The Twin Cities Star Tribune is reporting that Colin Powell has apparently broken with the Bush Administration on redeploymentm from Iraq:
In Iraq, "staying the course isn't good enough because a course has to have an end," Powell said.
Dick isn't going to like this. Dubya won't either. How fast until Powell backtracks, er, I mean clarifies his remarks? Tomorrow? Before 5PM today?
Or has the astronomically slim chance he'll lay into the Bush Administration like his former Deputy Larry Wilkerson has been doing for the last year?
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Comments: 18
He's now one of you "cut and runners"
Oh, that's right, W was aWol from the TANG. My bad. Military geniuses indeed.
He's now one of you "cut and runners" "
When is it you're heading over there again, big man?
About time....
Powell did not win a war and botched two key tasks.
He sent troops into Somalia and did not give them the weapons they said they needed and he had. Then the BlackHawk Down incident occurred and Powell would not go after the attacking warlord but agreed to withdraw. That was a very big recruiting symbol for Bin Laden since it proved that the U.S. was a paper tiger that could be scared out of town like we were scared out of town in Vietnam and gave in to the attackers.
Powell convinced both Bush I and Clinton not to bomb Serbia contending that it could not have an effect. Powell's replacement, Shalikashvili, convinced Clinton very quickly to bomb stating that the Serbs would give up in 3-4 weeks. He was proved correct except that it took less time. The reason was fairly obvious. If the Serbs were weakened too much they would be overrun by the Croats and the Serbs feared them far more than they feared any NATO force.
Powell was kept out to the Persian Gulf War by Schwartzkopf who did not allow Powell to interfere with the planning or the execution. Powell was not in Schwartzkopf's chain of command so he was able to make that stick. Schwartzkopf's direct boss was SecDef Dick Cheney who was not wimpy at all.
Schwartzkopf was a very competent battlefield general who knew how to treat/lead his troops. Powell was a staff type who knew little or nothing about the fighting in the trenches. Being a staff officer, Powell was very well known to the press corps, had been for years, and they liked him.
All that does not make Powell a good general and I can understand why he would be supporting a cut and run strategy having done it before.
Best regards, Ben
Author "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed"
Listen, Wolf. This is the way to put it in a nutshell. If the US continues its policy and operations as they are now the situation will worsen and the enemies of the US - principally al Qaeda and Iran - will continue to strengthen. There's a number of options that are presented to Washington at the moment. They either do this or they don't do this. They either need to get serious about the battle here on the ground - physically against al Qaeda and the insurgency - and commit the troops that the commanders need, or they need to look for alternative solutions. At the end of the day what they're facing is the potential of most of this country being subsumed by a Shia-led theocracy-style government with other parts of the government left as Western al Qaeda desert training camp facilities. To avoid that something radical has to be done. So Colin Powell is right. Staying the course will only strengthen America's enemies.
Hey Ben, I tell you what the Iranians think in two weeks when I get there, ok?