A couple of points….
In Tom Brokov’s opening statement when talking to Powell, he said this…:
Whoever’s elected president of the United States, that first day in the Oval Office on January 21st will face this: an American economy that’s in a near paralytic state at this time; we’re at war in two different countries, Afghanistan and Iraq; we have an energy crisis; we have big decisions to make about health care and about global climate change. The president of the United States and the Congress of the United States now have the highest disapproval ratings that we have seen in many years.
A valid argument could be made that most of these were self induced by 1) the Republican party succumbing to neocon madness and 2) by the top echelon of Republican leadership which allowed their party to go out of control.
This same message, that it was the Republicans who aimed a self imposed Cheney shotgun blast to their own face…. was also carried through by Powell himself…
And I’ve also been disappointed, frankly, by some of the approaches that Senator McCain has taken recently, or his campaign ads, on issues that are not really central to the problems that the American people are worried about. This Bill Ayers situation that’s been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign. But Mr. McCain says that he’s a washed-out terrorist. Well, then, why do we keep talking about him? And why do we have these robocalls going on around the country trying to suggest that, because of this very, very limited relationship that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, somehow, Mr. Obama is tainted. What they’re trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings. And I think that’s inappropriate.
One specific example of why Republicans should not be entrusted with the keys of this country….
I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.
Then a personal story to illustrate his philosophy:
I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards–Purple Heart, Bronze Star–showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross, it didn’t have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life. Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I’m troubled about the fact that, within the party, we have these kinds of expressions.
If you read this and are not be livid at those running the Republican Party, you are one sick dude.
kavips 
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October 20, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Sarah
Suddenly because Powell is endorsing obama he is not as evil as he used to be? Yet, Powell was the one encouraging the Iraq war claiming they had WMD. Anyone with intelligence knows that Powell is endorsing based on race.
98% of black people are voting for obama just because he is black. White people are split between obama, nadar, and McCain. Think about it.
The truth is this is a race campaign. The Democrats control the senate and congress and have the lowest approval rating in US history. The Democrats couldn’t even beat Bush in the elections thus why they are going after the black vote in the US, about 45 million blacks. Thus, why obama voted present over 130 times, avoided the tough issues, and never challenged his party leaders on senate to preserve his political career. Only 143 days on state senate when he decided to run for office.
The Democrats lost because the US is not a socialist/communist system. Americans fought against Nazi Germany, their socialist party, and communist USSR for decades, just to name a few.
Again, Clinton supported deregulation and introduced FTAs like NAFTA. That is why the US economy was strong during his administration. McCain also supports deregulation and fights for FTAs like NAFTA. These initiatives will help our economy. Our economy is very important, McCain is better for our economy. I hope people get educated before they vote.
US businesses create US jobs. obama wants to limit the growth of US businesses, which is limiting the growth of US jobs. If you increase tax on US businesses they will either just relocate to a lower tax country taking American jobs with them, pass the added tax cost to consumers or go bankrupt. GM and Ford can barely compete globally and obama wants to tax them more. The smaller businesses that are reliant on GM and Ford will also be greatly affected, destroying more US jobs.
The US is the land of opportunity not the land of equal outcome. Why should government take your money and give it to people who are already on welfare to spread the wealth?
What Caused Our Economic Crisis? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RZVw3no2A4
October 21, 2008 at 3:10 am
kavips
Whoa there Sarah… Who ever said Powell was evil? Maybe someone, somewhere in the Republican party did, (lol …it’s true…) but it wasn’t here?
Before you criticize Powell on his WMD thing you need to read this… If your boss tells you someone shot your child, here’s a gun, he’s getting away, shoot him now, you know you won’t question, you will..
By now the entire world but you knows Cheney misled Colin… We all have read the reports that Powell struggled internally with that call in front of the UN for a long time…He told Cheney that he had to have unequivocal proof that WMD’s were in Iraq before he went before the UN… When shown two trailers used for blowing up hydrogen weather balloons, and told they were chemical laboratories he believed it was so…( how could he find out for sure, check them out himself..?)
” Hi, Sir, I’m Colin Powell from the United States, and I have to make an important decision soon… that will be affectiing your country.. Do your mind if I step in and look around?” Oh, Lindsey Lohan… you like her too?” That hummas smells awfully good, mind if I try some? Look, I’d offer you a beer, but being muslim… I know you don’t drink… What’s on this tank… oh… H2…. Um interesting… not much here, time to move along, Thanks gentlemen….”
I don’t think so….. He had to rely upon what he was given..
Therefore your first line in your argument is false…
“Yet, Powell was the one encouraging the Iraq war claiming they had WMD”
How you jumped to the second is beyond me… There appears to be lacking any evidence for a logical leap to this conclusion…
Anyone with intelligence knows that Powell is endorsing based on race.
