Pre-zackly. When I hear obama (or the stunning mrs. obama) talk about getting past all that messy politics and anger and stuff I think "I'm not ready to make nice" and telling me I should want to be post politics is like telling me I want to be post breathing. Its not going to happen in my political lifetime because politics doesn't work that way. If we all jump out of the water to avoid the sharks all that's left in the water *is* the sharks. And unfortunately, the water is where the action is. Block that metaphor, I know. but its late.

aimai

you gotta be shitting me.
Colin Powell? the liar?

Obama/Cheney '08!

what I never understood was, the Powell doctrine was that you only go in with overwhelming, decisive force, if you must go at all.

Rumsfeld's theory was quite the opposite: light and fast.

So the architect of the Powell doctrine wouldn't stand up for his own strategy just 10 years on when it came to Iraq 2: Neo-Con Boogaloo?

Where *were* his nads?

r€nato, about those 'nads: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." So said Donald Rumsfeld, and as a true neo-con warrior, he's never wrong.

Holy god - after what he did to her husband? (to say nothing of the soldiers he betrayed when he helped achieve the invasion and occupation of Iraq) He had no trouble standing up to him.

I won't vote for Hillary under any circumstances. Call me a Naderist chump but I don't vote for Republicans.

People are political animals (right Kev?). 'Politics' is not a word worthy of derision, its a fact of life. To say differently is a wool pulling exercise.

Saying you will bring Powell back is a political move. One not aimed at you and me, but at the establishment types. All this talk about moving forward as if somehow the world now operates substantially different then it always has misses the mark.

There are lots of reasons not to want Powell in Hillary's Cabinet. Being 'old school' isn't one of them. We all go to the same school. The question is who has learned what, and what are their allegiances.

In fact it was widely known in 2002 that Powell was opposed to any invasion of Iraq.

When he decided to stay and support the administration anyway, I lost the one iota of respect I had for him. I also learned something else: military people should not be in policymaking roles. They don't understand they're no longer soldiers. You need someone who knows that their obligation is to what they think is right, even if that means quitting their job in protest. See: Vance, Cyrus. (Before your time, Ezra.)

I meant to DO what they think is right, of course.

This is a terrible idea.

Fortunately Powell seems unlikely to accept. But why centrist Dems feel compelled to kowtow to the Broders with crap like this is beyond me. Stupid move, Hillary.

Call me a Naderist chump but

You're a Naderist chump.

That said, this is not Hillary's finest hour by a LONG chalk.

I suspect the usefulness of this is that it flies under the radar of political junkies - the people who (still) like Colin Powell, for all the broad-mindedness he provides (as a black man we can all generally approve of) will like the appeal of this. Blaming Powell for Iraq seems about as useful as blaming Clinton -and you can send him to a lot of places other than the middle east, where he could be effective and useful in a bipartisan way, just as she suggests. I should add the caveat: I don't support her, and I won't be voting her in the primaries. But like a number of her salvos, I think this is way smarter than people give her credit.

The key phrase here is
But in South Carolina today, speaking to a group of black ministers, Mrs. Clinton dropped a name publicly that she has hinted at privately before.

If Powell even has a tiny shred of dignity left, he'll publicly laugh at this idea and embarrass Hillary to no end. "She wants ME?? What world has she been watching for the past six years? I'm a washed-up disgrace. Thanks, but no thanks. I'll just stay at home and play Risk with all the other generals Bush ruined."

But seeing as how Powell already gave his last shred of dignity to Cheney, who promptly shat on it before dumping it all over us, I don't really see that happening. I'm sure we still would have gone to war even without Powell's presentation, but he sure did make it easier for the Washington Establishment to hop on board and attack anyone who didn't. He was the cover they were waiting for and the Bushies knew it.

I don't think Powell would give up his lucrative (and distiguished!) gig with the Village People, just to lend a little credence to Hillary's new, non-cowboy foreign policy. I mean one thing he is not is stupid. What's she got against cowboys anyhow? Has she got something against indian chiefs, construction workers, and cops, too?

http://www.officialvillagepeople.com/Images/powell.jpg

Keep this up, Hillary, and you'll destroy any chance you once had of becoming president. I won't be sad.

Not a single primary vote has been cast and she's courting Republicans. It's really stupid politics, aside from the fact that she just doesn't get it.

what the f___???!!!

I'm surprised to hear myself say it, but I'm with Hillary on this one. There's a big difference between re-appointing Powell as Sec of State, versus sending him on a dog-and-pony show to help convince foreign nations that even some Republicans have learned from disaster. The latter is all Hillary's suggesting.

Sorry to rain on everyone's parade.

Reminds me of that TalkingHeads song. "Same as it ever was... Same as it ever was..."

Having just finished with his last gig shilling for a bunch of political whackos that wanted him to lie for them and give him cover, we find out that Colin Powell is ready to do it all over again for the Clintons.

Excuse me, but did I forget 1993? Didn't he leave the Pentagon in thinly-veiled protest because he didn't like Don't Ask Don't Tell?

So now he's coming back. What a whore. What whores they all are.

Powell should have good company. She has hired Michael O'Hanlon as her foreign policy advisor. Remember him? Last week, he wrote an article with Fred Kagan (that peacenik) suggesting we need to send troops to Pakistan ASAP to keep things "stable."

Stable. (sigh).

