It looks like the White House and its media minions are trying their damnedest to convince Colin Powell and the American public that Colin really does have a say in the administration. Of course he doesn't - look at the record! Ignored every time. Now as Nov, 2 looms, they're stuffing the media with stories designed to make it look as if Bush and co. actually care what he thinks. This sample was taken from a news assortment that, on ONE page had FIVE Powell stories. Just how stupid do they think Powell - and America - are?

MSNBC: "Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican centrist who is popular with moderate voters, intends to skip the GOP convention in New York that will nominate Bush for a second term. 'The secretary does not plan to attend,' State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said Tuesday [note that Powell has no comment himself!]. He drew attention to Powell's remarks last week at a convention of minority journalists that he was obliged as secretary not to take part in 'parochial debate.' " Yep, that's the White House's story and they're stickin' to it!

Newsday: "Matyas Reisz doesn't get weak in the knees when he thinks about Hungary's 300 troops risking life and limb in Iraq. He just wants the troops out of harm's way and safely home. Reisz, a 47-year-old accountant in Budapest, is among many people in mostly pro-America Eastern Europe who are bristling at Secretary of State Colin Powell's exhortation to the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq to "not get weak in the knees." "I don't know what our politicians told Powell, but if he thinks we want to keep our soldiers there, he is very mistaken. No one wants friends and relatives in a war zone like that." Of course Powell has no intention of sending HIS son into danger. The pudgy, soft-living Michael Powell is safe and sound in a cushy "instant exec" job secured for him by Daddy.

Two extremely telling revelations from the Guardian: First, the aide who took it upon herself to cut Powell's interview with Tim Russert on a recent "Meet the Press" short, Emily Miller, used to work for Tom Delay. Yep, the thuggish power-mongering sociopath from Texas who once advised an aide that not only should you kick someone when they are down, you should keep right on kicking them. Second, the question she took it upon herself to cut from the public's ears was (reports the Guardian) "how he felt now about all the bogus intelligence he was given to present as fact to the UN in the month before the war... The argument that ensued between Powell, the press aide and Russert was rebroadcast in its entirety and was more revealing of this administration's can-do-no-wrong attitude than any public campaign exchange."

David Corn writes, "On Meet the Press, Powell said of the bioweapons claim, 'I am disappointed and I regret it.' But that's not good enough. Powell provided cover for Bush's case for war. Why is he not angrily calling for an inquiry into how Chalibi flim-flammed the CIA and the administration? Why is Powell sticking around and helping Bush get reelected, when it's expected he will resign after that and leave the public with an administration that is not moderated (to the extent that it is) by the presence of this presumably sage grown-up? Think about it. The secretary of state revealed that he, the CIA and the administration were conned (perhaps too easily) by exiles supported by the Pentagon, and this fraud helped set the stage for a war and a bloody and difficult occupation that still is claiming the lives of Americans. If this is not cause for investigations, dismissals, and angry statements from congressional leaders and administration officials, then what is?"

Seattle Times: "Colin Powell said yesterday that what he had called 'the most dramatic' element of his Feb. 5, 2003, speech to the United Nations was 'inaccurate and discredited.' The presentation, considered a key in convincing allies and the American people that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, claimed the existence of mobile biological-weapons laboratories. 'When I made that presentation in February 2003, it was based on the best information that the Central Intelligence Agency made available to me,' Powell said... on NBC's 'Meet the Press.' 'It turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that, I am disappointed, and I regret it,' he said." You're a real stand-up guy, Colin. NOT! You knew then and you know now that the intelligence had been cooked not by the CIA -- but by the Office of Special Plans under Rumsfeld and Feith. And you were a key accomplice in pushing this fraud to the UN.

"'LARRY KING: Did you ever see anything like [Abu Ghraib]?' 'COLIN POWELL: No.' 'KING: Ever have a subordinate do anything like this?' 'POWELL: No.' 'KING: What do you make of it. What's your view?' 'POWELL: I don't know what to make of it. I'm shocked. I mean, I was in a unit that was responsible for My Lai. I got there after My Lai happened. So, in war these sorts of horrible things happen every now and again, but they're still to be deplored'... Of course, the murders of small numbers of Iraqis in prison and the abuse, torture and humiliation of many more is not the equivalent of the slaughter of more than 500 unresisting Vietnamese, mostly old people, women, and children in less than a day by Charlie Company of the Americal Division, while higher commanders circled overhead in helicopters. But it's interesting that My Lai leapt so quickly to Colin Powell's mind, and in fact there are parallels." So writes Tom Engelhardt.

