Colin Powell: Close Gitmo Now
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell held his tongue for four years during his tenure as the Bush Administrations chief foreign policy officer, faithfully toeing the party line when he was asked to do so. It was Powell who made the now infamous Iraq war presentation in front of the U.N. Security Council, forcefully declaring the case for war. Of course, the evidence in that presentation has turned out to be nearly universally false and as a result Powells credibility has been forever damaged. While it is not certain how much he knew was false before he gave the speech, all indications are that he considers it the low point of his political career, as he told Barbara Walters in 2005.
It's a blot. I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and [it] will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now.
Still, Powells resignation from Bushs cabinet does not mean hes given up political posturing altogether. Two years ago he called two Senators to voice his opposition to the nomination of John Bolton as US Ambassador to the UN. Today, he formally opposed another hot-button Bush project: the military detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"If it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo. Not tomorrow, but this afternoon. I'd close it," he said.
"And I would not let any of those people go," he said. "I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system. The concern was, well then they'll have access to lawyers, then they'll have access to writs of habeas corpus. So what? Let them. Isn't that what our system is all about?"
It is indeed what our system is about, Mr. Powell, but try telling that to President W.
Its unclear whether Powells remarks come as an attempt to atone for past sins or as an earnest attempt to speak out about important matters of state. It is however very clear that Powell has not lost his grasp on the concept of international relations.
"I would also do it because every morning, I pick up a paper and some authoritarian figure, some person somewhere, is using Guantanamo to hide their own misdeeds," Powell said. "And so essentially, we have shaken the belief that the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like the military commission.
"We don't need it, and it's causing us far more damage than any good we get for it," he said.
Seems like a pretty basic principle of diplomacy. When youre trying to present yourselves as the worlds leader on freedom and democracy, it comes off extremely hypocritical to gleefully suspend the rights of others in a systematic fashion. Still, some others on the right just arent getting it.
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said he believes the prison should remain open.
"It's more symbolic than it is a substantive issue, because people perceive of mistreatment when, in fact, there are extraordinary means being taken to make sure these detainees are being given, really, every consideration," said Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor.
"But I'll tell you, if we let somebody out and it turns out that they come and fly an airliner into one of our skyscrapers, we're going to be asking, how come we didn't stop them? We had them detained," Huckabee said.
"I can tell you, most of our prisoners would love to be in a facility more like Guantanamo and less like the state prisons that people are in in the United States," he said.
Huckabees remarks are predictably moronic. I guess every consideration does not include stuff like access to attorneys. That would be going above and beyond, I suppose. And while Im sure hes right that the treatment the Gitmo detainees receive is super peachy keen, his argument that we should keep them in Guantanamo because otherwise theyll be flying planes into buildings is total hogwash. If they are criminals, they can be convicted of crimes. If they are not criminals, they should be let free. As Powell said, that is indeed what our system is about.
Liberals, like myself for example, like to blame the Bush Administration for a lot of stuff. Usually, were justified in doing so. Powells comments today and Huckabees response to them made me think of something else we can righteously pin on Bush: were it not for the warmongers in the White House enlisting Powell as their invasion salesman four years ago, we might now have a Republican presidential candidate that knows their ass from a hole in the ground. Instead, they ruined his career.
Thanks, Bush Administration. You dickholes.
Iranian Diplomatic Offer to US Rejected - in 2003
Bush's latest effort to drum up support for the war in Iraq contained serious overtones of hostility against Iran, axis-of-evil member and favorite whipping boy of the administration. Later attacks on an Iranian consulate in Iraq suggested that the administration may be preparing more overt military actions against Iran, especially given the political backdrop of last summer, where a US warning to stop development of their nuclear program was ignored by a defiant Iranian government. The complaints against Iran by the Bush administration include their support of foreign terrorism, attempts to destabilize Iraq and further pursuit of nuclear weapons in defiance of treaty obligations. The real question is, if the US could have prevented this situation from ever occurring, would they have? Apparently not.
Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion.
Offers, including making its nuclear programme more transparent, were conditional on the US ending hostility.
But Vice-President Dick Cheney's office rejected the plan, the official said.
The offers came in a letter, seen by Newsnight, which was unsigned but which the US state department apparently believed to have been approved by the highest authorities.
In return for its concessions, Tehran asked Washington to end its hostility, to end sanctions, and to disband the Iranian rebel group the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq and repatriate its members.
Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had allowed the rebel group to base itself in Iraq, putting it under US power after the invasion.
One of the then Secretary of State Colin Powell's top aides told the BBC the state department was keen on the plan - but was over-ruled.
"We thought it was a very propitious moment to do that," Lawrence Wilkerson told Newsnight.
"But as soon as it got to the White House, and as soon as it got to the Vice-President's office, the old mantra of 'We don't talk to evil'... reasserted itself."
Observers say the Iranian offer as outlined nearly four years ago corresponds pretty closely to what Washington is demanding from Tehran now.
Which raises the rather important question: "What exactly does Bush want Iran to do?" All of this took place in 2003, when Mohammed Khatami, the moderate Reform party president was still in office in Iran, it wasn't until 2005 when the more radical and inflammatory Ahmadinejad was elected. So what was the problem? Especially considering that Colin Powell's office seemed to support the idea, and a US-friendly Iran would have been a major stabilizing force in the region, in addition to helping out considerably with Iraq.
