At the end of November, newspapers across the United States and
beyond told readers about sensational new statements by a former top
assistant to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state. After
interviewing Lawrence Wilkerson, the Associated Press reported he
“said that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees
after Sept. 11 arose from a coterie of White House and Pentagon aides
who argued that ‘the president of the United States is all-powerful,’
and that the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant.”
AP added: “Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. Wilkerson said that
Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning
ground for new terror assaults, because ‘otherwise I have to declare
him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard.’”
Such strong words are headline grabbers when they come from someone
widely assumed to be speaking Powell’s mind. And as a Powell
surrogate, Wilkerson is certainly on a tear this week, speaking some
truth about power. But there are a few big problems with his zeal to
recast the public record: 1) Wilkerson should have spoken up years
ago. 2) His current statements, for the most part, are foggy. 3) The
criticisms seem to stem largely from tactical critiques and image
concerns rather than moral objections. 4) Powell is still too much of
a cagey opportunist to speak out himself.
Appearing on the BBC’s “Today” program Nov. 29, Wilkerson said: “You
begin to wonder was this intelligence spun? Was it politicized? Was
it cherry-picked? Did, in fact, the American people get fooled? I am
beginning to have my concerns.”
So Wilkerson, who was Powell’s chief of staff from 2002 till early
this year, has started to “wonder” whether the intelligence was spun,
politicized, cherry-picked. At the end of November 2005, he was
“beginning” to have “concerns.”
“Beginning to have my concerns” is a phrase that aptly describes the
Colin Powell approach.
Overall, appearances remain key. And so, Wilkerson included this
anecdote in his AP interview: “Powell raised frequent and loud
objections, his former aide said, once yelling into a telephone at
Rumsfeld: ‘Donald, don’t you understand what you are doing to our
image?’”
Now there’s a transcendent reason to begin to have concerns:
Torturing prisoners is bad for “our image.”
Rest assured that if the war had gone well by Washington’s lights,
we’d be hearing none of this from Powell’s surrogate. The war has
gone bad, from elite vantage points, not because of the official lies
and the unrelenting carnage but because military victory has eluded
the U.S. government in Iraq. And with President Bush’s poll numbers
tanking, and Dick Cheney’s even worse, it’s time for some “moderate”
sharks to carefully circle for some score-settling and preening.
In its account of Wilkerson’s BBC appearance, the British Guardian
newspaper reported on Nov. 30: “Asked whether the vice president was
guilty of a war crime, Mr. Wilkerson replied: ‘Well, that’s an
interesting question -- it was certainly a domestic crime to advocate
terror and I would suspect that it is ... an international crime as
well.’ In the context of other remarks it appeared he was using the
word ‘terror’ to apply to the systematic abuse of prisoners.”
Strong stuff, especially since it’s obvious that Wilkerson is
channeling Powell with those statements. But Powell was a team player
and a very effective front man for the administration that was doing
all that politicizing and cherry-picking -- and then proceeding with
the policies that Wilkerson now seeks to pin on Cheney as possible
war crimes.
White House war makers deftly hyped Powell’s “moderate” credibility
while the Washington press corps lauded his supposed integrity.
Powell was the crucial point man for giving “diplomatic” cover to the
Iraq invasion fixation of Bush and Cheney. So, typically, Powell
proclaimed three weeks into 2003: “If the United Nations is going to
be relevant, it has to take a firm stand.”
When Powell made his dramatic presentation to the U.N. Security
Council on Feb. 5, 2003, he fudged, exaggerated and concocted, often
presenting deceptions as certainties. Along the way, he played fast
and loose with translations of phone intercepts to make them seem
more incriminating. And, as researchers at the media watch group FAIR
(where I’m an associate) pointed out, “Powell relied heavily on the
disclosure of Iraq’s pre-war unconventional weapons programs by
defector Hussein Kamel, without noting that Kamel had also said that
all those weapons had been destroyed.” But the secretary of state
wowed U.S. journalists.