There are some choice statements made by Powell's aides on the Bush Regime in a recent GQ article. Powell's chief of staff Larry Wilkerson describes US sanctions policy against countries such as Pakistan and Cuba as "the dumbest policy on the face of the Earth". As to Richard Perle, Wilkerson says: "Thank God [he] tendered his resignation and no longer will be even a semi-official person in this administration." Powell's good friend and mentor Harlan Ullman describes the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, as a "jerk". Richard Armitage says Bush's deceit and flipflopping at Powell's expense were "a source of great distress for the secretary."

Harlan Ullman says his friend Colin Powell is having a hard time being the only sane person in a nest of nutcases. Of course Ullman doesn't it put it quite like that and instead uses all sorts of politically correct euphemisms, which we will translate (in brackets): "'This is, in many ways, the most ideological [fanatical] administration Powell's ever had to work for...And I think Powell is inherently uncomfortable [developing ulcers] with grand visions [Biblical fantasies] like that. . . . There's an ideological core [messianic complex] to Bush, and I think it's hard for Powell to penetrate that [get past the illusions of grandeur].' " Of course, like any good foot soldier for a fanatic, Powell is denying it all.

NY Times opines, "What we seem to have once again with Mr. Powell is a desire to have it both ways, to be seen as a loyal member of the Bush team, but also as a wise man who knew all along that the Iraq war would be a mistake. If the Woodward version is correct, Mr. Powell should have spoken up more than a year ago... Powell, who apprenticed in the vicious parlor wars of the Reagan White House, has always played the spin game well. If the Woodward book is the version of inside-the-White-House history that Mr. Powell wanted people to believe, it has done nothing to burnish his reputation. Knowing that Mr. Powell thought the invasion was a bad idea doesn't make him look better - it makes his inaction puzzling and disappointing. It's an article of faith in Washington that Mr. Powell would not serve in a second Bush administration. The lasting impression may be this sense of disappointment in the secretary he could have been."

Bernard Weiner writes: "Are you listening, Colin Powell? Do you really want to wind up pitied and reviled like McNamara for moral culpability in war-crimes, or are there lessons you can learn from this introspective, deeply troubled man -- such as when and why to get out? Our Secretary of State could decide that his patriotism and conscience dictate an immediate, pre-November departure from the Bush Administration -- in order to help stop the reimposition of the draft, keep more unjustified 'pre-emptive' wars from happening, save the lives of countless soldiers and civilians who will die in Iraq and in other countries. In such a circumstance, he could talk frankly with the American people, revealing what he knows about how Bush policy was conceived and carried out. But, while I once believed Powell capable of such principled action, I don't think Powell now has the backbone or moral strength to do that... Go see 'The Fog of War,' Colin."

WashPost reports: "Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who urged the United Nations to endorse a preemptive war to strip Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction, conceded Saturday that Saddam Hussein's government may have no longer had such munitions. One day after David Kay, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, said he believes Hussein had not stockpiled unconventional weapons for years, Powell told reporters that his prominent Feb. 5 argument was based on 'what our intelligence community believed was credible.' Powell said in defense of the decision to go to war that the Bush administration was not simply troubled by the conviction that Iraq possessed unconventional weapons and development programs, but also that Hussein had refused to answer U.N. questions about his government's activities on the subject." Hey Colin -- you don't launch a war because you need questions answered! That's how the Mafia operates. Oh yeah, we forgot that you work for the Bush Crime Family.

"Colin Powell plans to attend the inauguration of Georgia's new president Mikhail Saakashvilli this weekend, offering Saakashvilli a symbolic stamp of U.S. approval. In addition to the planned festivities of singers, acrobats, dancing bears and a military parade, Powell may be stepping into the beginning of a civil war set off by the new president himself. Sources close to the president of a small Georgian republic, the Autonomous Republic of Adjara, say the Adjarans have uncovered a secret plot by Saakashvilli to seize the republic and its port capitol of Batumi in the aftermath of Sunday's inaugural celebration. Adjarans believe that as soon as Powell leaves Georgia the new president intends to strike against them."

