The Facts Thwart Rehab of Colin Powell

Watching retired Gen. Colin
Powell refer to the parable of the Good Samaritan during Sunday's
Memorial Day ceremonies on the Mall in Washington, it struck me that
Powell was giving hypocrisy a bad name.

Those familiar with the Good
Samaritan story and also with the under-reported behavior of Gen. Powell,
comeback kid of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM), know that the two
do not mesh.

Powell's well-documented disregard
for those who have borne the brunt of the battle places him in the company
of the priest and the Levite - in the Good Samaritan parable - who,
seeing the man attacked by robbers on the side of the road, walked right
on by.

Sadly, Powell has a long record of placing
the wounded and the vulnerable on his list of priorities far below his
undying need to get promoted or to promote himself. Powell's rhetoric,
of course, would have us believe otherwise.

At the Memorial Day event, Powell hailed
our "wounded warriors" from Iraq and Afghanistan as the cameras
cut to several severely damaged veterans. Lauding the "love and care"
they receive from their families, Powell noted in passing that some
10,000 parents are now full-time care providers for veterans not able
to take care of themselves.

It was a moving ceremony, but only if
you were able to keep your eye on the grand old flag and stay in denial
about thousands of wasted American lives, not to mention tens and tens
of thousands wasted Iraqi lives - as well as many thousands more incapacitated
for life - and not ask WHY.

"Noble Cause?"

The wounded warriors' former commander
in chief, President George W. Bush, argued that the deaths were "worth
it." They were casualties suffered in pursuit of a "noble cause."

Some claim that to suggest that those
troops killed and wounded were killed and wounded in vain is to dishonor
their memory, belittle their sacrifice, and inflict still more pain
on their loved ones.

But Bush never could explain what the
"noble cause" was, despite months and months of vigils by those
camping outside the Bush house in Crawford asking that question. Our
hearts certainly go out to the wounded, and to the families of the killed
or wounded.

But I think that the surest way to dishonor
them all is to avoid examining the real reasons for their loss, and
to use lessons learned so that their own sons and daughters will not
be sacrificed so glibly.

I lost many good Army colleagues and
other friends in Vietnam. Back then, generals and politicians - the
military and civilian leaders who promoted Powell and the careerists
like him - helped to obscure the real reasons behind that carnage,
too. And that was even before the corporate media became quite so fawning.

As the hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan
drag on and the casualties continue to mount, I feel an obligation to
do what I can to help spread some truth around - however painful that
may be. For truth is not only the best disinfectant, it is the best
protection against such misadventures happening again...and again.

It is, I suppose, understandable that
only the bravest widows and widowers - and parents like Cindy Sheehan
whose son Casey Sheehan was killed in Sadr City on April 4, 2004 -
have been able to summon enough courage out of their grief to challenge
the vacuous explanations of Bush and people like Powell.

You can see it in microcosm in the Sheehan
family. Casey's father, Pat Sheehan, cannot agree that Casey's death
was in vain. Pat told me that Casey met an honorable death, since he
was sent to rescue comrades pinned down by hostile forces in Sadr City.

No one can be sure what was going through
Casey's mind. And only later did it become clear that, rather than
"volunteering" for an ill-conceived rescue mission, Casey, a truck
mechanic, was ordered onto that open truck by superiors unwilling to
risk their own hides. (This is what one of Casey's comrades on the
scene later told his mother.)

But let us assume that Casey was nonetheless
eager to rescue his comrades. This still begs the question that I asked
Pat Sheehan: Why were Casey and his comrades in Iraq in the first place?
What was the "noble cause?" Pat's reaction, or lack thereof, almost
made me regret having asked him. Remembering it almost makes me want
to stop this essay here. Almost.

With ministers, priests and rabbis officiating
at funerals and other memorial services for "the fallen" and spinning
their own renditions of "Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori" -
"it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country" - small wonder
that even those who should know better choose this escape from reality.
There is so much pain out there...and if denial helps, well...

It does not help when it comes to charlatans
like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell - the latter now trying to
re-establish his poster-boy status with an eagerly cooperative FCM.