Which makes all of us readers assume that your second premise was your original hypothesis all the time.. evidence… or no…evidence…..
Since race motivating Powell’s endorsement is not based on any fact, and appears to be supposition upon your part, it would appear to rational human beings, that none of the rest of your argument has merit as well… just the rattling of the KKK in a different disguise…
“Hi, I’m Sarah Palin… and want to be your Putin protector….”
But Sarah, your racially generated argument, although it does nothing for Republicans, does make a compelling reason for one to vote for President Obama over Mr. “Behind In The Polls”…. It will make fools out of people who still think that skin melanin matters any more then the color of one’s eyes…. lol.
October 21, 2008 at 8:19 am
anonone
UN weapons inspectors had free rein in Iraq – they could have gone ANYPLACE Powell (R, Liar) told them to go. They were begging the US to tell them where the WMD were hidden. Powell knew there were no weapons, and he carried Bush’s water just like you’re carrying his now.
You are such an apologists for the repubs.
October 21, 2008 at 11:42 am
kavips
And you are a rather weak, if not ignorant, prosecutor.
Get facts.
Then come back.
Fact check these hypotheses.
1) free reign in Iraq
2) Powell was in charge of inspectors
3)Powell knew there were no weapons
4) Powell was a water carrier, and not an independent voice
5) I’m an apologist for repubs…
I’ll point you in the right direction. State of Denial.
October 21, 2008 at 12:13 pm
kavips
Sarah’s racial attack above has several glaring errors… Allow me to point them out….
I’ll just list them and see if you can see how she starts with an unproven hypothesis and builds upon it… Sort of like building a beach house on shifting sand…..
98% of black people are voting for Obama just because he is black. (how does she know?) False
The truth is this is a race campaign. (maybe for two people I know out or 5000 I’ve spoken to) False
The Democrats couldn’t even beat Bush in the elections thus why they are going after the black vote in the US, about 45 million blacks. (They always went after the black vote arduously and lost anyway) False
The Democrats lost because the US is not a socialist/communist system.( No, the democrats lost because of Florida in 2000, and 160,000 votes in Ohio the second time.) False
McCain also supports deregulation and fights for FTAs like NAFTA. These initiatives will help our economy. Our economy is very important, McCain is better for our economy. (Those are Bush’s proposals as well: they didn’t work over the past 8 years….) False
I hope people get educated before they vote. ( They are: that’s why Obama is so far ahead.) True
Obama wants to limit the growth of US businesses, which is limiting the growth of US jobs. (Where did you come up with such nonsense…. dream it at 2:00 am?… lol … Obama’s plan will jump start businesses as did Clinton’s plan during the 90’s. McCain’s plan will cause a newer Great Depression as did Bush’s) False
If you increase tax on US businesses they will either just relocate to a lower tax country taking American jobs with them. (Too late: they have already relocated under this past Republican administration because of fantastic tax credits each time one relocates overseas…. Your mantra is a failure… On the other hand, Obama will issue tax credits to both foreign and domestic businesses who invest here, in our country…So if you’re a business… Hmm. I’ll invest in Cayman Islands if McCain is elected and Pikeville, Kentucky if Obama is elected… Again that’s why Obama is so far ahead in the polls….Americans can trust him…) False
GM and Ford can barely compete globally..(because of Bush’s tax code and stupid business practices…cars getting 10 miles per gallon? Just plain stupid as is your argument) True
The US is the land of opportunity not the land of equal outcome. Why should government take your money and give it to people who are already on welfare to spread the wealth? ( So we get roads, schools, hospitals, new technology, new sources of energy, better competitiveness against other nations, less debt, more efficient business practices, a viable housing market, economic incentives in poorer rural areas… just to name a few… Why would we want to waste money giving it to rich people who have way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, too much of it already…. and just waste it in paper securities marginalized to the max….. This crises was caused by Phil Gramm… He was a Republican you know…. and heh, wait a minute… He is slated to be McCain’s Secretary of Treasurer if McCain gets elected…. You premise is… False
Look, Sarah… if you want to propagate nonsense to yourself… go ahead… but the rest of us are too smart to believe those lies your side has peddled for too long… True
The crashing stock market woke us up… True
Goodbye Republicans… lol…. True
October 21, 2008 at 5:39 pm
anonone
“Fact check these hypotheses.”
Game on:
1) free reign in Iraq
Ask Hans Blix – they were going everywhere they wanted, without notice, including the Presidential palaces
2) Powell was in charge of inspectors
I never said he was. But the UN inspectors were asking for the US intelligence that would give them the location of the WMD. What they got was garbage, of course, because there wasn’t any WMD.
