Back when President Bush selected Powell as his Secretary of State I was approving, even though I had long disagreed with his influence on the first Gulf War, (I am convinced the decision to stop short of Baghdad was largely his) and his stewardship of DoD under Les Aspin led directly to the Black Hawk Down incident. In that case he went along with a flawed policy because:
The report says Gen. Colin Powell, at the time chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was unable to resist the U.N. pressure and then was unable to get Mr. Aspin to approve the military's request for tanks and armored vehicles and AC-130 gunships.
The pressure was put on the administration by U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali; his deputy in Somalia, retired U. S. Adm. Jonathan Howe; and the deputy U.N. military commander in Somalia, Army Maj. Gen. Thomas Montgomery, who told congressional investigators he favored sending British special forces soldiers, not U.S. Rangers.
Gen. Powell, now retired and contemplating a run for president, is quoted in the report as saying the pressure was "a steady drumbeat," and ultimately he agreed to "go along, since as a general principle I believe in supporting the commander in the field."
Gen. Montgomery was acting in the dual role as deputy commander of U.N. forces and as commander of the 4,000 U.S. forces left behind after a humanitarian operation involving 25,000 U.S. troops ended.
...
Although he backed commanders' request for the armor, the report said Powell did not back an earlier request that AC-130 Spectre gunships be sent to Somalia with the special forces. It quoted special forces commanders as saying the AC-130s frightened Somali militia so they would have had psychological impact in the October raid.
But it said Powell and another senior commander rejected the request, saying as few new U.S. forces as possible should be sent to Somalia and the Spectres were not useful because they should not fire in Mogodishu itself.
It quoted Powell as saying he did not remember the AC-130 decision but that when Spectres had been in Somalia earlier "they wrecked a few buildings and it wasn't the greatest imagery on CNN."
source
Fast forward 10 years and we have Powell making the case for Iraq. Now I supported Iraq based on the Intelligence that was available (which turned out to be highly flawed) but apparently Powell didn't:
Powell was initially opposed to a forcible overthrow of Hussein, preferring to continue a policy of containment. However, Powell eventually agreed to go along with the Bush administration's determination to remove Hussein. He had often clashed with others in the administration, who were reportedly planning an Iraq invasion even before the September 11 attacks—an insight supported by testimony by former terrorism czar Richard Clarke in front of the 9/11 Commission. The main concession Powell wanted before he would offer his full support for the Iraq War was the involvement of the international community in the invasion, as opposed to the unilateral approach some advocated. He was also successful in persuading Bush to take the case of Iraq to the United Nations, and in moderating other initiatives. Powell was placed at the forefront of this diplomatic campaign.
...
A Senate report on intelligence failures would later detail the intense debate that went on behind the scenes on what to include in Powell's speech. State Department analysts had found dozens of factual problems in drafts of the speech. Some of the claims were taken out, but others were left in, such as claims based on the yellowcake forgery.[18] The administration came under fire for having acted on faulty intelligence. Reports have indicated that Powell himself was skeptical of the evidence presented to him. Powell later recounted how Vice President Cheney had joked with him before he gave the speech, telling him, "You've got high poll ratings; you can afford to lose a few points." Larry Wilkerson later characterized Cheney's view of Powell's mission as to "go up there and sell it, and we'll have moved forward a peg or two. Fall on your damn sword and kill yourself, and I'll be happy, too."[19]
In September 2005, Powell was asked about the speech during an interview with Barbara Walters and responded that it was a "blot" on his record. He went on to say, "It will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now."[20]
Mr. Powell's longtime aide-de-camp Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson said that he participated in a hoax on the American people in preparing Mr. Powell's erroneous testimony before the United Nations Security Council.
In other words he allowed himself to be swayed by the drumbeat of pressure, again. What would have happened if he had offered his resignation in Feb. 2003 instead of appearing before the UN?
So looking back on Powell's record I am not particularly impressed by his endorsement of Obama, after all there is a drumbeat of pressure to insure his election and Gen. Powell doesn't seem to stand up to that sort of thing well.
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