Monday, July 09, 2007

NOW You Have Something To Say, Powell

At the Aspen Ideas Festival Colin Powell made the claim that he'd tried to talk George II out of the Iraq War. According to The Times, “I tried to avoid this war, I took him through the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers,” an endeavor he spent an entire 2 1/2 hours on. For pete's sake, I've spent that amount of time washing and waxing a damn car for a car show.

At one time Colin Powell was widely respected in this country, so much so that there was very serious talk of him as a candidate for President, these kinds of statements 4 years into a war after 3500 American troops lost their lives and uncounted Iraqis dead leave me somewhat "underwhelmed." “The civil war will ultimately be resolved by a test of arms,” he said. “It’s not going to be pretty to watch, but I don’t know any way to avoid it. It is happening now. It is not a civil war that can be put down or solved by the armed forces of the United States.” Would that kind of talk have helped sell the war? Is it possible that something other than a UN appearance talking about bona fide WMD evidence might have cooled some of the public ardor for war?

Two previously well respected former members of BushCo have managed to say how unenthusiastic they were about the Iraq war in the past year. Tennet and Powell have been a little late voicing their misgivings, sometime previous to the carnage in Iraq could have made some difference to a public that was conditioned to respect their words. To be sure, Faux News would've beaten the war drum for George, but some of the others might have been a little less blindly credulous - or maybe not - but this latest only goes to show how BushCo eats honor and leaves political scat.

2 comments:

H. Bruce Miller said...

"For pete's sake, I've spent that amount of time washing and waxing a damn car for a car show."

But you have to remember President Blinky has the attention span of a gnat. He probably stopped listening to Powell after the first five seconds.

Chuck Butcher said...

He probably never started listening, but a whole lot of other people would have and maybe the banging of the war drums would've been a little more muted. These guys make me want to puke with their, "well I said" that never ever went anywhere except to whom they were sucking up to.