Aside from those whose TVs are stuck
at Fox News and radios at Rush Limbaugh, fewer and fewer Americans now
believe the lingering lies. Even funeral directors and preachers tread
sparingly with the once-familiar rhetoric - used cynically in Washington
to facilitate further careless carnage - that these dead "must not
have died in vain."

Isaiah on the Mall

Besides the Good Samaritan parable, Powell
quoted from Isaiah about bringing comfort to the people. Surely Isaiah
did not mean this to be done with lies on top of lies. Isaiah was no
shrinking violet. He got himself killed for speaking out bluntly against
lies that in his time justified the oppression of those on the margins.

I imagine this is what Isaiah would say
to us now:

"Hear this, Americans. It is time
to be not only sad, but also honest. You must summon the courage to
handle the truth, which is this: our young warriors and (literally)
countless Iraqis died in vain, and
there is no excuse for their needless sacrifice. Nothing will bring
them back - least of all meretricious rhetoric that is an insult to
their memory.

"Their sacrifice was in vain, hear?
Our task now is two-fold: (1) Bury the dead with
respect and care for the wounded and their families; and
(2) ensure that the truth gets out, so that a war built on lies will
not soon happen again."

Isaiah, I think, would add that this
is also precisely why we owe it to the "fallen" and their families
to hold to account those responsible for sending them into battle "on
false pretenses," to quote then-Senate Intelligence Committee head,
Jay Rockefeller last June.

After a five-year investigation and a
bipartisan vote approving the Senate Intelligence Committee report,
Rockefeller summed it up:

"In making the case for war, the Administration
repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated,
contradicted, or even non-existent." As a result, the American
people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater
than actually existed."

There is plenty of blame to go around
- to be shared by an adolescent president who liked to dress up and
call himself a "war president," and openly savored presiding over
what he called "the first war of the 21st Century."

Not to mention the power-hungry, sadistic
bent of the men he chose to be vice president and secretary of defense
and the treachery of CIA seniors George Tenet and John McLaughlin.

The Enabler

But there would have been no war, no
dead, no limb-less bodies, no loved ones for whom to recall Isaiah's
words of comfort or mention the Good Samaritan, if Colin Powell had
a conscience - if he had not chosen to "walk right on by."

Let's face it; neither the Texas Air
National Guard's most famous pilot nor the five-times-draft-deferred
former vice president had the credibility to lead the country into war
- especially one based on a highly dubious threat.

They needed the credibility of someone
who had worn the uniform with some distinction - someone who, though
never in command of a major Army combat unit, had been good at briefing
the media while Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the glorious
Gulf War in 1991, which most Americans have been led to believe was
virtually casualty-free.

Actually, since we are trying to spread
some truth around, this is worth a brief digression.

The Casualty-Lite Gulf War

According to Powell's memoir, My
American Journey, before the attack on Iraq Powell was warned by
his British counterpart, Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Sir David Craig,
about the risks involved in bombing Iraq's so-called "weapons of
mass destruction" installations. After Powell told him that this was
indeed part of the plan, Craig expressed particular worry about release
of agents from biological installations: "A bit risky that, eh?"

Powell writes that he told Craig the
attendant risk of release was worth it and: "If it heads south, just
blame me."

Powell writes he was "less concerned"
about chemical exposures. He should have been more concerned, not less.
As the hostilities ended, U.S. Army engineers blew up chemical agents
at a large Iraqi storage site near Kamasiyah. About 100,000 U.S. troops
were downwind.

Many of those troops are now among the
210,000 veterans suffering from nervous and other diseases - and FINALLY
now receiving disability payments for what came to be known as Gulf
War Syndrome.

Far from his pre-war posture of "just
blame me," Powell joined Pentagon and CIA efforts to cover up this
tragedy. When reports of the horrible fiasco at Kamasiyah hit the media,
he erupted in macho outrage saying that, were he still on active duty,
he would "rape and pillage" throughout the government to find those
responsible. Of course, Kamasiyah happened during his watch. Typically,
the FCM reported his macho remark, and then gave him a pass.