Sidney Blumenthal writes, "Powell's loyalty to those who have shepherded his career, from the Nixon administration to the present, has taken precedent over all else. He has won battles but lost the wars. His efforts, along with Blair's, to pursue the UN route on Iraq is now revealed by the former director of state department policy planning, Richard Haass, to have been largely a matter of PR... There has been nothing with which Powell has disagreed that he has felt has been worth fighting to the end. He has given his best advice, husbanded his inherent power, and accepted policies - which he's privately told senators have been calamitous - on the diplomatic run-up to the Iraq war and the reconstruction, the Middle East peace process and North Korea. His presence has lent the appearance there could have been another course, when on the important issues that has been proved an illusion. "

A NY Times editorial: "If it had seemed unlikely that Mr. Hussein had [WMDs], we doubt that Congress or the American people would have endorsed the war. This is clearly an uncomfortable question for the Bush administration. Yesterday, Secretary of State Colin Powell met with Times editors. Asked whether Americans would have supported this war if weapons of mass destruction had not been at issue, Mr. Powell said the question was too hypothetical to answer. Asked if he, personally, would have supported it, he smiled, thrust his hand out and said, 'It was good to meet you.'" Colin, you low-down Bushevik, don't EVEN imply that, deep down, you were against the war! You COULD have resigned in protest. You COULD have chosen not to lie through your teeth for the Bushites, as you did dozens of times. You COULD have AT LEAST refused to be Administration spokesman on Iraq in the months leading up to war. Your hands are bloody, Colin, your jibes won't wash them clean!

Ha'aretz reports: "In an interview with the Charlie Rose Show on public television, Powell sympathized with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on the settlement question, saying it would be almost impossible for an Israeli leader to appear to be yielding to U.S. pressure. In a gaffe, Powell also called the United States a Judeo-Christian country on Monday but quickly amended that to 'a country of many faiths'. The first amendment to the U.S. constitution prohibits the establishment of any state religion - a provision usually interpreted as requiring strict separation of church and state, though Christian activists dispute that."

From Reuters: "Secretary of State Colin Powell said at the mass grave of Iraqi Kurds killed in a 1988 gas attack that the killings showed the world should have acted sooner against President Saddam Hussein...." Mahablog responds: "Let's not talk about 'the world's' reaction to this tragedy, Mr. Secretary. Let's talk about your reaction. In 1988 then senators Claiborne Pell, Al Gore, and Jesse Helms introduced a bill to impose economic sanctions on Iraq in response to its use of chemical weapons. The Reagan White House blocked that bill. You were part of the Reagan White House, Mr. Secretary. In fact, the United States continued to provide Iraq with money and arms after the gassing of the Kurds at Tuwaitha.... The truth is, 15 years ago the dead of Halabja were an inconvenience.... But when the agenda became an invasion of Iraq, you shamelessly dug up the Halabja corpses and put them on display for your own purposes. Suddenly, you really, really cared about them."

If Bush steals a second term, be warned: the supposedly "moderating" influence of Colin Powell will vanish. Powell has signaled that he will not serve in Bush II, thus surrendering to his nemesis Donald Rumsfeld. Of equal importance, Powell's deputy Richard Armitage will also quit, thus surrending to his nemesis Paul Wolfowitz. The Powell "moderation" charade is over, and the imperialist warmongers are now completely - and nakedly - in control of the US government. Will the US media report on the military takeover of America's "civilian" government? Of COURSE not! (Update: Both Powell and the White House deny that Powell will step down. We'll see...)

TVNewsLies.org writes, "Dear Secretary of State Powell: In this desperate time, when the US has become a rogue nation that has launched the first unprovoked preemptive strike on a sovereign nation in its history - you have become the single most devastating disappointment to millions of Americans. We, who love this nation, were not surprised by the destructive actions of President Bush and his treacherous neoconservative advisors. We feared, early on, that they would divert this nation from its role as leader and example to the world. But we truly had faith in your moral strength as our representative to the world. To that end, we were terribly wrong." Print and send this letter to Colin Powell.

Pete Hamill writes, "There were no dead bodies in the scandals at The New York Times. But in the end, [Howell] Raines took the fall with as much grace as he could muster. If [Colin] Powell discovers that he was snookered the way Raines was snookered by Jayson Blair, he should do the same. The Bush administration is filled with people devoid of shame. But Powell is from the Bronx. He's a soldier and was pledged to avoid the unnecessary deaths of soldiers. He knows better than to defend the indefensible. The way out, as someone once said about Vietnam, is through the door." Oh Pete, you expect way too much of Powell. You still buy the Colin Powell myth. Back in Vietnam, Powell covered up reports of massacres and war crimes in an area where My Lai was eventually exposed. Powell has always done whatever was necessary to ingratiate himself with the powerful, such as his key role in Iran-Contra. See 'Behind Colin Powell's Legend' at ConsortiumNews.com for details.

