The White House is occupied by squatters, the kind who trash the place, then vanish a day before the police show up to evict them.
This administration is a syndicate, bullies and thugs who know that idealists accept self-sacrifice and are not cowed by personal threats. Idealists are motivated by empathy for others, so you threaten their family and friends.
So it isn't surprising this generation has no "Deep Throat." The players are nastier and the stakes higher. But as each day passes, with every soldier and civilian that dies I ask myself: where is Colin Powell and how can he remain silent?
As the lies twisted and grew into Bush's justification for invading Iraq, one story remained the same. The INR, the State Department's intelligence service, never believed that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. Or was an imminent nuclear threat.
And Powell knew. State's "fact sheet," released on 12/19/02 was an end-run around Powell by John Bolton, to try and bolster the fraudulent Iraq-Niger claim. Powell himself removed the reference from his U.N. presentation a week after the President stated the intelligence as fact.
It's easy to view Powell as a sympathetic character, the lone voice of reason shouted down and shut out. Powell is affable, a well-spoken light-skinned black man, and America loves safe black men. It's easy to think Powell is being set-up.
But in Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, John Dean devotes nearly 2 pages to a laundry list of false claims Powell made before the U.N. Like Tenet, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice, Powell's 'evidence' reeked of distorted intelligence and half-truths. And Powell knew.
His treachery is two-fold and stings the most.
Colin Powell was a soldier -- he lied and used his stature to send fellow soldiers to needless deaths. He was a general, a vietnam veteran, a celebrity. He knowingly helped promote an illegal and avoidable war.
Colin Powell could step forward and end it all with the truth. He has the facts and the credibility to reclaim our country, to stop the unnecessary suffering being inflicted in our name. He could shut it all down at any time.
But Colin Powell is a traitor -- in the truest sense of the word -- to his country and to his uniform. He swore to defend this country with his life, yet he remains silent while it is attacked from within and becomes increasingly vulnerable to threats from abroad.
And Colin Powell is a coward. He awakes each day in the safety and comfort of his own bed while his 'men' lie in the dirt bleeding. Despite having seen and heard and smelled vietnamese woman and children covered with jellied gasoline, Powell remains silent as the number of dead and maimed Iraqi civilians approaches that attributed to Hussein himself.
Powell told his lies, watched as American troops died, and then walked away.
Our soldiers are precious. They are that small percentage of Americans willing to die so the rest of us can stay safely home and bitch on the internet. Every passing day, Colin Powell dishonors himself and their sacrifice with his silence.
I don't understand how he can do it.