Despite numerous veterans' pleas for
support, Powell, in effect, went AWOL on the issue of Gulf War illnesses,
never acknowledging that he shared any of the responsibility.

He took no interest and, in effect, made
a huge contribution to the unconscionable delay in recognizing Gulf
War illnesses for what they are. One out of every four troops deployed
to the Gulf in 1991 are now receiving the benefits to which they have
long been entitled - no thanks to Gen. Powell.

You didn't know that? Thank the FCM
and its persistent romance with Gen. Powell. Sorry for the digression;
just had to get that off my chest.

Useful Uniform

Back to the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld quest
for someone to sell the attack on Iraq, someone whom the media loved,
someone with military credentials who would do what he was told.

Perhaps they had read Powell's memoir,
in which he brags about his subservience to the "wisdom" of those
up the line. They needed someone who was not too bright but could be
eloquent - someone who was so used to taking orders that he would
squander his own credibility for his boss, if the boss would just ask.

Not too bright? Apparently, during the
three years between when Powell and I, as fledgling infantry officers,
had been instructed at Fort Benning on counterinsurgency, the Army's
understanding of how to fight it had improved. Either that, or
Powell was not able to master the key learnings of the course.

Here is what Powell writes in his memoir
about how he bought into his superiors' notion about how to win hearts
and minds - what Powell calls "counterinsurgency at the cutting
edge":

"However chilling this destruction
of homes and crops reads in cold print today, as a young officer I had
been conditioned to believe in the wisdom of my superiors, and to obey.
I had no qualms about what we were doing. This was counterinsurgency
at the cutting edge. Hack down the peasants' crops, thus denying food
to the Viet Cong...It all made sense in those days."

"Duty, Honor, Country" is what I
remember made sense in those days. That was the watchword for young
Army officers in the early Sixties - not supreme faith in the wisdom
of superiors and blind obedience. But most of the rest of us did not
make it beyond colonel.

Easy Prey

Small wonder that the hapless Powell
was easy prey for Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld. They needed him to sell the
war to the American people and, they hoped, to the rest of the world.

It is hard to fathom what "wisdom"
Powell saw in his superiors' decisions; what is clear is that he lacked
the courage to challenge them, whether out of blind faith, a highly
exaggerated - and dubiously moral - notion of obedience, a lack
of conscience, or simple cowardice.

Tell lies to support the White House
decision for war on Iraq? No problem. As was his wont, Powell
saluted sharply, even though four days prior to his Feb. 5, 2003 U.N.
speech he and his chief of staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, had decided
that some of the "intelligence" the White House had conjured up
to "justify" war was pure "bull---t," according to Wilkerson.
Powell ended up using it anyway.

Powell and his handlers were acutely
aware that war would be just weeks away after Powell spoke. One small
but significant sign of this was what seemed to me the earliest cover-up
related to the soon-to-begin attack on Iraq.

It was a literal cover-up, accomplished
even before Powell conducted his post-speech press briefing in the customary
spot in front of the Security Council wall adorned with a reproduction
of Picasso's famous anti-war painting, Guernica.

Prior to the press conference, that wall
hanging had been covered up by another fabric. Some PR person had recognized
the impropriety of trying to justify a new war of aggression with Guernica
as backdrop. As usual with Powell, the speech and press conference went
swimmingly, and the gullible or shameless (your choice) FCM was embarrassingly
generous with their accolades.

Blame-Shifting

Once it became clear -- by mid-2003 --
that there were no WMD stockpiles or mobile bio-weapons labs or anything
else that had been conjured up in the U.N. speech, Powell smoothly shifted
the blame to the CIA, and his fans in the FCM transformed Powell into
a noble victim, now tragically suffering from a "blot on my record"
for no real fault of his own.

Though it is abundantly clear that then-CIA
Director George Tenet and his accomplice/deputy John McLaughlin did
play a treacherous role, no CIA director has ever made a secretary of
state worth his salt do anything - and certainly not help start an
unnecessary war.

