Colin Powell's Own Staff Had Warned Him Against His War Lies

[Donnachaidh]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-swanson/34438/colin-powells-own-staff-had-warned-him-against-his-war-lies

In the wake of WMD-liar Curveball's videotaped confession, Colin Powell is demanding to know why nobody warned him about Curveball's unreliability. The trouble is, they did.

Can you imagine having an opportunity to address the United Nations Security Council about a matter of great global importance, with all the world's media watching, and using it to… well, to make shit up – to lie with a straight face, and with a CIA director propped up behind you, I mean to spew one world-class, for-the-record-books stream of bull, to utter nary a breath without a couple of whoppers in it, and to look like you really mean it all? What gall. What an insult to the entire world that would be.

Colin Powell doesn't have to imagine such a thing. He has to live with it. He did it on February 5, 2003. It's on videotape.

I tried to ask him about it in the summer of 2004. He was speaking to the Unity Journalists of Color convention in Washington, D.C. The event had been advertised as including questions from the floor, but for some reason that plan was revised. Speakers from the floor were permitted to ask questions of four safe and vetted journalists of color before Powell showed up, and then those four individuals could choose to ask him something related – which of course they did not, in any instance, do.

More at the link --

[ensho]

1. Colin is first a ninny and second acts stupid because of his ninnyness

his hands will never stop dripping the blood of the innocent

[niyad]

2. he knew he was lying at the time, and it is utterly despicable.

but then, this is a man who made his whole career on lying--I do not ever forget that he was instrumental in the attempted coverup of MyLai

[rhett o rick]

5. It's called situational ethics. He was lying for our better good. Now he is trying to rationalize

his way out. Mostly likely for his own conscience. He will rot in hell along with his fellow war criminals.

I wish Pres Obama would at least go after one of them. Just one. Cheeeeney.

[Badfish]

3. He saw that this would be the perfect...

time to wash his hands of Iraqi blood , and took it.

"see , it wasn't my fault"

[Nordmadr]

4. He's not lying to us. He's lying to himself. It is the only way he can

sleep at night. They figured they'd still find something sufficient enough to justify it. They figured wrong.

[ensho]

11. he can sleep at night - remember when he said he and the neo cons

used ambien in order to sleep.

and now we know they have discovered ambien messes with the brain

[Bluenorthwest]

6. It was obvious at the time that he was lying and that he knew

he was lying. He is a man of no honor whatsoever.

[RainDog]

7. Powell wants to have it both ways

give Bush/Cheney their war and then pretend he wasn't told it was based upon lies - that it wasn't a war crime - a war of aggression.

I remember that time - funny how Powell's memory is so lacking.

[H2O Man]

8. Right.

He absolutely was warned that he was being told to parrot known lies. In fact, that is exactly why he and Dick Armitage spent the weekend at CIA HQ, doing the research that made it evident he was going to be purposely lying if he made the presentation. This is well documented.

Powell is an emotionally disturbed individual.

[Badfish]

13. Yup.

"He absolutely was warned that he was being told to parrot known lies."

And then he threw out the worst of it and went to the UN. Imagine what was left on the floor if the good stuff was drawings of trucks...

[Carolina]

9. Colin's

a despicable, evil sellout whose named should be spelled colon since he's full of shit.

[somone]

10. Like Powell never knew how to tell a lie during his entire military career

from ROTC to Vietnam to the Nixon White House to CJCS.

[gratuitous]

12. I don't know who Powell thinks he's fooling

But then again, after Powell's Prevaricating Power Point Presentation, there was a virtual stampede of popular journalists who couldn't get to their cameras, microphones or word processors fast enough to praise him as the most compelling speaker since Lincoln or Moses. So it's understandable that he should think he could just wave the wand again.

The question now is, will any of those who were singing Powell's praises in 2003 re-evaluate their position and hold him accountable? Or will this just be another inconvenient incident to be swept under the rug and erased from the public memory? And when the repercussions inevitably come, we'll just comfort ourselves with the fiction that "they" hate us for our freedom.