Tenet and Powell : Pick Up a Bedpan

[CatWoman]

It was so cowardly of both of you not to scream, yell and push back with every fiber of your souls against the Cheney-orchestrated, trumped up run up to war. It is almost as cowardly now to claim that you knew all along that it was a bad idea and that you had wished that the administration had found another way of insuring that Saddam was defanged.


Tens of thousands of lives have been lost, hundreds of billions of dollars spent making us less safe, more hated and the region even more destabilized.

And you write a book to clear your name?

Watching the excellent Bill Moyers report on the lack of opposition to the trail of lies that lead us to war I was again struck by the number of people who knew better but stayed silent. Or, much worse, knew better but parroted the administration's lies. When Colin Powell spoke before the U.N. and accused Saddam of harboring al-Zarqawi in northern Iraq I remember screaming at the television, "Liar! Northern Iraq is Kurdish controlled and in our no-fly zone. There are already more U.S. Special Forces there on the ground than Iraqi troops." And yet General Powell has the balls to leak to Bob Woodward that he lobbied to avoid this madness.

Tenet and Powell should worry more about the lives that they helped ruin than their precious reputations. They should march over to Walter Reed and empty bedpans for now legless soldiers, read Tom Clancy novels to now sightless marines. If they were Japanese they would have long ago fallen on their swords.

I do not want that for them, or for anyone. However if these two men truly want to restore honor to their reputations they need to dedicate the rest of their days to atoning for the pointless misery that they helped unleash on our country, on Iraq and the world.

--Trey Ellis

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trey-ellis/tenet-and-powell-pick-u_b_47048.html

[EFerrari]

1. I couldn't agree more. K&R

[firefox_fan]

2. Agree...

Whining now about it is just too late...

[Swamp Rat]

3. If he does not return it, we should REVOKE Tenet's Medal of Freedom!

If he wants to atone for his sins, he should begin by passing out purple hearts to injured soldiers for the duration, and perhaps do some KP duty outside the Green Zone for a while. :mad:

[hwmnbn]

4. For all his blustery accusations....

he was in bed with these liars. So he's written a book, big deal! The real book on him has already been written by history.

I can do without his self-serving whining.

[La_Fourmi_Rouge]

5. This post deserves 100 recs.

These are two of the puniest men in Washington. I swear, if I live long enough, I will do a "pissing tour" on the graves of the pukes who promoted this war.

Unfortunatley, it is beginning to look like Gen. David Petraeus is going to be on the list

[myrna minx]

6. These men are shameless. K&R and

:applause:

[Straight Shooter]

7. And to think I once supported Colin Powell for president, for the 2000 campaign.

The treachery of his deceit was far greater than the others', for he is the one in whom most Americans placed their confidence. Not bush. Not cheney. Not wolfowitz. Not tenet. Certainly not kindasleezy rice.

Colin Powell was the greatest deceiver of all, because his word carried the most weight.

[Morgana LaFey]

8. "mistakes were made..."

famous words from McNamara re the stupid Vietnam War (stupid tht we did it and stayed so long, which were the results of the mistakes made by McNamara and others lying to the public). In the 90s, when HIS book came out, he toured the various talk shows. I probably heard him on NPR, saying with tears in his voice: "We were wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong."

No shit, sherlock.

Nevertheless, his pain was palpabale and I'm sure sincere, and his performance tore at my heart. He HAD obviously finally gotten it and he was clearly trying to acquire some modicum of forgiveness as he toured around the country choking up, and choking those of us who lived thrugh those tumultuous times up too.

WHY THE HELL DIDN'T WE LEARN THOSE VIETNAM LESSONS? (Well, some of us did, actually) But we PROMISED OURSELVES that we would never make those mistakes again. Powell himself had a whole damned DOCTRINE named after him -- the Powell Doctrine (go in with overwhelming force, have a clear mission, and a clear exit strategy) -- which got COMPLETELY ignored and violated from start to finish, and he HELPED do it.

I was so beside myself before the war -- even now, the pain of knowing that as hard as I worked, as hard as we all worked, we were NOT going to stop this damned war, and that it was against everything we knew, everything we'd learned still hurts at a very deep level. And yet we all knew at the time that it was destined to become Vietnam in the desert. Millions of us knew. And couldn't stop it.

We couldn't stop it in part because people like Tenet and Powell who KNEW better themselves were actively complicit in the build-up to the war.

Damn them to hell.

[tomp]

9. restore honor?

what honor did either ever have to restore?

[H2O Man]

10. It's a tough thing .....

I think that Tenet betrayed his agency and indeed his country. And I have a very low opinion of Powell. However, I think that people can redeem themselves .... though not by making a hefty fee for a "tell all" book. It's interesting that Bill Moyers is mentioned in the discussion, because he is a wonderful example of a person who failed to take an honorable position in the Vietnam days, but who has become one of the most honest and respected voices in the country in the decades since that time.

[upi402]

11. Yep, ZERO respect now for them.

Powell crapped on the uniform.
Tenet let neocons humiliate the CIA.

Shame on these men of no courage. They are complicite in the Republican betrayal of American democracy.

[WinkyDink]

12. Amen. These are men without honor.

[malaise]

13. Belafonte on Colin Powell

http://www.blackcommentator.com/14_belafonte.html

<snip>
KING: What did you want him to do? What do you want him to do?

BELAFONTE: I would like him to live up to a higher moral standard. You know, Jeffords doesn't have to be the only one who sits in disagreement with the policies of this country and this government and acts upon it out of conscience.

Where is Colin Powell's conscience? In a time when the world is getting ready to go up in flames in a war that's hugely ill-advised, you know. Today we are going to go after Iraq. You know, where do we go next? After Iran? And then, when our present friends fall out of favor with us, do we go after Pakistan?

KING: But can't Colin Powell have a belief that the Iraqi situation is the administration's point of view, is correct and agree with its principles without giving up his own -- you're assuming that he's going against his principles. Maybe they are his principles.

BELAFONTE: Well, if they are his principles, then I sit opposed to them. I have to make the assumption that it's not his principles because of what he said (UNINTELLIGIBLE) at the Republican National Convention when he gave that remarkable speech. Or when he said going through the United Nations as the vehicle through which this problem should be settled. To do anything less than that and to stick to that mandate I think is a sellout.

KING: So you think he is selling -- has he disappointed you, then?

BELAFONTE: Yes. You know, unfortunately. He has.