Can We Just Say Liar?

I have to say that I cringe whenever that illustrious "warrior hero" Colin Powell gets brought up in the media. Today NPR talked to Karen DeYoung who has published a new book about Powell. In the interview Steve Inskeep keeps trying to cover for Powell as being an unwitting dupe for Bush, but Powell is a liar with a history. Now I don't expect NPR to just come out and say, "Oh, Colin Powell the four-star liar," but they could give a little background on the man and let listeners draw the obvious conclusions. I went back and looked at a letter to the editor that I wrote back in February of 2003, when Powell knowingly soiled himself in front of the UN before the US invasion of Iraq.

In that letter I wrote, "Powell went to Vietnam as an executive officer with the American Division in July 1968, four months after soldiers within that division slaughtered hundreds of civilians in the My Lai massacre. Even after the massacre was uncovered, Powell did nothing to pursue officers responsible for covering up the facts of the case.

Powell does not mind supporting drug dealers and paramilitary groups that kidnap, torture, and kill nurses, doctors and teachers, and destroy farms, schools, and clinics. He did this during the Reagan years when he was the chief advocate of the Nicaraguan Contras. He justifies his close work with the Contras by saying, “we worked with what we had.” Powell can lie with the best of them.

During the Iran/Contra scandal he misled congressional investigators about whether his boss, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, kept a diary. First he flatly denied it, then changed his story saying that some notes were kept, then later called it a diary. This was crucial information and his deception helped shield Weinberger from investigators."

Amazing, but history hasn't changed since that fateful performance. One can do a little research and still find the dirt on Powell in The Nation, Salon, and Disinformation which has even more sordid links.