Powell

He was never anything but a Dem in my book.  Notice that it was that nasty, ole' George Bush who was the first prez to put a black into such a high level in his cabinet.  And also Condi Rice...  But Bush is way too lib for me, anyway.  But he's right on things I consider important.

I find it amazing that the Dems will defend their party no matter what the scandal, but the Republicans don't.  Rmemeber Mark Foley?  Gone!  His replacement:  3rd mistress, I believe?  How about Ted Stevens?  He needs to GO, and is Republican.  Clinton cheating on Hillary all the time?  I wouldn't condone that from any of them. 

That's my point, and it's the truth.  The politicians work for US, remember?

• I read this on Snopes, it is true and I found it very - danfan
  • Just so you know about Snopes - JD
    • what possible advange to the Chicago political machine - can a Christian A-Am endorsing McCain be?
      • do some research - JD
        • Thread topic is African-American Christian endorsing McCain. - So this rant relates how?
          • yeah, so what? - JD
            • Yep, the democrats always get a free pass...sm - ms
            • I see a pattern of hostile incoherence that has no earthly - relationship this McC endorsement dialog.
              • not true - JD
                • "Not true", as in - Everything you have posted so far...sm
    • Of course you are, dear. Mohamar Ghadaffi on the other hand - on WND perfectly credible. nm
    • Thanks for that info. I did go directly to this man's site... - danfan
  • Sounds like a fine man voting his conscience, sort of like - Powell who won't be GOPing this year. nm
    • Powell - JD
      • Bush inherited Powell from Clinton who inherited him from Reagan. - Uniformed rants strip McC of any shred of credibil
        • i personally don't care much for either of them - JD

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I thought the show was wonderful and illustrated very clearly how bits and pieces of intelligence were selected and manipulated and turned into something they weren't.  (They referred to it as a "Chinese menu" that the administration used to pick and choose from.)

I taped this show and watched it a couple times.  As far as Powell is concerned, it did show how Powell's relationship with George Tenet began to disintegrate.

It further showed how Tenet was, at Bush's father's urging, kept as CIA director when Dubya took office, and all the events leading to his resignation.  He was one of Dubya's sacrifical lambs.  I guess Bush thought giving him the Medal of Freedom made up for that.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff, said that Powell told him, "I wonder how we'll all feel if we put half a million troops into Iraq and march from one corner of the country to the other and find nothing."

Powell said, "I will forever be known as the one who made the case. I have to live with that."  (That made me feel really bad for Powell, who I have always trusted and considered to be an honest, ethical man.  His association with Bush really dragged him down, and his statement about having to live with that just tells me that he's still an honest, ethical man, the kind of man who had a spectacular military career, actually had the guts to go fight in wars himself, someone who truly IS Presidential material, someone who doesn't belong in an underhanded, lying, foolish administration like Bush's.)

The show also pointed out how if you are someone who works for this president and you discover something not right or in alignment with his "plans," if you tell him, you'd better be prepared to resign or be fired. 

This show clearly illustrated how Bush wanted to go to war with Iraq, and all he needed was a reason, even if he had to invent a fictional one.

Again, I thought it was an excellent show, and if you ever have the opportunity to watch it or obtain a transcript of it, I would highly recommend it.

It is easy to see that he is heart-sick that his years of service to our nation were in vain because he was pressured into making those untrue statements to Congress.  It is big, sick, industrial machine ruining lives everywhere it plants its massive cloven hoof.

Former aide: Powell WMD speech 'lowest point in my life'

(CNN) -- A former top aide to Colin Powell says his involvement in the former secretary of state's presentation to the United Nations on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "the lowest point" in his life.

"I wish I had not been involved in it," says Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a longtime Powell adviser who served as his chief of staff from 2002 through 2005. "I look back on it, and I still say it was the lowest point in my life."

Wilkerson is one of several insiders interviewed for the CNN Presents documentary "Dead Wrong -- Inside an Intelligence Meltdown." The program pieced together the events leading up to the mistaken WMD intelligence that was presented to the public. A presidential commission that investigated the pre-war WMD intelligence found much of it to be "dead wrong."

Powell's speech, delivered on February 5, 2003, made the case for the war by presenting U.S. intelligence that purported to prove that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Wilkerson says the information in Powell's presentation initially came from a document he described as "sort of a Chinese menu" that was provided by the White House.

"(Powell) came through the door ... and he had in his hands a sheaf of papers, and he said, 'This is what I've got to present at the United Nations according to the White House, and you need to look at it,'" Wilkerson says in the program. "It was anything but an intelligence document. It was, as some people characterized it later, sort of a Chinese menu from which you could pick and choose."

Wilkerson and Powell spent four days and nights in a CIA conference room with then-Director George Tenet and other top officials trying to ensure the accuracy of the presentation, Wilkerson says.

"There was no way the Secretary of State was going to read off a script about serious matters of intelligence that could lead to war when the script was basically un-sourced," Wilkerson says.

In one dramatic accusation in his speech, Powell showed slides alleging that Saddam had bioweapons labs mounted on trucks that would be almost impossible to find.

"In fact, Secretary Powell was not told that one of the sources he was given as a source of this information had indeed been flagged by the Defense Intelligence Agency as a liar, a fabricator," says David Kay, who served as the CIA's chief weapons inspector in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. That source, an Iraqi defector who had never been debriefed by the CIA, was known within the intelligence community as "Curveball."

After searching Iraq for several months across the summer of 2003, Kay began e-mailing Tenet to tell him the WMD evidence was falling apart. At one point, Wilkerson says, Tenet called Powell to tell him the claims about mobile bioweapons labs were apparently not true.

"George actually did call the Secretary, and said, 'I'm really sorry to have to tell you. We don't believe there were any mobile labs for making biological weapons,'" Wilkerson says in the documentary. "This was the third or fourth telephone call. And I think it's fair to say the Secretary and Mr. Tenet, at that point, ceased being close. I mean, you can be sincere and you can be honest and you can believe what you're telling the Secretary. But three or four times on substantive issues like that? It's difficult to maintain any warm feelings."