Colin Powell has previously broken with the Bush administration, terming the situation in Iraq a civil war late last year. Now Powell is claiming to have spent considerable time trying talk Bush out of the invasion. Frankly, this sounds like Powell is referring to Bush in terms one would use for a dead person:
...Powell has revealed that he spent 2½ hours vainly trying to persuade President George W Bush not to invade Iraq and believes today’s conflict cannot be resolved by US forces.
I find that time estimate, as a single meeting, to be not believable...who thinks that Bush would sit still that long? But of course Powell might be estimating the total hours of meetings he had with Bush had prior to the invasion.
“I tried to avoid this war,” Powell said at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. “I took him through the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers.”
An interesting choice of words...
“I tried to avoid this war..."
As if he were referring to his personal efforts to not get involved, not be tainted...
Funny, the reporter didn't ask Powell why he gave the UN speech, and which ended with
We must not shrink from whatever is ahead of us. We must not fail in our duty and our responsibility to the citizens of the countries that are represented by this body.
No, Colin Powell can't dodge his responsibility by telling the world that Bush is a lying, stupid, ignorant, shallow, stubborn, cruel blockhead. All the more reason Powell should have quit at the time, to tell the world not to believe the blather that he had to have known was false.
Powell continued his statements about the civil war in Iraq, without making any definite recommendations:
”
It is not a civil war that can be put down or solved by the armed forces of the United States.” All the military could do, Powell suggested, was put “a heavier lid on this pot of boiling sectarian stew”.
Powell lapses into the "it's their fault" mode:
He believes that, even if the military surge has been a partial success in areas such as Anbar province, where Sunni tribes have turned on Al-Qaeda, it has not been accompanied by the vital political and economic “surge” and reconciliation process promised by the Iraqi government.
Al-Qaeda, Powell asserted, was only 10% of the problem in Iraq and Nouri al-Maliki, its prime minister, lacked the political will to establish an effective government. After a promising start to the surge at the beginning of the year, 453 unidentified corpses were found on the streets of Baghdad last month, 41% more than the 321 bodies found in January, according to unofficial Iraqi health ministry statistics.
....
The general and former joint chiefs of staff added: “Shi’ites will ultimately prevail because they are 60% of the population and their militias can be pretty violent. They will prevail also because they are determined not to be ruled again by the Sunnis.
Powell still has a long way to go in revealing what went on in the runup to the war. This self serving interview is barely a first step, mostly finger-pointing. But I do appreciate his contribution on the "reality" side of the Iraq situation.