Powell Movement

That’s what Jon Stewart’s Daily Show called the resignation of Colin Powell. A Powell movement. (They didn’t even touch the possible pun on Colin.)

That’s how bad it has become. The Bush national security team is now so bad that it is a joke. The Daily Show noted that Powell was the administration’s “most influential moderate.” He was, at the same time, Stewart noted, also its “least influential moderate.” (See Letterman’s Top 10 comments on Powell below.)

It’s clear to me that the invasion of Fallujah was just a diversionary action. It was meant to distract attention from the real offensive: the blitzkrieg against the CIA and the State Department. Those two agencies were the locus of opposition to Bush’s reckless foreign policy, and they are no more. The alarmist, war-on-terror people are bashing the CIA for being “risk averse,” which is neocon nonsense, and for having failed to stop the 9/11 attacks, which is more than a little unfair. Now Goss is a giant wrecking ball. The two top officials in the Directorate of Operations walked out yesterday, and more are expected. It reminds me of the six months that James Schlesinger spent as CIA director in 1973, when, a CIA source said, it got so bad that Schlesinger requested an armed guard to accompany him as he strolled the halls at Langley.

Putting Condi Rice at the State Department means that the Cheney-Wolfowitz axis will have a free hand-or, a freer hand. Powell, who will go down in history for his idiotic waving of fake anthrax at the UN Security Council in February 2003 and other show-and-tell fakeries cooked up for him by the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, never really managed to stop the neocon juggernaut, whose minions will now invade the CIA and State en masse. History will judge Powell harshly, unless, of course, he decides to run for president in 2008. In any case, my guess is that Powell is too cowardly to go from show-and-tell to kiss-and-tell, so don’t expect Powell to write a tell-all book. He wants to stay friends with the Bush dynasty and the neocons. I hope I’m wrong.

Meanwhile, the Powell editorials are worth noting, though they aren’t as good as the Daily Show comments. The Post, surprisingly for this hawkish editorial page, says: “It is a measure of the stunning absence of accountability under Mr. Bush that it is Mr. Powell who leaves, while the architects of the failed and even disastrous policies he opposed, from postwar Iraq to Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, remain in office.” (What does it mean that Powell opposed “post-war Iraq”? I thought the important thing was that he opposed-secretly, and sans resigning in protest-the invasion itself.) The Times brings that part up: “There were moments in his tenure when Mr. Powell could have resigned over principle.” But the Times adds, correctly, that Powell “long ago chose loyalty over leadership.” Alas.

First reactions on Capitol Hill are interesting. The Democrats rushed to the microphones to praise Powell, while the Republicans-except for Sen. Hagel (who is also floating 2008 rumors)-were mostly quiet. So Powell gets the worst of both worlds. He fails to slow down the neocons, and he still gets tarred by the Bush partisans as “not a team player.”

David Letterman’s Top 10 List last night was, of course, about Colin Powell. It was a list of Powell’s top complaints. No. 5: “Tired of Dr. Heart Attack getting all the attention.” No. 2: “Bush constantly asking, ‘So which state are you secretary of?’” Funny. Sad.

http://www.tompaine.com/archives/the_dreyfuss_report.php