[Sosfbay-discuss] Colin Powell last Monday

Sun Mar 8 19:36:10 PDT 2009

Sorry for the double post--forgot the refs

    I note that Colin Powell managed to slither onto the Stanford campus for a 
couple of hours last Monday apparently without arousing any controversy.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/march4/colin-powell-speaks-030409.html

    When he spoke at De Anza College in Cupertino in November, 2005 he
inspired an all-afternoon "War Crimes Tribunal" that was pretty well
attended, also demonstrations three nights running. 

   Where's the outrage?  

    Don't let anyone tell you Colin Powell is a nice man.  Powell was involved 
early in his career in the coverup of the My Lai massacre.  (1) His book My

American Journey justifies the Americans' practice of shooting Vietnamese 
"military-age males" from helicopters.  If the man ran, he would be judged 
hostile and killed.  If he stood in place and allowed the Americans to shoot 
at him, he would be allowed to live.  (2)

   Later, Powell defended  Brig. Gen. John W. Donaldson from court-martial 
murder charges after the general's helicopter pilots alleged that he had 
killed Vietnamese civilians indiscriminantly. (2)

   Powell served as senior military advisor to Secretary of Defense Cap 
Weinberger during a time when the Reagan administration was supporting
Central American death squads and the murderous Contras in Nicaragua.  (3)
Later he pressured Central American regimes to support the Contras, 
"trying
        every weapon in [his] arsenal to break up the peace process,"

according to one Congressman.  (4)

   As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Powell recommended the 1989
invasion of Panama that was condemned by the U.N. and the Organization 
of American States.  Human rights organizations protested that military 
policies designed to minimize U.S. casualties caused unnecessary civilian 
deaths. (5)  

   In preparations for the ground war phase of Gulf War I, Powell repeatedly

expressed impatience with delays to commencing the war, fearing that the

Russians would succeed in brokering a peace settlement.  Poppy Bush
badly needed a war to do away with his "wimp factor".  General 
Schwarzkopf wanted to allow the Iraqis to peacefully withdrawal from Kuwait 
with a one-week timetable.  According to award-winning journalist Robert
Parry, Powell sabotaged this plan by substituting an unrealistic two-day 
timetable.  Ultimately, retreating Iraqi troops were slaughtered in the famous 
"Highway of Death" atrocity. (6)  (10)

Norman Solomon calls Powell's
presentation to the U.N. about alleged Iraqi WMD 
"fudged,
exaggerated and concocted, often presenting deceptions as

certainties.... [H]e played fast and loose with translations of phone
intercepts  to 
make them seem more incriminating.... " but
though many of his claims were 
"ripped apart" within a few
days by mainstream British press, the press in the 
USA was almost
universally fawning and admiring. (7) 

Though Powell has tried to put the blame for the WMD debacle on bad intelligence 
from lower-level intelligence officers, his State Department colleagues were 
skeptical of the WMD claims and according to former Assistant Secretary of State
Carl Ford, "the State 
        Department's intelligence bureau put in a very deliberate and 
strong and 
        lengthy dissent" to claims about Iraq's nuke program.  (8)  Four months
before Powell tried to sell the WMD case to the U.N., mainstream Knight-Ridder 
journalists Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay published a story called "Some 
Administration Officials Expressing Misgivings on Iraq" that said: 

"a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and
diplomats....  
charge that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the
threat that 
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses - including distorting
his links to the al-Qaida 
terrorist network - have overstated the
amount of international support for attacking 
Iraq and have downplayed
the potential repercussions of a new war in the Middle 
East."   (9)

 Robert Parry concludes that Powell "has always been an opportunist who consistently 
put 
        his career and personal status ahead of America’s best interests.... Powell 
repeatedly has failed to stand up against actions that were 
        immoral, unethical or 
reckless. At every turning point, Powell protected 
        his career above all else."  (10)

If I'd known he was coming I would have baked a cake.

1.    
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/121700b.html
2.    
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/121700c.html
3.    
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/121900a.html
4.    
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/122200b.html
5.    
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/122600a.html
6.    
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/122600b.html
7.    
http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/18820.html
8.    
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/091605.html
9.    
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/22200/
10.  
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/112604.html

Windows Live™ Contacts: Organize your contact list.  Check it out.
Express your personality in color! Preview and select themes for Hotmail®.  See how.
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail® is up to 70% faster. Now good news travels really fast. 
http://windowslive.com/online/hotmail?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_70faster_032009
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cagreens.org/pipermail/sosfbay-discuss_lists.cagreens.org/attachments/20090308/02d52583/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: ATT00000
URL: <http://lists.cagreens.org/pipermail/sosfbay-discuss_lists.cagreens.org/attachments/20090308/02d52583/attachment.ksh>