At the recent
Aspen Ideas Festival, Arianna Huffington cornered Colin Powell, who was there as part of a discussion panel entitled "Order, Law, and Governance in the 21st Century". Not one to beat around the bush, Huffington asked Powell the question foremost in the minds of many: Is the U.S. ever going to get out of Iraq?
Powell responded:
"We are...but we're not going to leave behind anything we like because we are in the middle of a civil war."
Huffington asked in her post citing Powell--
Powell and Jack Murtha both talking about civil war in Iraq -- shouldn't that be headline news?
So, the war's reluctant salesman now (publically) agrees with it's most outspoken Congressional critic that Iraq has collapsed into nationally disfiguring civil conflict. If that item hasn't grabbed headlines yet, the bloody evidence of this grim reality certainly has, as diaried by topicalstorm.
In the same piece, the HuffPo founder makes a relevant point by noting a common thread that ran through many of the discussions on New and Old Media, which made up the basic theme of this year's Festival:
"As I was making the rounds of these media panels, there was one constant: at some point someone in the audience or on a panel would, without fail, raise the old canard about the supposed inaccuracy of the blogosphere. "We still need a place," some plaintive soul would inevitably say, "where we can go that we can count on for its accuracy."
I would nod understandingly and say, Yes, someplace like the front page of the New York Times... or all the other homes to the tragic, above-the-fold inaccuracies reported by the MSM that misled us to war."
Yep.