FIRED: POWELL SURPRISE TELL-ALL

[trancepriest]

Colin Powell claims he was fired by the Bush Administration, according to his official biography which was excerpted in the Washington Post's Sunday magazine.

After his termination, Powell and the Bush Administration had used the cover story that Powell resigned of his own accord from his position as Secretary of State.


The following is the relevant text of Powell's official biography published in the Washington Post:


"The president would like to make a change," Card said, using a time-honored formulation that avoided the words "resign" or "fire." He noted briskly that there had been some discussion of having Powell remain until after Iraqi elections scheduled for the end of January, but that the president had decided to take care of all Cabinet changes sooner rather than later. Bush wanted Powell’s resignation letter dated two days hence, on Friday, November 12, Card said, although the White House expected him to stay at the State Department until his successor was confirmed by the Senate.

After four long years, Powell had anticipated the end of his service and sometimes even longed for it. He had never directly told the president but thought he had made clear to him during the summer of 2004 that he did not intend to stay into a second term.

There had been public speculation as the election drew near that the president might ask the secretary of state to reenlist, at least temporarily. Powell was still the most popular member of Bush’s team, far more popular with the public than the president himself. Senior Powell aides were convinced that the secretary anticipated an invitation to stay, and they were equally certain that he intended to accept. The approaching elections in Iraq, hints of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the rumored departure of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a principal Powell nemesis, made the next six months look like a rare period of promise for diplomacy.

John Harwood of the Wall Street Journal provides analysis of Powell's admission in the following MSNBC video report.

[xmuzik]

this should be good

[trancepriest]

Powell saw Bush regularly over the next two months, passing through the Oval Office for routine meetings that took place as if nothing had transpired. Eventually, the White House contacted his office to schedule what it described as a "farewell call" with the president. Such calls were being arranged for each departing Cabinet secretary.

When Powell saw the January 13 appointment on his calendar, his staff told him they assumed it was a goodbye photo opportunity with Bush. They suggested that perhaps he should bring his family.

"We've got a houseful of pictures," Powell replied dryly. Was he supposed to talk to the president? Or was the president supposed to talk to him?

"Am I supposed to say: 'This is what I think?' Or what?"

He didn't have to say anything, he was told. It was just a "farewell call."

As the meeting approached, the White House -- which had scheduled it in the first place -- inexplicably called the State Department to ask for "talking points" that aides could use to brief the president.

The appointed time found Powell already in the Oval Office for a routine meeting; when it concluded, he lingered as the others left. As Powell later remembered it, Bush seemed puzzled and called after his departing chief of staff, "Where you going, Andy?"

"Mr. President, I think this is supposed to be our farewell call," Powell prompted.

"Is that why Condi ain't here?" he recalled the president asking.

That was probably the reason, Powell replied.

Card walked back inside, and the three men sat down. Powell had already decided to use the opportunity -- likely his last as secretary of state -- to unload.

The war in Iraq was going south, he said after a few moments of small talk, and the president had little time left to turn it around. The administration's hope was that the upcoming election there would change the dynamics on the ground, and the Iraqi people would finally be ready and able to begin standing up to the insurgents on their own.

But the administration, he pointed out, had entertained such hopes before over the past two years -- when it had set up a new legal framework for Iraq, when it had first turned a modicum of government power over to handpicked Iraqis and when ousted dictator Saddam Hussein had been captured -- and those hopes had been dashed every time. There would be a window of about two months after the election "to start to see progress," he told Bush. "If by the first of April this insurgency is not starting to ameliorate in some way, then I think you really have a problem."

Elections, and talking about democracy, were unlikely to stop the insurgency, he said. Only the fledgling Iraqi army could do that, and it was unclear whether it would ever succeed. Its competence was not just a matter of training, Powell said; it was a question of whether the troops believed in what they were fighting for.

Powell warned about serious internal problems in Bush's own administration, saying that the power he had given the Pentagon to meddle in diplomacy on issues as widespread as North Korea, Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict, along with poisoned personal relations between his State and Defense departments, were seriously undermining the president's diplomacy. Bush dismissed his concern. It wasn't any worse, he said, than the legendary battles between State and Defense during the Reagan administration.

The session ended with a cordial handshake, and the secretary returned to the State Department. "That was really strange," he reported to Wilkerson. "The president didn't know why I was there."

Link: Washington Post

[xmuzik]

that last line pretty much states that bush is a puppet

[trancepriest]

Originally Posted by xmuzik

that last line pretty much states that bush is a puppet

Pretty scary to me.

[jamu]

It was probably Donald Rumsfeld that set it up. Wouldn't surprise me at all. Then again Isn't it President Donald Rumsfeld?

[Spankmeister]

Colin Powell was not and has never been a "YES" man, hence the tension between him and Bush...

As President, don't you ask the Secretary of State about what he thinks about a situation as grave as going to war? It states that he was never asked his opinion, and therefore never offered it until his 'exit interview'...WTF...

The last 6 years has been nothing but a train wreck