Besides, it is a safe bet that what was
already clear to us Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
was at least equally clear to Powell. On the afternoon of Powell's
U.N. speech, we formally warned President Bush that the evidence adduced
by Powell fell far short of justifying an attack on Iraq and that such
an attack would be a huge fillip to terrorism around the world.

And since it was obvious that Powell
had thrown in his lot with those rolling the juggernaut to war, we urged
the president to "widen the circle of your advisers beyond those clearly
bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason, and from which
we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."

Suave Martinet

Why Powell simply saluted, in full knowledge
that his imprimatur would grease the skids to a highly dubious war can
be debated. It may be as simple as the clues he provided in his memoir
about honoring the "wisdom of superiors" and his penchant to obey,
even when it made little sense and even when lots of folks would lose
their homes and their lives.

Who was the colonel in Vietnam who insisted
he was duty bound to destroy a village in order to save it from the
communists? Powell was cut from similar cloth, albeit with a greater
sense of subtlety and a much better knack for PR.

In April 2006, Powell admitted to journalist
Robert Scheer that top State Department experts never believed that
Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, but that the president followed
the misleading advice of Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA in making
the claim.

It may simply be that by the time other
generals promote you to general (the current system) you have distinguished
yourself first and foremost by saluting smartly - by obeying and not
asking too many questions.

But why Powell acquiesced is less important
than THAT he went along. Though perhaps not the brightest star in the
galaxy, he certainly was aware he was being co-opted, and that he needed
not only to bless the war but also to wax enthusiastic about it, in
order to remain welcome in the White House.

Surely he had learned something since
his days in Vietnam - something about the "wisdom" of superiors,
and of blind obedience. He could have said no, but he just did not have
it in him to do so.

Powell's stature (especially with the
FCM) made his blessing of the Iraq War especially valuable to Cheney/Rumsfeld
and the war-hungry neocons.

"The Only Guy Who Could
Perhaps Have Stopped It"

Don't take my word for it. Take it
from the quintessential Republican elder statesman, former Secretary
of State James Baker - hero of the Florida escapade that stopped the
recount in Florida and, with the help of the U.S. Supreme Court, gave
the 2000 election to George W. Bush.

In his book The War Within, Bob
Woodward wrote: "Powell...didn't think [Iraq] was a necessary war,
and yet he had gone along in a hundred ways, large and small...He had
succumbed to the momentum and his own sense of deference - even obedience
- to the president...Perhaps more than anyone else in the administration,
Powell had become the 'closer' for the president's case on war."

On Oct. 19, 2008, Tom Brokaw asked Powell
about this on "Meet the Press;" Brokaw alluded to Woodward's revelations
and how Baker had grilled Powell when he appeared before the Baker-Hamilton
Iraq Study Group. Here's Brokaw quoting Woodard's book:

"'Why did we go into Iraq with so
few people?' Baker asked. ... 'Colin just exploded at that point,'
[former Secretary of Defense William] Perry recalled later. 'He unloaded,'
[former White House Chief of Staff and now CIA Director Leon] Panetta
added, 'He was angry. He was mad as hell.'... Powell left [the Iraq
Study Group meeting].

"Baker turned to Panetta and said
solemnly. 'He's the only guy who could have perhaps prevented this
from happening.'"

I added the bold, so you wouldn't miss
it.

Powell responded to Brokaw's question
by again pointing his finger at the CIA - "a lot of the information
that the intelligence community provided us was wrong" - and then
insisting that his war role wasn't that consequential.

Stung by Baker's observation, Powell
said, "I also assure you that it was not a correct assessment by
anybody that my statements or my leaving the administration would have
stopped" going to war.

Unlike the Good Samaritan who went out
of his way to help a stranger in trouble, Powell simply looked to his
own convenience, carefully protecting his status within the Bush administration
and keeping his place at fashionable Washington dinner parties.

Whether he could have stopped the war
or not, the truth is that Colin Powell didn't even try. He would not
risk his reputation for all those victims - Iraqi and American -
who have died or suffered horribly from an unnecessary war. The blot
on his record was self-inflicted; the FCM is likely to run out of Clorox
trying to remove the stain.