More on Collin Powell

I don't think as highly of Colin Powell as Jazz does and in fact see him as just another US Baghdad Bob. Powell's first claim to fame was the cover-up of the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam and was latter involved in the Iran Contra scandal. Jane Hamsher over at firedoglake describes Powell better than I could.

A lot of people think Colin Powell is a good guy who just got done dirty by BushCo. Hogwash. He's a whore, he's always been a whore, his son's a whore, whore whore whore. Nobody put a gun to his head and made him lie to the UN, and any argument that he questioned the necessity of the war only goes to show that he put his own political meal ticket ahead of any sort of principle. He'd still be shilling for that bunch of crooks today but for the fact that they tossed him out like a bulging sack of garbage.

James Wagner has a brief history of Powell's sorry legacy.

Colin Powell, may he not enjoy this retirement

He's gone. Colin Powell's finally gone, and under the most cowardly of circumstances, just slipping out the back door quietly to no good purpose, and not three years ago, not two years ago and ultimately not at any time before November 2, but instead only days after the apparently successful election campaign of the man for whose stupidity and insane belligerance he destroyed whatever reputation he may* have assembled years ago.

That same cowardice, in the line of his duty as Secretary of State, is responsible for the deaths of perhaps over a hundred thousand Americans and Iraqis.

Powell's legacy will, and not incidently, include his argument that the U.S. armed services couldn't (shouldn't?) be integrated - for homosexuals, that is. I'm sure however that he would have made the usual exception for times of war like the present, when they are needed for cannon fodder.

A very small man indeed.


*I'll leave it to others, who know much more than I do, to comment on Powell's early, very problematic career in the Viet Nam war (a Mai Lai cover-up is apparently only part of it) and in the Iran-Contra affair (coordinating the sale of missiles to Iran), and I'm sure they will.

I have no tears to shed for Colin Powell.