[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: The Cabinet Shuffle: Good Soldier Powell

Tue Nov 16 08:29:21 PST 2004

The article below from NYTimes.com 
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The Cabinet Shuffle: Good Soldier Powell

November 16, 2004

As Secretary of State Colin Powell resigned yesterday,
reportedly to be succeeded by the national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice, it was hard to avoid the feeling that
this imposing figure - who once personified the dignity,
integrity and promise of government service and was the
first African-American considered to have a shot at the
White House - will be remembered for one picture and three
sentences. 

On Feb. 5, 2003, in an appearance before the United Nations
Security Council, Mr. Powell, the retired four-star general
and former national security adviser, held up a vial of
white powder as a symbol of what he claimed - falsely, as
it turned out - were Iraq's huge stockpiles of anthrax. He
offered a scathing indictment of Saddam Hussein. "My
colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by
sources, solid sources,'' he said. "These are not
assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions
based on solid intelligence." 

As an increasingly angry world soon learned, Mr. Powell in
fact offered half-truths, poorly analyzed intelligence and
outright fantasies, from a nuclear weapons program in
Baghdad that didn't exist to wildly exaggerated estimates
of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons stockpiles and
its ties to Al Qaeda. 

But at the time, Mr. Powell's performance convinced many
Americans skeptical about the war that the Iraqi government
was a clear and present danger to the rest of the world.
His enormous stature and his image as a moderating force
within the administration - valued especially by America's
European allies - were squandered in defending a unilateral
decision he did not agree with to launch a war in which he
did not really seem to believe. 

>From the start of his tenure as secretary of state, there
was a question about which Colin Powell had moved into
Foggy Bottom. Was it the decisive, charismatic general who
coined a military doctrine that called for waging war only
after the establishment of a political consensus behind
achievable goals and then the commitment of overwhelming
force to reach those ends? Or was it the faithful soldier
who prized loyalty above all else? 

Mr. Powell began with promise, forcing the long-neglected
issues of Africa to the forefront of the administration's
agenda. Even after 9/11, when those issues naturally took
the back seat, the über-Powell was forever being rumored to
be on the cusp of emerging and asserting himself over
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and even Vice President
Dick Cheney. 

But it's now clear that Mr. Powell long ago chose loyalty
over leadership and was not a major figure in the biggest
foreign policy decisions of the Bush administration. Most
accounts of the rush to war in Iraq show that Mr. Powell
was deeply troubled about the planning for the war, its
timing and the intense opposition of most of Washington's
European allies. But he was unwilling or unable to exert
much influence over the president in that critical time,
and it's not clear whether Mr. Bush even consulted him
before making his decision to go to war. 

There were moments in his tenure when Mr. Powell could have
resigned over principle. But he soldiered on, leaving when
it was safe and convenient for his boss. Yesterday, he told
the world that he'd long ago given up any ambition of
sticking around for a second term. In the end, his legacy
may simply be that the administration that bungled the
handling of a war because the president failed to heed the
Powell Doctrine was the one in which Mr. Powell himself
served. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/16/opinion/16tue1.html?ex=1101622561&ei=1&en=76888ac90dd90b7f

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