[lbo-talk] Powell sick of Bush

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed May 5 15:33:06 PDT 2004


[via Sam Smith's Progressive Review <http://prorev.com>}

POWELL BUDDIES TELL ON BUSH ET AL http://us.gq.com/plus/content/?040429plco_01

SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL is exhausted, frustrated, and bitter, uncomfortable with President George W. Bush's agenda, and fatigued from his battles with the Pentagon, reports GQ magazine writer-at-large Wil S. Hylton in the June 2004 issue of GQ magazine.

Powell's chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, on whether Powell will return for a second term: "He's tired. Mentally and physically. And if the president were to ask him to stay on -- if the president is re-elected and the president were to ask him to stay on, he might for a transitional period, but I don't think he'd want to do another four years."

Powell's mentor from the National War College, Harlan Ullman on Powell's discomfort with the Bush team: "This is, in many ways, the most ideological administration Powell's ever had to work for. Not only is it very ideological, but they have a vision. And I think Powell is inherently uncomfortable with grand visions like that ... There's an ideological core to Bush, and I think it's hard for Powell to penetrate that."

Ullman on Powell's relationship with Vice President Dick Cheney: "I can tell you firsthand that there is a tremendous barrier between Cheney and Powell, and there has been for a long time ... It's like McCain saying that his relations with the president are 'congenial,' meaning McCain doesn't tell the president to go f*ck himself every time."

Ullman on National Security Advisor's Condoleeza Rice's comments that Powell and Cheney are "on more than speaking terms," and that they're "very friendly": "Condi's a jerk."

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage on Powell's presentation pre- war presentation before the U.N.: "It's a source of great distress for the secretary." Hylton reports that Rice described Powell as enthusiastic about the presentation, spending four days and nights at CIA headquarters and scouring the evidence against Saddam Hussein for ways to punch it up. But Armitage and Wilkerson describe Powell's four-day immersion at the CIA in very different terms -- not punching up the evidence but frantically scouring it for mistakes and faulty intelligence.

"On the last day and night [at the CIA], the secretary called me, and he said, 'I need a little extra reinforcement.' So I went out there and spent Sunday and Saturday night with him. He needed someone. He was the voice throwing everything out, and he wanted another loud voice at the table." Wilkerson describes those four days at the CIA as a battle, with Powell's team scrambling in the final hours to save the general from humiliation: "I was down at the agency as his task-force leader, and we fought tooth and nail with other members of the administration to scrub it and get the crap out."

Wilkerson on the neo-cons: "I make no bones about it. I have some reservations about people who have never been in the face of battle, so to speak, who are making cavalier decisions about sending men and women out to die. A person who comes immediately to mind in that regard is Richard Perle, who, thank God, tendered his resignation and no longer will be even a semi-official person in this administration. Richard Perle's cavalier remarks about doing this or doing that with regard to military force always, always troubled me. Because it just showed me that he didn't have the appreciation, for example, that Colin Powell has for what it means ... I call them utopians ... I don't care whether utopians are Vladimir Lenin in a sealed train going to Moscow or Paul Wolfowitz. Utopians, I don't like. You're never going to bring utopia, and you're going to hurt a lot of people in the process of trying to do it."



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