3)Powell knew there were no weapons
There were many many people in the intelligence agencies that knew the intelligence was being ginned. The policy was to go to war and to fix the intelligence to match the policy. Powell was the vaunted Secretary of State with all the security access needed to know the truth. He also know the UN inspectors couldn’t find anything, he also knew that the former UN inspector Scott Ritter said the Iraq did not have any weapons, and that we had the Iraqi military contained and under constant surveillance.
4) Powell was a water carrier, and not an independent voice
See his UN speech – not a bit of truth in it. Every thing he said turned out to be a lie. Show me one time when he contradicted Bush. If he had had any integrity, he would have resigned as several senior career diplomats did at the time because they knew it was a war based on lies.
5) I’m an apologist for repubs…
Well, the evidence is scattered throughout your blog and others….
October 21, 2008 at 5:40 pm
anonone
Case closed:
“Colin Powell’s long dossier of Iraq’s alleged non-compliance came under withering attack from the chief UN weapons inspectors yesterday. They said they found several elements of his evidence either false or unconvincing.
Hans Blix picked on two satellite images of a chemical warfare site, which the US secretary of state told the security council, in his 90-minute presentation last week, proved Iraq was engaged in deception.
Mr Powell had shown two photographs of the site at Al Musayyib, taken in May and July last year. The site was used to trans-ship chemical weapons from production facilities out to the field, he said.
On the first occasion there was what Mr Powell described as a “decontamination vehicle associated with biological and chemical weapons activity”. Two months later the vehicle had gone and the site had been bulldozed and graded, he said.
But Mr Blix made it clear he found the pictures unconvincing. “The reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity as a movement of proscribed munitions in anticipation of an imminent inspection,” he said.
He accepted that governments had many sources of information that were not available to the inspectors, but he added drily: “Inspectors must base their reports only on evidence which they can themselves examine and present publicly. Without evidence, confidence cannot arise.”
The thinly veiled attack on Mr Powell’s case for war by the chief arms inspectors adds to the problems the US and Britain are facing in making their argument on the world stage. Last week a similar British dossier was discredited when it became clear that it had been compiled from old academic papers which it had passed off as partly drawn from “intelligence”.
Mr Powell last week made much of an engine testing stand for which he also showed the security council satellite pictures. It was “clearly intended for long-range missiles that can fly 1,200 kilometres”, he claimed, adding: “These are missiles that Iraq wants in order to project power, to threaten, and to deliver chemical, biological and – if we let him – nuclear warheads.”
Iraq last week rebutted the US charges, arguing that the testing stand had a longer exhaust facility than earlier ones only because it was set up horizontally rather than vertically.
In his report yesterday, Mr Blix came down closer to the Iraqi position. “So far, the test stand has not been associated with proscribed activity,” he said. In other words, there was no evidence it had been used in ways deemed illegal under UN resolutions.
Mr Blix also cast doubt on Mr Powell’s claims that Iraqi officials had been tapping the inspectors’ telephones and hastily moving material from sites shortly before the inspectors arrived. “In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew in advance that the inspectors were coming,” Mr Blix said.
Speaking after Mr Blix, Mohamed El Baradei, the chief nuclear inspector and director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), also questioned Mr Powell’s claims. He referred to documents removed from an Iraqi scientist’s home. Mr Powell had said the 2,000 pages had been found thanks to intelligence supplied to the inspectors.
Mr El Baradei said the documents referred to uranium enrichment using lasers. “Nothing contained in the documents alters the conclusions previously drawn by the IAEA concerning the extent of Iraq’s laser enrichment programme,” he said.”
© Guardian News & Media 2008
Published: 2/14/2003
October 22, 2008 at 12:09 am
kavips
Ok, there seems to be some translation problems going on here… along the lines of “it determines what “is”, means….”
I was going to highlight everything I agreed with, but went for the easier option… Below is everything I disagree with….
……..
Nada… Apparently we are on the same page… Uh, what were we arguing about again?
Oh, yeah, whether this evidence proves that Powell should be considered evil… I said no… I’m still not sure if you are saying yes? If, you conclude he is “evil”, by chance, does that make his most recent endorsement as being one emanating from hell’s pit, as Limbaugh is now stating?
October 22, 2008 at 1:35 am
anonone
You seem to think that we should be listening to Powell and granting him some semblance of credibility. I guess he is one of your oxymoronic “good” repubs. You make excuses for him like he was “misled” by Cheney. No, he was the center of the conspiracy and he used his credibility to help lie this country into war.
