Colin Powell Being Colin Powell

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By Robert Parry (about the author) Page 2 of 15 page(s)

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Discussing the current situation in Iraq, Powell even sounded a bit like George W. Bush claiming that no one had anticipated the breach of the New Orleans levees. �Who knew what the whole mess was going to be like?� Powell said about Iraq.

Still, Powell distanced himself from the disastrous implementation of the war policy.

�What we didn't do in the immediate aftermath of the war was to impose our will on the whole country, with enough troops of our own, with enough troops from coalition forces, or, by recreating the Iraqi forces, armed forces, more quickly than we are doing now. And it may not have turned out to be such a mess if we had done some things differently. But it is now a difficult situation, but difficult situations are there to be worked on and solved, not walked away from, not cutting and running from.�

Powell said he sympathized with anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan, whose son died in Iraq, but the 68-year-old former secretary of state said the United States has no choice but to press ahead with the Iraq War.

�The alternative ... is essentially saying, 'Nevermind, we're leaving.' And I don't think that is an option for the United States,� Powell said.

To Powell's critics, his TV performance was a classic example of him being all things to all people � stressing his loyalty to Bush to keep conservatives happy while dishing some skepticism to placate liberals � while always putting himself in the best possible light.

The ABC interview fits with Powell's life story as a careful military bureaucrat. From his earliest days as a junior officer in Vietnam through his acquiescence to Bush's Iraq adventure, Powell repeatedly has failed to stand up against actions that were immoral, unethical or reckless.

Yet, Powell's charisma � and the fact that he is a prominent and successful African-American � have protected him from any clear-eyed assessment of his true record. Even when Powell has publicly defended war crimes, such as the shooting of defenseless �military-aged males� in Vietnam, national journalists have preferred to focus on Powell's sparkling style over his troubling substance.

'Fine Leopard'

This infatuation with Powell's image was perhaps best captured when New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd plunged into mourning after Powell backed away from a flirtation with a presidential candidacy in 1995.

"The graceful, hard male animal who did nothing overtly to dominate us yet dominated us completely, in the exact way we wanted that to happen at this moment, like a fine leopard on the veld, was gone," Dowd wrote, only slightly tongue-in-cheek. "'Don't leave, Colin Powell,' I could hear myself crying from somewhere inside." [NYT, Nov. 9, 1995]

As longtime readers of Consortiumnews.com know, we always have tried to resist Powell's personal magnetism. In one of our first investigative projects, Norman Solomon and I examined the real story of Colin Powell. [To read the full series, start at �Behind Colin Powell's Legend.�]

I've updated the series a couple of times: when Powell failed to protest Bush's disenfranchisement of thousands of African-Americans during the disputed Florida election in 2000 and when Powell made his over-the-top presentation on Iraq in February 2003. After Powell's UN speech � while both liberal and conservative commentators swooned over Powell's WMD case � we entitled our story: �Trust Colin Powell?�

What we found in our investigation of Powell's legend was not the heroic figure of his press clippings, but the story of an ambitious man with a weak moral compass. He either hid in the reeds when others were standing up for what they knew to be right or he contributed to the wrongdoing (albeit often while wringing his hands and confiding to reporters that he really wasn't entirely comfortable).

Another amazing aspect of Powell's life story was his Forrest-Gump-like quality to show up in frame after frame of turning-point moments in recent American history, except in Powell's case, he almost never did the right thing. Indeed, one could argue that the reason Powell found himself in the middle of so many historical moments was that he never sacrificed his career on the altar of challenging corrupt or foolish superiors.

That pattern began in the earliest days of his military career when he was part of an extraordinary group of early U.S. military advisers that President John F. Kennedy dispatched to Vietnam.

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Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at more...)

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