Today's
Telegraph has Colin Powell's first interview since his resignation. While it touches on his difficult relationship with Rumsfeld and his disagreement with Rumsfeld's plan to "fight the war with limited troop numbers", Powell pulls the party line - pushing for an American-European reconciliation.
A taste below the fold:
Powell told Charles Moore, the former editor of The Telegraph:
Admitting that Mr Rumsfeld's controversial plan to fight the war with limited troop numbers had been an outstanding success, Mr Powell said the "nation building" that followed had been deeply flawed. There had been "enough troops for war but not for peace, for establishing order. My own preference would have been for more forces after the conflict." Mr Powell said he had warned President George W Bush over dinner in August 2002 that the problem with Iraq was not going to be the invasion but what followed. He told him: "This place will crack like a goblet and it will be a problem to pick up the bits. It was on this basis that he decided to let me see if we could find a United Nations solution to this."
But the overall theme of the interview is reconciliation with Europe - consistent with current White House talking points.
Mr Powell, in his first interview since resigning last November, also told The Telegraph of his "dismay" at the deterioration in relations between America and Europe and of his "disappointment" with France... Mr Powell told Charles Moore, the former editor of The Telegraph who conducted the interview outside Washington, that he regretted the fall-out with Europe over the Iraq war... He also found Mr Rumsfeld's reference to "New Europe" and "Old Europe" unfortunate. "I never used the phrase," he said. "It just wasn't a useful construct. I don't think the president ever used it... "We've got a lot more work to do with European public opinion."
Always the good soldier.