We don’t need Powell to explain to us what went wrong with the repubs. We all know, and he was part of it. Obama doesn’t need his endorsement; it serves Powell much more than it helps Obama.
If there were justice, Powell would be sitting in a cell in the Hague, not pontificating on Meet the Press.
October 22, 2008 at 2:37 am
kavips
Your view is silly, only because there are no facts to supplant your accusation.
Now if it were Cheney… a different story.
October 22, 2008 at 3:33 am
anonone
Re-read the post “Fact check these hypotheses.” That article was published two days after he lied to the world his U.N. speech. Not two years later. Two days later.
You’re saying Powell didn’t know any of that because Cheney “misled” him? You think Powell is that dumb? What more “facts” do you need? He lied, and after his lies were pointed out to him, he did nothing. Nothing. Nothing to stop the war. Why is this so difficult for you to understand? If the world knew that he was lying, you don’t think he himself knew? Of course he did.
Now, 10’s of thousands of dead and trillions of dollars later, he comes out to tell us what the problem with repubs are, and you think it is wonderful. Powell should be glad he’s not in jail (yet), and ashamed to show is lying face in public.
You say my view is “silly” because I have no facts. I say to you that you call me “silly” because you have no facts.
October 22, 2008 at 6:51 am
kavips
Before you go further, ask yourself this question: is it still considered a lie if one makes a misstatement he fervently holds to be true at the time spoken, but at a later date evidence turns up that it is not?
You are using evidence that turned up after three years of scouring Iraq for WMD’s that were not there… and using that piece of evidence to call out someone who had to make a life-changing choice based on the evidence he had on hand at that contemporaneous time…
The question of whether right or wrong, depends upon the culpability of Powell’s frame of mind at the moment… You do not seem to have access to that point… Bob Woodward’s book covers it in detail…exactly how Cheney bamboozled a very skeptical Powell into going before the world and convincing the world that perhaps a threat was viable…
Blix responded two days later, and was attacked by the Bush/Cheney smear machine (we didn’t know better then) well enough so that his argument was not deemed credible… “broken old man” I believe was the term used….
It was Powell’s presentation that finally convinced the world that it was not just a grab for oil…
Powell later responded as to why he went through with it: “you work for the president.. He is the Commander in Chief… If he comes to you and says he really needs you to do something for your country…. you do it.”
I’ll close this remark by mentioning that there is the primary difference on how American people conduct themselves compared to those of other nations; and that is American’s are quick to forgive, if a judgmental call was made in error, and effective in meting out punishment… if it was not… Soviets on the other hand, never bothered to make that distinction….
October 22, 2008 at 8:43 am
anonone
Kavips, please…I really thought you were better thinker than this:
“Powell later responded as to why he went through with it: ‘you work for the president.. He is the Commander in Chief… If he comes to you and says he really needs you to do something for your country…. you do it.’” In Powell’s value structure, that includes knowingly lying to his country and the world to start an unprovoked war.
I know you remember the history of the Nuremberg Trials. You must remember that “I was only following orders” was not a defense for war crimes. I can’t believe that you would accept such a pathetic excuse for Powell’s lies and failures to act. That is always the excuse of war criminals.
And Powell did NOT convince the world. Bush refused to follow through on his promise to have a UN vote because he knew he would lose it because the world was not convinced.
And you keep saying things like “we didn’t know better then.” Actually there were a huge number of Americans and other countries that DID know better THEN. The evidence did not appear “after three years of scouring Iraq for WMD’s” – that is utter nonsense – it was known then by people like Scott Ritter and other senior members of the intelligence community. IT WAS KNOWN THEN! The evidence that Powell was lying was known AT THE TIME as I clearly showed you in the article published 2 days after his speech.
You can try to re-write history to be an apologist for repub war criminals like Powell, which is exactly what you’re doing in your last post. Forgiveness is one thing and justice is another. Without justice for war criminals like Powell et. al. there is no incentive to keep this from happening again. Particularly when people like you continue to venerate people like Powell, who lied to the world and enabled an unnecessary war that has cost countless lives. He should be held in nothing less than disgrace and contempt for what he did to our country.
October 10, 2009 at 4:07 pm
unknown
Here is my thing I hate how these Republicans act like they know everything. I have never met people in my life that are so disrespectful, single-minded, and babies in my entire life. PRESIDENT OBAMA get that PRESIDENT OBAMA (D) is in charge now. Sorry Republicans but your past 8 years of living the high life are OVER!!!!! Why don’t you sit back and relax these next 8 years and let us the Democrats clean up your mess. Barack Obama is not the person to put the blame on for our countries failures right now it is President Bush and that old fart who sat next to him the past 8 years. Please have some patience it took 8 years to ruin our country it will take 8 years to fix it.