General Colin Powell: Political Casualty of Iraq War

Mr Gill, let me be civil with you, even though your articles provoke me to abandon all civil discourse. Please don't waste our time and good space on Chowk. Colin Powell is old history just like Hans Blix, let the poor _______ rest, wherever the hell he is resting. It is not about the person of Colin Powell, it is about a State Department that always falls in line behind the Pentagon's civilian warlords, that always push the line of those whose mouths drool with saliva at the sound of war, in the 'permanent war economy' of the US. The State Department is just there to gather the pieces and for damage control as the pusher of the Great American Celebration, based on the master symbols (democracy, individual human rights, freedom and so on and so forth) all legitimations for the higher barbarism are built. Now please find another past time, just when we thought that products of a colonial "parrot/rote/tape-recorderesque" education were realizing their mistakes you keep repeating more of the same.....give us a damn break

In matters of war and even on major foreign policy issues the decision comes from the Pentagon and not from the state dept. In the recent years the pentagon has been taking the lead in all matters relating to Iraq or the WOT. State dept’s roles is just to find a way to push that agenda as diplomatically as possible.

Powel makes every attempt to show that he was not aware of the real situation about the WMD and believed the intelligence presented to him by the CIA. That is yet another lie coming from this Mai Lai massacre enabler. You don’t get to be the Joint Chief of the Staff of the US armed forces, if you can’t analyze the intelligence correctly. At his level he certainly had access to some qualified people and had the ability to get opinion from different sources and sleuths who could have easily broken down the information presented to him. Powel had all the sources available to him so his excuse that he believed what was presented to him is hogwash.

By early 2002 the US policy was clear and everyone in the admin knew that US will attack Iraq. Gen. Powel was part of that decision and now he cannot run away from it.

He decided to be the hero and took that information to the UN. He could have easily delegated this task to one of his minions but he decided to do it and that is the decision he is regretting. He knew from the very outset that the information presented to the UN was false even before the first slide were created.

To gain political capital from the whole thing, he decided to be the presenter. It looked liked an excellent decision then. He was allover the TV and was being treated like a rock star by the US media. This was a time everyone in the Bush administration genuinely believed that the Iraq war would be over in three months and none yes, no one had anticipated any resistance from any group in Iraq. As things unfolded in Iraq, the rug got pulled underneath the US and now, one after another, people who were solidly behind the attack on Iraq are running away from it.

Anyway, Powel is not important nough anymore to deserve an article.

Having read Co-lin Powell's autobiography I can say that he worked damn hard to make it to such a powerful political position which for a black man in the USA is remarkable. However he had to dilute a lot of this blackness to make it. Was he really black?

Give credit to Dubya where credit is due.

This is the first administration where we had Uncle Tom and now we have Aunt Jemima heading the State Department.

Collin Powel will be always remebered for the mess he has left behind in afghanistan for the phone call he made to mushy, " if you are not with us, you are against us". If he were not to make that phone call, pakistan and afghanistan would hav been bombed together with no waziristan left for the osama to hide.

Now the jihadis in waziristan who escaped form afghanistan is trying to take over pakistan. the stupid collin should have taken the offer from india , clubbed pakistan along with afghanistan, it would have been a different story. No lal majid, no kashmir problem, no mQM problem in pakistan, no afghan problem and all the pakistanis would have been happy in the re-building of pakistan.