Powell Tells Of Dysfunctional White House, ‘We Weren’t Aware Of The Advice Cheney Was Giving’

[babylonsister]

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/29/powell-cheney/

Powell Tells Of Dysfunctional White House, ‘We Weren’t Aware Of The Advice Cheney Was Giving’

In the stellar Washington Post exposé on Dick Cheney, the public learned that key presidential aides were often intentionally kept out of the loop on important decisions by the Vice President. For example, President Bush’s decision to try detainees in military commissions and strip them of their due process rights was not conveyed to Secretary of State Colin Powell:

“What the hell just happened?” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded, a witness said, when CNN announced the order that evening, Nov. 13, 2001.

In addition, the Post reported that a Cheney-commissioned Justice Department memo that advocated the legal justification for torture was kept out of Powell’s sight:

On June 8, 2004, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell learned of the two-year-old torture memo for the first time from an article in The Washington Post.

Last night in an interview with Larry King, Powell criticized Cheney, saying, “ sometimes went directly to the president and the rest of us weren’t aware of what advice he was giving.” He also chastised the White House’s manner of doing business. “It was not a system where we routinely exposed all points of view,” he said.

Watch it/read transcript at link~

In the interview, Powell reaffirmed his stated desire to close Guantanamo, arguing it is one of the reasons “we are losing around the world”:

The reason I am feeling so strongly about Guantanamo is that while we’re arguing these legal issues, we are getting killed in terms of our international reputation because of the place. And we are losing around the world. And what makes it even more difficult is some of the biggest thugs in the world and people that you want to press on moral issues and human rights issues hide behind Guantanamo and say don’t lecture us when you have Guantanamo.

[demnan]

1. I wear an orange ribbon to publicize this issue

http://www.actagainsttorture.org/materials/orange-ribbon-flyer.pdf

[central scrutinizer]

2. Way too little, way too late

You will never cleanse your soul of all the blood shed - you are just as culpable as the rest of these criminals. Your lies helped spawn this bloodbath. Just shut up and go away.

[blueworld]

3. Another helpless victim who didn't know what to do. Sob! n/t

[Solly Mack]

4. Excuse me while I laugh

I'll only be a moment

back :)

LMAO

no wait...sorry

brb

[Ghost in the Machine]

7. How do I nominate this reply for a DUzy??

:spray:

[Greyskye]

8. send JeffR a PM n/t

[Le Taz Hot]

5. If he and Tony Blair

and a few other key people would have just said "no" (channeling Nancy Reagan here) and exposed this regime to the rest of the world, we would not have been in this unjust, murderous, illegal war. All it would have taken was a few key people. He was one of them.

[KAT119]

9. How True, Le Taz Hot....

[gratuitous]

6. Wow, Colin Powell, tower of jello

After getting dry-gulched in November 2001, he continued to serve a crooked administration that showed him only what it wanted him to see, deliberately misled him, cashed in whatever credibility he had (and truly doesn't deserve) to further their agenda, and Powell went along with it. All of it. Every last inch of it, like a crack whore giving a $5 blowjob in an alley.

Now, six years and countless hundreds of thousands of lives, and a trillion dollars later, Powell is trying to retrieve whatever scraps of honor and dignity might still remain, and now -- when he's in absolutely no position to do anything -- he wants this administration to start walking the straight and narrow.

Fucking Uncle Tom rat bastard. I hope the screams of the dead and dying haunt your sleep.

[AlCzervik]

10. Powell the Enabler should have put his country first.