[Peace-discuss] Rat exits ship that one hopes is sinking

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Going back to Vietnam, I've thought it a great mistake to cry
up Colin Powell as a liberal.  The viciousness of the neocons
has a certain mad honesty -- which Powell seems to lack.  His
UN speech did immense damage. At the time the pompous editor
of the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette exclaimed rhetorically,
"Do you think Colin Powell would lie to us?!"  --CGE]

  November 30, 2005
  Still Craven After All These Years
  Colin Powell: Always Willing to Let 
  Someone Else Deliver the Bad News
  By NORMAN SOLOMON

Newspapers across the United States and beyond told readers
Wednesday about sensational new statements by a former top
assistant to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state.
After interviewing Lawrence Wilkerson, the Associated Press
reported he "said that wrongheaded ideas for the handling 
of foreign detainees after Sept. 11 arose from a coterie of
White House and Pentagon aides who argued that 'the president
of the United States is all-powerful,' and that the Geneva
Conventions were irrelevant."

AP added: "Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney,
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides.
Wilkerson said that Cheney must have sincerely believed that
Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults,
because 'otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or
a nefarious bastard.'"

Such strong words are headline grabbers when they come from
someone widely assumed to be speaking Powell's mind. And as a
Powell surrogate, Wilkerson is certainly on a tear this week,
speaking some truth about power. But there are a few big
problems with his zeal to recast the public record:

1) Wilkerson should have spoken up years ago.

2) His current statements, for the most part, are foggy.

3) The criticisms seem to stem largely from tactical critiques
and image concerns rather than moral objections.

4) Powell is still too much of a cagey opportunist to speak
out himself.

Appearing on the BBC's "Today" program Tuesday, Wilkerson
said: "You begin to wonder was this intelligence spun? Was it
politicized? Was it cherry-picked? Did, in fact, the American
people get fooled? I am beginning to have my concerns."

So Wilkerson, who was Powell's chief of staff from 2002 till
early this year, has started to "wonder" whether the
intelligence was spun, politicized, cherry-picked. At the end
of November 2005, he was "beginning" to have "concerns."

"Beginning to have my concerns" is a phrase that aptly
describes the Colin Powell approach.

Overall, appearances remain key. And so, Wilkerson included
this anecdote in his AP interview: "Powell raised frequent and
loud objections, his former aide said, once yelling into a
telephone at Rumsfeld: 'Donald, don't you understand what you
are doing to our image?'"

Now there's a transcendent reason to begin to have concerns:
Torturing prisoners is bad for "our image."

Rest assured that if the war had gone well by Washington's
lights, we'd be hearing none of this from Powell's surrogate.
The war has gone bad, from elite vantage points, not because
of the official lies and the unrelenting carnage but because
military victory has eluded the U.S. government in Iraq. And
with President Bush's poll numbers tanking, and Dick Cheney's
even worse, it's time for some "moderate" sharks to carefully
circle for some score-settling and preening.

In its account of Wilkerson's BBC appearance, the British
Guardian newspaper reported Wednesday: "Asked whether the vice
president was guilty of a war crime, Mr. Wilkerson replied:
'Well, that's an interesting question -- it was certainly a
domestic crime to advocate terror and I would suspect that 
it is ... an international crime as well.' In the context of
other remarks it appeared he was using the word 'terror' to
apply to the systematic abuse of prisoners."

Strong stuff, especially since it's obvious that Wilkerson is
channeling Powell with those statements. But Powell was a team
player and a very effective front man for the administration
that was doing all that politicizing and cherry-picking -- and
then proceeding with the policies that Wilkerson now seeks to
pin on Cheney as possible war crimes.

White House war makers deftly hyped Powell's "moderate"
credibility while the Washington press corps lauded his
supposed integrity. Powell was the crucial point man for
giving "diplomatic" cover to the Iraq invasion fixation of
Bush and Cheney. So, typically, Powell proclaimed three weeks 
into 2003: "If the United Nations is going to be relevant, it
has to take a firm stand."

