Has Powell lost his political capital?

[iPoster]

Through his association with Iraq/the Bush administration, has Collin Powell lost any political capital he has/had? He was once a popular choice for an 'outside' Presidential candidate, whom I would have thought seriously about voting for. I think he may be able to recover, but it will be some time before people stop associating him with the Iraq war. IMHO, he went before the UN with the best of intentions, but wound up being duped by Bush, et. al, like almost everyone else. Just wanted to know if anyone else has an opinon on this?

[faust9]

In short: Yes.

[Towel]

What political capital? He let himself become a spineless stooge. Used up, soon to be thrown away. Remember when Time ran a cover story like "Where is Colin Powell"? He's done, and it's sad. Even sadder that he didn't have the brains to see it coming before he even took the appointment, or the courage to stand up when it became obvious.

[shetline]

The best thing Powell could do in my opinion is resign and come out against Bush's mishandling of Iraq and the lack of any real Bush policy for the real War on Terror. It would probably trash his political career to do so, but in my opinion it would be much more honorable than standing stalwartly by Bush's incompetence.

Even if, however, Powell feels like this toward how things have gone in this administration (which is only my hope, and probably wishful thinking) I think he's too much of a "good soldier" to do anything other than quietly fade away.

Damn people for their idiotic ideas of "loyalty"! Loyalty to the country as a whole is a whole lot more important than loyalty to Bush and his cronies, but I doubt Powell would see it that way.

Police should be more loyal to the people they're supposed to protect than to fellow policemen who go bad, doctors should be more loyal to people relying on good medical care than to fellow doctors who are incompetent, soldiers should be more loyal to innocent civilians, even citizens of enemy countries, than to fellow soldiers who commit atrocities -- but it hardly ever works out that way.

[ColanderOfDeath]

Powell has already made it pretty clear that he won't be around for the next term. I would suspect that he will try to distance himself from the Shrubbery clique over time after a year or so goes by. He won't attack Bush directly but he'll slowly pin some fuckups like Iraq and 9/11 on Rumsfeld and Cheney since they are disposable and in the long run Rumsfeld is gonna get waxed anyway in a year when the Iraq mess is still a steaming pile of shit. Somebody's gotta be the fall guy. Also, if the Bush admin goes looney tunes in the remix administration and gets even more extreme than one imagines they will be now, he can portray himself as the voice of reason who kept it from being so bad in the first four years, relatively speaking. Still, I don't think he really ever will have a chance at being president. I still think the country is evenly divided enough that his skin color will cost him enough votes among the bass ackwards people to make him a losing proposition for the Republicans. He's a little bit too reasonable and thoughtful as well to appeal to all of the conservative Christian wingnuts whose ideology he only shares on a fairly limited basis.

[THT]

Originally posted by shetline
Police should be more loyal to the people they're supposed to protect than to fellow policemen who go bad, doctors should be more loyal to people relying on good medical care than to fellow doctors who are incompetent, soldiers should be more loyal to innocent civilians, even citizens of enemy countries, than to fellow soldiers who commit atrocities -- but it hardly ever works out that way.

Yes. Excellent point of view. This is the primary reason why I think the police shouldn't give out 99% of the speeding tickets they give. It breeds mistrust among police and the public. That's the last thing we should be doing.

As for Powell, yeah, he's lost all the political capital he had, especially the liberal middle which had respect for him. He's got zero chance of being successful in a presidential bid anymore.

And no, he did not get duped into that presentation at the UN, and he did not go into the UN with the best of intentions. He knew what he was doing. He knew the data he had was crap. And he knew his job was to dupe the UN and the public into believing there were weapons in Iraq. He lied just as GWB and other administration officals lied by presenting the certainty of existence when all evidence indicated uncertainty. The took a gamble and lost.

Not to mention all of his military principles were broken going into Iraq either...

[iPoster]

Originally posted by THT
Not to mention all of his military principles were broken going into Iraq either... [/B]

Yes, but Powell was not longer the Chairman of the JCOS. I blame the poor Iraq planning cluster**** on Rumsfield and crew. The inital assault went as well as can be expected, but the're about 2-300,000 troops short of an occupying force. It took @500,000 troops(peak numbers) to lose the Vietnam war, and they expected to pacify a larger, more populated country with 125,000??:no:

[rageous]

I don't think Powell has lost much clout. A bit, for sure, but overall he's not bad off.

Sure, he's stuck by Bush, but it's also known he was trying to be a voice of caution and reason before the Iraq war and was railroaded by the DoD. I think the administration has treated him shitty enough to allow him to walk away without appearing to be a stooge. He's mostly a guy who got fucked over. Who can't relate to that?

[rageous]

Originally posted by iPoster
Yes, but Powell was not longer the Chairman of the JCOS. I blame the poor Iraq planning cluster**** on Rumsfield and crew. The inital assault went as well as can be expected, but the're about 2-300,000 troops short of an occupying force. It took @500,000 troops(peak numbers) to lose the Vietnam war, and they expected to pacify a larger, more populated country with 125,000??:no:

Yes but they are a lighter, faster, better military as they would tell you. Manpower appears to not be so important anymore.

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[Anders]

Regarding Powell and Iraq see this great pre-Iraq program (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/view/)

And then see this about how it went (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/view/)

[faust9]

A very long article about skewed data and Powell's misuse of it: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/international/middleeast/03tube.html?pagewanted=1&hp&oref=login

This is a must read. It shows how willing the Bush admin was to fabricate their own reality in order to march this country into war...