certainly not a done deal to me that McCain is going to lose- it's a toss-up in Ohio with McCain a little bit ahead.

_{"The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy" - Bob Herbert}

was his choosing to run a Karl Rove campaign using Rove's understudies.

But history was against him anyway, and I suspect he would have lost in any event.

At least, then he wouldn't have lost his honor and his credibility.

To run against Obama.

to run after 7 years of Republican rule left this country's economy in a smoking ruin.

is in fact winning the boobie prize.

That said, under no circumstances would I ever wish to see Sarah Palin as president. So, I pray (1) for an Obama 'victory', or, failing that, (2) John McCain's good health.

I suspect the incumbent will not win re-election in 2012. There's too much broken and too much division for any president to turn around, IMHO.

_{"What we've got here is, failure to communicate"}

A rational President who appoints a bunch of high-level officials based on their actual merit and competence can do. Probably such a President would not solve all problems in 4 years. But enough progress would be made to be able to argue that things have gotten better already.

the right wing attack machine was pretty busy- and rational doesn't mean never saying or doing anything that can be misinterpreted(sigh).

_{"The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy" - Bob Herbert}

Ronald Reagan 1980 / 1988:



Bill Clinton 1993 / 2000:



George W. Bush 2001 / 2008:



Yeah, that's some spa, that White House.

_{"What we've got here is, failure to communicate"}

I watched this. I suppose that President Obama will find something for Colin Powell to do for the next few years, but that will be unfortunate.
Powell is someone who truly "blotted his copybook" as the Brits used to say. After a lifetime of service and achievement, Powell chose in the end to "drink the koolaid" that flowed in the bloodstream of the Bush/Cheney/neocon regime that has ruled the United States for the last eight years. He was Secretary of State at a time when his firm opposition, and ultimately his resignation would have crippled the onrushing utopian crusade for Westernization in Iraq.

He did not choose to follow that path. Instead, he chose to believe the corrupted judgments of an intelligence community leadership that betrayed the country and the armed forces by producing nonsensical estimates designed to create support for war among an ignorant and bellicose public that hungered for revenge aganst an enemy they could not even define.

Today, when he was asked by Brokaw about his role as perhaps the greatest enabler of the Iraq War decision, he took shelter behind the collection of garbage that was served up in 2002-2003 by George Tenet and company as justification for war.

For Shame! For Shame!

He should hide himself and hope that someday men will remember the good of him and not the worst. pl
http://tinyurl.com/6lu89b

My comments on Powell are all over the Web, and one can only hope that suggestions of Obama that Powell "will have a role" in his Administration - should that eventuate - is just campaign blather and firming-up of the Powell endorsement. If not, however, it would put paid to the notion that Obama is in fact a "game-changer", for how can bringing aboard a patent symbol of the mendacity, fraudulence, manipulation, and outright criminality that has prevailed in Washington since January, 2001 be viewed as a "break from the past"???
HOW?