Without full details of what was proposed in the diplomatic offer it's difficult to say exactly why the offer was rejected, but at least on the surface it would appear that the stubborn diplomacy of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush ruined a chance to defuse what is rapidly becoming a worrisome situation between Iran and Middle East.
Colin Powell Finally Finds a Backbone
Former secretary of state Colin Powell was typically known as the sole moderating influence in the cabinet of the first term of George W. Bush's administration. His calm, collected manner and effective execution of the first gulf war (under the first president Bush) earned him the respect of many both inside and outside the military, and across the political aisle. Then came the newer Iraq war. Without a mandate, an international consensus or even a hint of a reason why the US should get embroiled in another foreign conflict, Powell struggled to sell the war to the international community and the American people, culminating in his denouement of a performance at the UN, where he bought into the neocon BS and spewed it on the delegates who were present in an attempt to get them to drink the kool aid and support the US invasion of Iraq. It was a moment that was heralded as the equivalent of JFK's speech to the nation preceding the Cuban missile crisis, when he revealed intelligence information that was his "smoking gun" showing that Cuba was constructing nuclear missile launch sites. Only Powell's presentation was long on rhetoric and speculation, while lacking in the hard data department.
All of which has finally come full circle. The war predicated on false pretenses and unrealistic expectations has taken its toll on the Iraqis, the US military and the politicians at home. And finally Colin Powell has decided that it's time to call it like it is, and admit that the US is losing in Iraq.
The former secretary of state Colin Powell said Sunday that badly overstretched U.S. forces in Iraq were losing the war there and that a temporary U.S. troop surge probably would not help.
In one of his few commentaries on the war since leaving office, Powell quickly added that the situation could be reversed. He recommended an intense coalition effort to train and support Iraqi security forces and strengthen the government in Baghdad. Powell was deeply skeptical about increasing troop levels, an idea that appears to be gaining ground as President George W. Bush weighs U.S. strategy options.
"There really are no additional troops" to send, Powell said, adding that he agreed with those who say that the U.S. Army is "about broken."
He said he was unsure that new troops could suppress sectarian violence or secure Baghdad.
He urged the United States to do everything possible to prepare Iraqis to take over lead responsibility; the "baton pass," he said, should begin by mid-2007.
"We are losing we haven't lost and this is the time, now, to start to put in place the kinds of strategies that will turn this situation around," Powell said on CBS-TV.
Military planners and White House budget analysts have been asked to provide Bush with options for increasing U.S. forces in Baghdad by 20,000 or more and there were signs he is leaning in that direction.
His comments were made in direct opposition to the newest political buzzword, the "troop surge," the idea being championed by both George W. Bush and John McCain that a temporary, large increase in the number of US troops in Iraq will be enough to overpower the insurgency and allow the new democratic government to gain enough of a foothold that it will be able to govern itself without US aid, and we can finally leave.
It's a marvelous notion, and the appropriation of sports terminology as a metaphor for military action is certain to marginally increase public suport for it. But it's based on antiquated notions of war that don't apply in the slightest to the sort of asymmetrical contlict currently being faced in Iraq. Sure, in the second world war and other more traditional battlefield conflicts, a large group of reinforcements could push through enemy lines and fracture a unified front, allowing a final push to victory by the conquering heroes. But Iraq is nothing like that, it's a mess of different factions fighting with each other and with the US, with no distinct territorial or political goals other than a faint notion of dominance, and certainly no demarcated battle lines or fronts where a US ground assault could "surge" through to victory.
At least Powell recognizes that much, and his willingness to speak up about it should lend some credibility to the notion that it is not pacificists and cowards who want to pull out of Iraq, but people who have an understanding of the current military situation there. Unfortunately it would have been nice to have heard this same thing four years ago, before the disastrous invasion, when a military man as intelligent and expereinced as Powell must surely have known what he was getting the country into.
Colin Powell is a Terrorist
Colin Powell stepped out of the shadows today and exposed himself to the country as a very soft bitch. The ex-Secretary of State sent a letter to Senator John McCain that criticizes George Bushs plan for the treatment of terror suspects. Bush wants to relax standards and allow prisoners to enjoy some light torture, as well as protect interrogators from being prosecuted for war crimes.
"I do not support such a step and believe it would be inconsistent with the McCain amendment on torture which I supported last year. The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism, wrote Powell. To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk.
Whatever, baby. Article Three of the Geneva Conventions governs the way detainees are treated, which only serves to help the terrorists who want to destroy our country and kill our babies. The time has come to violate the shit out of Article Three.
Today the president is visiting Congress to try to convince the wussy filled legislators that we actually need to be tough on terrorists. Senator John McCain has joined other Republican traders who oppose the presidents plan. McCain was tortured during the Vietnam War in the Hanoi Hilton for five years, which has apparently turned him into a world-class pussy.
Bush also wants to change the way terrorists are tried in court. First, we can torture a terrorist. Yippee! Information obtained through that torture can be used in a secret military tribunal against someone the tortured terrorist named while his testicles were in a clamp. Then we get to arrest another terrorist. The second terrorist will hopefully be tortured, horribly. Then we will have a trial for the second terrorist. Terrorist #2 will never be told how the information was obtained or even what was said. Also, the accused terrorist and his lawyer will not know what crime he is being accused of. He can be arrested, tried and convicted without ever knowing what he did. But odds are he did something because the first terrorist knew his name. We have to do change Article Three so that we may torture these people and convict them because they hate freedom. It is the only way.