Joe Shea writes, "A former White House covert operations official has told The American Reporter that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, then a military aide to the U.S. Army command staff in Vietnam, misunderstood a general's instructions and mistakenly ordered the notorious March 16, 1968, My Lai massacre, and successfully covered up his error until now... [Shea's source investigated My Lai at the request of President Nixon, and said] Gen. William Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam from 1964 to July 1968, told him that Powell had mistaken his orders to subdue the village as an order to wipe out its inhabitants, and relayed the mistaken order through an Army major to Calley, who was court-martialed and sent to jail for murder... Powell was unavailable for comment, but in an autobiography said he did not learn of the incident until two years after it occurred."

WashPost reports, "Colin Powell ended his lightning Asia trip having made little public progress in his efforts to rally support for U.S. strategy on North Korea or Iraq... He failed to win any visible pledges in South Korea, China or Japan to bolster Washington's hard line strategy with North Korea, or to support the administration's plans to invade Iraq... His trip, the first since the tense standoff over North Korea's acknowledgement of a uranium enrichment program in October, was done at top-speed. In South Korea, where he attended the inauguration of Roh, attention on Powell's message was further disrupted by news that North Korea had fired a short range missile into the sea Monday... China reportedly balked at the U.S. request to at least abstain from using that veto and instead complained that it gets too little credit from Washington for the efforts it does make to support the U.S. position."

Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace asks in a recent issue of The Globalist: "Do you know who in the early 1990s worried that: 1. 'Ruling Baghdad' would come only 'unpardonable expense in terms of money, lives lost and ruined regional relationships?' 2. Addressing 'inevitable follow-up, who also asked whether Americans would really learn to live with 'major occupation forces in Iraq for years to come?' 3. Finally, who argued that, 'fortunately for America, reasonable people ' would think such a scenario 'would not have been worth the inevitable follow-up?'" That's right. Our newly minted hawk and hypocrite, Colin Powell.

Jeffrey J. Mariotte writes, "There was a time when Colin Powell was considered a man of integrity, a voice of reason in the Bush administration. He was one of the grown-ups who would keep a rein on the resident with less foreign policy experience - less experience in nearly every area, for that matter - than any other in our lifetimes. But his recent behavior, including his rabid performance in front of the United Nations this week, demonstrates that Powell has given up any claim to integrity, and possibly to common sense and even passable intelligence. Granted, trying to maintain any integrity in the company of Bush and friends - a gang of thugs boasting quite possibly the longest combined rap sheet of any administration in history, when you factor in drunk driving arrests, Iran Contra convictions, and the like - would be sort of like being a member of the Medellin Cartel and advocating using their profits to fund anti-drug programs. You just aren't going to last long."

William Saletan writes for Slate: "When Powell testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee later that month, he dismissed Bin Laden's claims. 'We cannot let Usama bin Laden pretend that he is doing it in the name of helping the Iraqi people or the Palestinian people,' said Powell. 'He doesn't care one whit about them. He has never given a dollar toward them. He has never spoken out for them.' That was then; this is now. Tuesday morning, Powell testified before the Senate Budget Committee. He warned that Al Jazeera would soon air a new Bin Laden statement in which 'once again he speaks to the people of Iraq and talks about their struggle and how he is in partnership with Iraq. This nexus between terrorists and states that are developing weapons of mass destruction can no longer be looked away from and ignored.' You can write the next paragraph yourself."

Robert Scheer writes that Powell summarized Vietnam's lessons in his autobiography, "War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support." "Does anybody outside of the extremist claque of think-tank warriors bending Bush's ear really think we are at the point of 'last resort' with Iraq, a poor country half a world away that is already divvied up into 'no-fly' zones, crawling with U.N. inspectors and still shattered economically and militarily from two previous wars? Or that the American people, so divided and apathetic in polls on the subject, 'understand and support' why we would start a firestorm in Baghdad and then send our young men and women to fight in its streets? ... As a military man Powell should be employing a straightforward equation: Does the target pose a direct threat to U.S. security? In the case of Iraq in 2003, the answer can be yes only if Powell is prepared to swallow a trio of Big Lies."

Steven H. Leser, webmaster of the Dumbya Chronicles (www.thedumbyachronicles.com), writes: "I was pleased to see an excerpt from your book urge an equal class free commitment to serve our nation's armed forces in time of war. I have some helpful news for you. Regarding this excerpt: 'I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed... managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units...Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.' (Colin Powell's autobiography, My American Journey, p. 148) If you would like to verbally take to task one of the individuals who embodies 'this raw class discrimination' of which you speak, they are within an arms reach, so to speak. I'm speaking, of course, of your boss, George W. Bush." (Democrats.com registration required).