Vaporware. Yawn. Any real issues to discuss?

If anything, Powell's expertise is in resroring a broken military, which he helped do after Vietnam, and that's something useful and ncessary.

Scrapping the Bush and Rumsfeld Doctrines and restoring The Powell Doctrine, which seems to have gone down the memory hole, is not an entirely bad thing.

But Powell polls well! Ezra, we need to choose people based on the approval, not on the quality of their judgment. In fact, Powell is literally a contraction for "polls well"!

I don't get what the problem is. What's so offensive? The pandering or Colin Powell himself? Where's the fire?

Could be that Hillary thinks Wes Clark needs something of a prod. This should do it.

Gee, for some reason I don't feel any great horror at this.
"...distinguished Americans of both parties - people like Colin Powell, for example..."
And I understand the Senator was speaking to "a group of black ministers".
How about a quick refresher in "Politics 101"?

If this is true, she is cynically dealing the race card against Obama from the bottom of the deck.

What next? O.J. Simpson for Attorney General?

Michael Jackson for Dept. of Education?

What next? O.J. Simpson for Attorney General?

Michael Jackson for Dept. of Education?

You left out actual government officials.

Clinton/Rice '08

Condo ought to poll as well as Powell, no?

powell was and always will be an asskisser. that's how he got his rank in vietnam. he is the consumate bullshit artist.

You're wrong, Ezra. It will push us forward - off the cliff.

powell was on the military court that tried jim medeina for mi lie and the coverup he made his bones and now he's a trusted house nigger

Powell is a snivelling, ineffectual little war criminal.

I will NEVER vote for Hillary if she has anything to do with that human scum.

Ezra,

The "old politics" Obama refers to is the politics of the trivial and the vindictive and the personal focus and the lobbyist-caving and the ...

The "new politics" that he wants to see happen is the politics of actually getting about the business of governing and discussing issues rationally and not being afraid to say what one thinks and deemphasizing the personal and...

I hope you will not feign ignorance in the future...

feh, Obama's "new politics" is just emptiness and wind, and Hillary is far worse... Edwards might stand for something, but should he win he'd be co-opted too. We all want to imagine that a person might have the strength to resist the structural pressures that bear down on the office holder but does anyone have that power?

You know who is scary? Huckabee. Scary because he's funny, scary because he might defeat a Democrat unlike any other Rethug, and scary because unlike most Democrats and Republicans he seems to have a moral backbone... His moral compass points in the wrong direction on 90% of issues, but he could win and use his power to do something.

Giuliani couldn't win, but man if he did that would be bad... pure fascism.

Romney is a Republican Kerry... can't win, and if he did win, would be eaten alive by the forces that bought and paid for him.

Huckabee... now there is a case to meditate on.

I'm from the rest of the world, and I can assure you that a Dem president appointing Colin Powell would be a PR desaster. Powell is almost as tainted as Rumsfeld, and will always be rembered for presenting bold faced lies to the UN. He gets exactly no respect anymore anywhere outside the US (and even in the US, he is a controversial figure). Making such a crazy appointment would make the world wonder if the new president is the same old madman with a different face. Imho the best way to cripple efforts to restore the image of the US as a reasonable player in global politics. Even considering this is evidence of a very confused mind.

Geez I hope this is just a rumor.
It just is far too stoopid for words.

"all of his fine theories and international triumphs date to the Cold War era"

And what "triumphs" would those be?

Covering up My Lai.

The plain, blunt truth is that Colin Powell is and has been a net negative in our nation's history.

It should have been plain long ago that Powell's advancement was a result of his ability to protect his superior officers, to keep them out of trouble.

I'm from the rest of the world, and I can assure you that a Dem president appointing Colin Powell would be a PR desaster.

She wouldn't be using him to impress the rest of the world-- she'd use Bill for that-- because Powell is strictly for domestic consumption. My take is that she's pulling together a GOP-lite foreign-policy team for American PR purposes, working with the [usually safe] assumption that Americans like bluster and saber-rattling in general, and easily winnable wars under normal circumstances. But I'd place at least a small bet on her having a much less belligerent SOS, and Bill will be her wink-and-nod guy who tells foreign leaders not to believe the rhetoric, since it's just to keep the rubes feeling safe with a woman in charge. It would be a classic Clintonian tactic, I guess, even though it wouldn't count as triangulation per se-- playing both sides for personal political gain and not worrying too much about long-term institutional credibility.

Colin Powell's resume:

1970-72: involved in attempts to cover up the My Lai massacre.

1984-85: conspired to organise illegal arms sales to the Islamic Republic of Iran. (Yes, he did. Look it up).

1991: during ceasefire talks, agreed to allow the Iraqi army to use helicopters in the south of Iraq, facilitating the crushing of the Marsh Arab revolt and keeping Saddam Hussein in power for another twelve years.

2002-3: lied to the UN about WMD in order to promote the second Iraq war.

If I got the opportunity to ask him one question, it would be "General Powell, have you ever considered committing suicide, and if not, why not?"

You have got to be kidding. If "Colon" Powell didn't know he was lying to the UN then he is worse than incompetant. The man should just be let to fade into oblivion.

And as to those who wou8ldn't vote for Hilary if she is the nominee -that is just suicide.

Would Obama be even a blip on the radar in the presidential election if he wasn't black?

دردشة