he is a fair weathered friend

From an earlier comment regarding Sec. Powell’s endorsement of Sen. Obama.

(I apologize to our community in advance for reposting it here.)

Would you accept an endorsement from this man?

A brief look at Colin Powell’s Character, Honesty and Judgment.

Plamegate revisited…

Mr. Armitage never did tell the White House or his boss, the President, that he was the leaker. Instead, in October 2003 he told Mr. Powell, who told the State Department general counsel, who in turn told the Justice Department but gave the White House Counsel only the sketchiest overview of what he’d learned and didn’t mention Mr. Armitage’s name. So while Mr. Fitzgerald presumably knew when he began his probe two months later that Mr. Armitage was Mr. Novak’s source, the President himself was apparently kept in the dark, even as he was pledging publicly to find out who the leaker was.

At a minimum, there appears to be a serious question of disloyalty here. By keeping silent, Messrs. Powell and Armitage let the President take political heat for the case, while also letting Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby and other White House officials twist in the wind for more than two years. We also know that it was the folks in Mr. Powell’s shop–including his former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson and intelligence officer Carl Ford Jr.–who did so much to trash John Bolton’s nomination to be Ambassador to the U.N. in 2005. The State Department clique that Mr. Bush tolerated for so long did tremendous damage to his Administration.

As for Justice, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the case in an act of political abdication. That left then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey in charge, and he also presumably knew about Mr. Armitage’s role as the leaker who started it all. Yet if the book’s account is correct, he too misled the White House with his silence. Mr. Comey is also the official who let Mr. Fitzgerald alter his mandate from its initial find-the-leaker charge to the obstruction and perjury raps against Mr. Libby that are all this case has come down to. Remind us never to get in a foxhole with either Mr. Comey or the Powell crowd.

As I recall, Bush’s stated goal was to get Saddam out of Kuwait, which he did. Perhaps he thought it would leave him weakened enough that the Iraqi people would finish him off, or perhaps we didn’t follow through with enough covert aid later, or who knows what. But it seemed like Bush accomplished his stated goal and then stopped, which is at it should be IMHO.

This business of Bush “not getting the job done in 1991″ seemed to come mostly from Democrats in 2003 griping that Dubya was trying to invade Iraq only because his daddy failed to get the job done when he had the chance or such tripe. These were the same sorts who’d have been screaming bloody murder had we stormed Baghdad in 1991.

So while there may be plenty of things to say bad regarding Powell, I don’t think this is one of them.

The one common thread that I have seen among the “Potomac Man” tribe of insiders is that Sarah Palin is not one of us, and she must be destroyed. I don’t think I am the only person out there seeing this.

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Activists Taking Action: Unified Patriots

I was very proud of that letter for a long time. It was personally signed and the General presented it to me with kind words after I was Selected as the honor graduate of my Basic Non-Commission Officer Course.

It’s framed on my wall.

Tommorrow it will be in an envelope back to the good general with my thoughts on his endoursement.

Powell is a politician’s politician, always drawn to power, and he thinks Obama has the most. I halfway hoped he wouldn’t endorse at all, that perhaps Obama was too far to the left in spite of the perceived power, but this doesn’t surprise me.

That’s why the endorsement doesn’t matter all that much. The people in the beltway will know this about Powell and the people outside… for the most part… could care less because, to them, he’s just another beltway elite.

In addition, if he was on McCain’s short list, this could even look like a case of sour grapes… inside the beltway.

The media will make much ado about it but, since people don’t really pay attention to the media anymore, it’s not going to cause any big rush to Obama, not even from the military.

And it was probably the correct decision. The goal was to get Saddam out of Kuwait, which was accomplished. Moreover, it was thought (correctly, in my opinion) that Saddam Hussein’s secularist Sunni government was a natural counterbalance to the Shi’ite extremist in Iraq as well as Shi’ite extremists elsewhere in the Middle East, especially in the Shi’ite government in Iran.

“Those who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” The Romans lost the strength of their system when they ceded power to a “Triumvirate” – three leaders, whom the Senate and House had no authority over. If we elect Barack Obama as president of these United States, he will join Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as a kind of new Triumvirate – three like-minded leaders unrestrained by any checks or balances. I cannot believe this is what the American people want. This SINGLE ISSUE alone is plenty of reason to elect John McCain as president. What is Colin Powell thinking?

Powell’s endorsement, although probable to remain in the biased media for quite some time, is, in fact, one vote.

As of statistics from 2002, (I imagine to be greater today)please bear in mind the following:

Amount of people in our Armed Forces:
26 million Americans living today have served in the military. 24 million of which are men, 12 million are over age 60. Also, on our soil:
Army- 466,000
Navy – 319,000
Air Force – 290,000
Marine Corps – 137,000

I will take the odds that the majority of the above will vote for the POW and I will happily relinquish the one vote coming from Powell. I am probably not alone in saying that the endorsement from any of the above is much more satisfying and important that Mr. Colin Powell. I was depressed for days before the endorsement, but not any more.

and as uncalled for, if not as widely seen, as the General Betrayus ad by Move On.