With the US poised to attack Iraq, it's helpful to recall what pushed us over the brink last time ... the invisible steps and the unspoken consequences. In the fall of 1990, when the US Congress was debating going to war, Amnesty International (AI) released an explosive report detailing how Iraqi soldiers had taken Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and left them to die on hospital floors. Many US Senators later claimed it was the Amnesty "dead baby" report that finally convinced them to use vicious force against the Iraqis. Minor glitch. It was soon revealed that the Amnesty report was a complete sham - Kuwaiti propaganda put together by the PR firm Hill & Knowlton.

The London Telegraph reports, "Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, is becoming so frustrated at being undermined by the White House that he may stand down after the mid-term elections, according to some American diplomats. The damaging speculation sweeping Gen Powell's Foggy Bottom headquarters has been dismissed as unfounded by senior State Department sources, but it caps a very bad week for President George W Bush's cabinet. John Ashcroft, the attorney-general, was reprimanded for his announcement of the arrest of an alleged 'dirty bomber'. Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defence, was forced to make an embarrassing retreat over claims of al-Qa'eda activity in Kashmir. But the biggest problem has been the simmering internal dispute over Middle East policy, which burst into the open when Gen Powell contradicted Mr Bush and Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, appeared dismissive of the secretary of state."

"If I jump now, with Karen Hughes having left and the Venezuela-coup egg all over our face and the state and federal courts stomping on Ashcroft's police-state tactics and the Democratic darts starting to hit the Administration's many bullseyes, it'll look bad. Like I'm deserting a ship that's started leaking badly." So writes Bernard Weiner.

Colin Powell began his meteoric climb by covering up the My Lai Massacre, and played a key role in Iran-contra. But hey - he's so handsome, and has such rich friends! We guess that explains why his son Michael is now the hottest property in D.C. Of course, there's a small scandal - in January, Michael voted to approve the AOL Time-Warner merger, even though Colin sat on the AOL board and held options on 320,000 shares which will net him $9 million. Where is the outrage??? Of course, since Republicans control the media, Republican scandals never get investigated, they just become clubby little jokes to amuse the overpaid journalistic elite. Michael doesn't belong in the White House, he belongs in jail!

This week, expect to hear a lot from Shrub & Co. about "American's Promise," a lofty-sounding organization founded by Colin Powell that hints in its promos that it's the YMCA, Big Brothers/Sisters and Boys' Town all rolled into one love-filled package. Well, we checked out the site and defy anyone to find one concrete action this group has achieved on its own steam besides listing five very vague goals, and maintaining a database of grant-writing info and referrals. The latter it oh-so-nobly shares with real in-the-trenches social service folks, in exchange for which it scoops up credit-by-association for these groups' real-world efforts in its annual "report." In short, "Promise" is a PR facade (actually, "publicity parasite" was the first term that came to mind). Check it out - you might get some good tips on how to appear the world's greatest "compassionate conservative" without ever leaving your desk.

In March 1968, American soldiers killed more than 500 Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai. Nine months later, Major Colin Powell wrote a memo that helped cover up the massacre. Powell will be returning to Vietnam in July - will he apologize?

Shrub has humiliated Powell on matters ranging from "Korea to Kosovo." According to Joe Conason, Powell now "finds himself under attack from conservatives allied with the Cheney-Rumsfeld faction. Armchair militarists at The Weekly Standard warn that the Secretary of State is a closet Clintonite, for example, while former fringe Presidential candidate Gary Bauer suggests that any cabinet official, such as Mr. Powell, who dares to dissent from right-wing orthodoxy might be 'taken to the woodshed.'" Hey Colin - these guys hate you! Not just because you're black, but because you're BETTER than they are. Quit now while you're ahead, let them self-destruct through in-fighting, and when Cheney's heart gives out they'll come begging you to take over as Regent.

Colin Powell was reportedly paid $80,000 by Lebanese billionaire Issam Fares to give a speech at Tufts University. Besides being Lebanon's deputy prime minister, Fares has close ties to the Syrian government - and of course to the Bushes.

Colin Powell launched his career as a gung-ho commander in Vietnam. He never harbored any doubts about killing Vietnamese soldiers - or civilians. "We burned down the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo lighters. Why were we torching houses and destroying crops? Ho Chi Minh had said the people were like the sea in which his guerrillas swam. ... We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable. In the hard logic of war, what difference did it make if you shot your enemy or starved him to death?"