Powell’s televised U.N. speech exuded great confidence and
authoritative judgment. But he owed much of his touted credibility to
the fact that he had long functioned inside a media bubble shielding
him from direct challenge. It might puzzle an American to read later,
in a book compiled by the London-based Guardian, that Powell’s
much-ballyhooed speech went over like a lead balloon. “The
presentation was long on assertion and muffled taped phone calls, but
short on killer facts,” the book said. “It fell flat.”
Fell flat? Well it did in Britain, where a portion of the mainstream
press immediately set about engaging in vigorous journalism that
ripped apart many of Powell’s assertions within days. But not on the
western side of the Atlantic, where Powell’s star turn at the United
Nations elicited an outpouring of media adulation. In the process of
deference to Powell, many liberals were among the swooners.
In her Washington Post column the morning after Powell spoke, Mary
McGrory proclaimed that “he persuaded me.” She wrote: “The cumulative
effect was stunning.” And McGrory, a seasoned and dovish political
observer, concluded: “I’m not ready for war yet. But Colin Powell has
convinced me that it might be the only way to stop a fiend, and that
if we do go, there is reason.”
In the same edition, Post columnist Richard Cohen shared his insight
that Powell was utterly convincing: “The evidence he presented to the
United Nations -- some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely
bone-chilling in its detail -- had to prove to anyone that Iraq not
only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without
a doubt still retains them. Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman --
could conclude otherwise.”
Inches away, Post readers found Jim Hoagland’s column with this lead:
“Colin Powell did more than present the world with a convincing and
detailed X-ray of Iraq’s secret weapons and terrorism programs
yesterday. He also exposed the enduring bad faith of several key
members of the U.N. Security Council when it comes to Iraq and its
‘web of lies,’ in Powell’s phrase.” Hoagland’s closing words sought
to banish doubt: “To continue to say that the Bush administration has
not made its case, you must now believe that Colin Powell lied in the
most serious statement he will ever make, or was taken in by
manufactured evidence. I don’t believe that. Today, neither should
you.”
On the opposite page the morning after Powell’s momentous U.N.
speech, a Washington Post editorial was figuratively on the same page
as the Post columnists. Under the headline “Irrefutable,” the
newspaper laid down its line for rationality: “After Secretary of
State Colin L. Powell’s presentation to the United Nations Security
Council yesterday, it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that
Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.”
Also smitten was the editorial board of the most influential U.S.
newspaper leaning against the push for war. Hours after Powell
finished his U.N. snow job, the New York Times published an editorial
with a mollified tone -- declaring that he “presented the United
Nations and a global television audience yesterday with the most
powerful case to date that Saddam Hussein stands in defiance of
Security Council resolutions and has no intention of revealing or
surrendering whatever unconventional weapons he may have.”
By sending Powell to address the Security Council, the Times claimed,
President Bush “showed a wise concern for international opinion.” And
the paper contended that “Mr. Powell’s presentation was all the more
convincing because he dispensed with apocalyptic invocations of a
struggle of good and evil and focused on shaping a sober, factual
case against Mr. Hussein’s regime.”
Later, in mid-September 2003, straining to justify Washington’s
refusal to let go of the occupation of Iraq, Colin Powell used the
language of a venture capitalist: “Since the United States and its
coalition partners have invested a great deal of political capital,
as well as financial resources, as well as the lives of our young men
and women -- and we have a large force there now -- we can’t be
expected to suddenly just step aside.”
Now, after so much clear evidence has emerged to discredit the entire
U.S. war effort, Colin Powell still can’t bring himself to stand up
and account for his crucial role. Instead, he’s leaving it to a
former aide to pin blame on those who remain at the top of the Bush
administration. But Powell was an integral part of the war propaganda
machinery. And we can hardly expect the same media outlets that
puffed him up at crucial times to now scrutinize their mutual
history.
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This article includes an excerpt from Norman Solomon’s new book “War Made
Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For
information, go to:
www.WarMadeEasy.com