When Powell made his dramatic presentation to the U.N.
Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, he fudged, exaggerated and
concocted, often presenting deceptions as certainties. Along
the way, he played fast and loose with translations of phone
intercepts to make them seem more incriminating. And, 
as researchers at the media watch group FAIR (where I'm an
associate) pointed out, "Powell relied heavily on the
disclosure of Iraq's pre-war unconventional weapons programs
by defector Hussein Kamel, without noting that Kamel had also
said that all those weapons had been destroyed." But the 
secretary of state wowed U.S. journalists.

Powell's televised U.N. speech exuded great confidence and
authoritative judgment. But he owed much of his touted
credibility to the fact that he had long functioned inside a
media bubble shielding him from direct challenge. It might
puzzle an American to read later, in a book compiled by the 
London-based Guardian, that Powell's much-ballyhooed speech
went over like a lead balloon. "The presentation was long on
assertion and muffled taped phone calls, but short on killer
facts," the book said. "It fell flat."

Fell flat? Well it did in Britain, where a portion of the
mainstream press immediately set about engaging in vigorous
journalism that ripped apart many of Powell's assertions
within days. But not on the western side of the Atlantic,
where Powell's star turn at the United Nations elicited an 
outpouring of media adulation. In the process of deference to
Powell, many liberals were among the swooners.

In her Washington Post column the morning after Powell spoke,
Mary McGrory proclaimed that "he persuaded me." She wrote:
"The cumulative effect was stunning." And McGrory, a seasoned
and dovish political observer, concluded: "I'm not ready for
war yet. But Colin Powell has convinced me that it might 
be the only way to stop a fiend, and that if we do go, there
is reason."

In the same edition, Post columnist Richard Cohen shared his
insight that Powell was utterly convincing: "The evidence he
presented to the United Nations -- some of it circumstantial,
some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail -- had to
prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for 
its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still
retains them. Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman -- could
conclude otherwise."

Inches away, Post readers found Jim Hoagland's column with
this lead: "Colin Powell did more than present the world with
a convincing and detailed X-ray of Iraq's secret weapons and
terrorism programs yesterday. He also exposed the enduring bad
faith of several key members of the U.N. Security Council 
when it comes to Iraq and its 'web of lies,' in Powell's
phrase." Hoagland's closing words sought to banish doubt: "To
continue to say that the Bush administration has not made its
case, you must now believe that Colin Powell lied in the most
serious statement he will ever make, or was taken in by 
manufactured evidence. I don't believe that. Today, neither
should you."

On the opposite page the morning after Powell's momentous U.N.
speech, a Washington Post editorial was figuratively on the
same page as the Post columnists. Under the headline
"Irrefutable," the newspaper laid down its line for
rationality: "After Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's 
presentation to the United Nations Security Council yesterday,
it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq
possesses weapons of mass destruction."

Also smitten was the editorial board of the most influential
U.S. newspaper leaning against the push for war. Hours after
Powell finished his U.N. snow job, the New York Times
published an editorial with a mollified tone -- declaring that
he "presented the United Nations and a global television 
audience yesterday with the most powerful case to date that
Saddam Hussein stands in defiance of Security Council
resolutions and has no intention of revealing or surrendering
whatever unconventional weapons he may have."

By sending Powell to address the Security Council, the Times
claimed, President Bush "showed a wise concern for
international opinion." And the paper contended that "Mr.
Powell's presentation was all the more convincing because he
dispensed with apocalyptic invocations of a struggle of good
and evil and focused on shaping a sober, factual case against
Mr. Hussein's regime."

Later, in mid-September 2003, straining to justify
Washington's refusal to let go of the occupation of Iraq,
Colin Powell used the language of a venture capitalist: "Since
the United States and its coalition partners have invested a
great deal of political capital, as well as financial
resources, as well as the lives of our young men and women --
and we have a large force there now -- we can't be expected to
suddenly just step aside."

Now, after so much clear evidence has emerged to discredit the
entire U.S. war effort, Colin Powell still can't bring himself
to stand up and account for his crucial role. Instead, he's
leaving it to a former aide to pin blame on those who remain
at the top of the Bush administration. But Powell was an 
integral part of the war propaganda machinery. And we can
hardly expect the same media outlets that puffed him up at
crucial times to now scrutinize their mutual history.

<http://www.counterpunch.org/solomon11302005.html>