Left: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, photo from PBS.From Sue at Head On Radio:
Lottirj sent along this link to a 9 page GQ article featuring Colin Powell. I’m not going to give any of it away here. Just go here and read it all for yourself. I honestly think Powell is the key to impeachment. The one thing he constantly denies though is that the pre-war intell was all lies. He admits to it being wrong, but not fabricated. Maybe he should see the fact cooking and cherry picking evidence we’ve all seen.This is an incredible document. Read it and weep.
For example, Powell is asked: Are you sorry you didn’t question things more forcefully?
At the time, when I felt the president might not have focused on all the potential consequences, I said I needed to see him. I went to the White House and had a private session with him. I told him that we could knock over Saddam’s regime but he needed to understand what we would be faced with once we had done that. It was my “When you break it, you own it” speech. I said that this invasion would tie up the better part of 40 percent of our army for an indefinite period of time. It will be hugely expensive. You will be dealing with this for a long time to come. I said, “Take it to the U.N. See if we can get something from the U.N. that might allow us to avoid this war.” He said, “Let’s share this with the others.” And a few days later, we had a discussion with everyone, some by videoconference. They eventually agreed that we should take it to the U.N., some more willingly than others. Dick [Cheney] didn’t think it would work, and Don [Rumsfeld] I was not sure about, because you couldn’t always tell his opinion. Had I done my duty? I think so.
Do you feel responsible for giving the U.N. flawed intelligence?
I didn’t know it was flawed. Everybody was using it. The CIA was saying the same thing for two years. I gave perhaps the most accurate presentation of the intelligence as we knew it—without any of the “Mushroom clouds are going to show up tomorrow morning” and all the rest of that stuff. But the fact of the matter is that a good part of it was wrong, and I am sorry that it was wrong.
Read the whole mealy-mouthed interview at GQ.