In movies they film alternative endings for movies and test them with audiences to see what makes the move sell more tickets. While I am not saying that President Bush had that luxury, what were the possible alternative endings of Gulf War I.

Ending 1…US forces swept into Baghdad and over threw the regime. US and coalition forces had enough boots on the ground to actually secure the country. The invasion would probably have been accepted in the court of world opinion based on the rape of an innocent country by Saddam.

Ending 2…Saddam with his back to wall started in with a scorched earth campaign using the Chemical weapons he was known to possess in 1990. A few here, a few there, and few dropped on Israel, delivered on one way martyrdom flights.

This would have been a very bad outcome in my view.

Enormous loss of civilian and military life with a response by the US of what, Tactical Nukes in population centers in Iraq.

If the US invaded Iraq in 2003 based on fear of Saddam having WMD’s and the will to use them, what leads anyone to believe he would not use them in 1990 in the face of a US invasion?

History, including the classified history of Gulf War 1 will someday come to light, I wonder what that history will tell us about the advice given to President Bush.

I get your passion for America when it is at war to be in it to win it. Unfortunately this country has sprouted up a crop of military elitists who don’t have the same passion as you do for the US fighting forces to get down and dirty in a fight until it is finished. They like to promote building up a first class military as a show of military might, but it is all for show. Colin Powell, Chuck Hagel, and Jack Murtha are the names that immediately come to my head.

So I disagree that this is akin to betraying America like Benedict Arnold. It is a weakness, but then a President needs to have the weak ones resign their posts because they are too in love with themselves to do the country any good.

The last time I remember a President doing this kind of thing is when Truman fired MacArthur.

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Activists Taking Action: Unified Patriots

Powell’s endorsement will have little if any impact on garnering votes.

Obama already has the black vote, so Powell won’t really effect that. I think that undecided white voters won’t be swayed anymore by this endorsement than they were by Oprah’s.

For all the reasons already stated here, I have no regard for Powell’s opinion on anything. I think most Americans feel the same way. And I think a lot of undecideds will see this as a “black like me” endorsement.

It’s sad really that things have to always come down to race… or gender. Most of us just want to vote for the right person, race and gender aside.

But when a group keeps throwing race and racism in your face, it just can’t be ignored.

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You put some facts together in a way I never thought of before. I think we have to judge him guilty as charged. I missed his appearance on the tube today, I was at church clinging to a higher power while it aired. I just caught up via a clip at another post here on redstate. What got me fired up about his mealy-mouthed interview was his umbrage over some harsh words from the right concerning Obama. Never mind that it came from outside the McCain campaign. Has he missed all the crap from dkos and the myriad others from the hard left aimed at McCain & Palin? Moderate = lukewarm, thus “I spew it out of my mouth”. Can we treat him like Chuck Connors in the opening scene from “Branded”?

After all, a man is known by the company he keeps. Maybe someone should have pointed out to Powell that he has now aligned himself with every anti-military organization in the Country along with every anti-American group, white hating group, all sexual pervert groups, live baby killers, and etc.

While not all Obama supporters are leftwing scum,(the majority are just idiots), all leftwing scum are Obama supporters.

We will put Powell in the idiot group. He seems to have established a foothold there over time.

So, why wouldn’t he turn tail now?

UPDATE: Powell abandoned President Clinton re Somalia in 1993, when Clinton entered office in the midst of an ongoing operation and, despite a request by the President to stay on thru the crisis and see Christopher Hitchens’ Bill of Particulars against Powell from 2000 which paint a picture of a politically expediant career not contradicted by his actions after 2000:

In 1968, as a staff army major in Vietnam, Colin Powell played a direct role in suppressing the inquiry into the My Lai massacre, and into related atrocities against civilians.

As a White House fellow during the Watergate years he earned a reputation — but only for keeping his mouth shut.

As a military assistant to Caspar Weinberger during the Reagan administration, he helped to deceive Congress about the trading in heavy weapons with Iran, about the exchange of those weapons for hostages, and about the diversion of the illicit proceeds to finance another illicit operation in Nicaragua.

In Panama, in 1989, he helped shape an operation that totally disregarded international law and took many civilian lives.

During the Gulf War, he strongly opposed any military help for the Kurdish and Shia rebellions against Saddam Hussein.

In the Bosnian conflict, he publicly opposed any intervention against Slobodan Milosevic and his forcible creation of a “Greater Serbia.”

Read it all.

“See also Christopher Hitchens’ Bill of Particulars against Powell…..”

I’m not sure what to make of Mr. Hitchens after he also endorsed Obama last week.

At least we still have Sean Hannity and David Brooks…. We do still have them, right?

Colin Powell’s endorsement of Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States is his second serious and notorious blunder. The first was permitting himself to be the Bush team greenhorn at the United Nations, alleging that great stores of WMD would be found, which never were.

Democrats love to ride on the coat tails of Gen. Powell’s endorsement of Barrack Hussein Obama; however, did they forget? This is the same Gen. Powell that endorsed President G.W. Bush……. the man that we know Democrats love soooooo much.