Even he can’t forget it:

He is no Edith Piaf. He has regrets. And did you see that piece of information? Each US soldier in Iraq costs the tax payer almost a million dollars a year. Yet the soldiers are not returning as millionaires and buying big homes.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

24 replies on “We Will Never Forget Powell’s Costly and Deadly Lie”

  1. Yes, old news, we know the war was a mistake, and didn’t coincide with what the majority of the US wanted …. I almost laughed to death when Bush made the claim that Iraq was a threat remembering the first “attack” he made …. But here’s my question, why hasn’t anyone ended it yet? We’ve been asking for it to be ended for a very long time, I can’t even remember how long, but not one politician has done anything to actually end it.

  2. He’s an embarrassment and another Bush era war criminal. Why do black people allow the Republican party to use them for evil? You see it with Clarence Thomas too.

  3. I very much admired the man until I saw him give that speech to the UN security council. He presented many many slides of ordinary-looking buildings that he seemed to want to rush through so that no-one would examine the “evidence” closely. There were certainly no nuclear facilities (that could produce the much-touted “mushroom cloud”). There were no missiles, or missile silos, or much weapons manufacturing going on, if any. Some satelite pictures of canisters containing “warheads” could have easily been anything at all. And then about half the presentation showed drawings of what the mobile biological weapons trucks were supposed to look like, without ever showing evidence of their existence. He showed slide after slide of ordinary oil storage tanks and warehouses with a truck or two parked outside. It looked like a poor, dusty country going about its ordinary business. The slide show could easily have been used by people opposed to the war (as if anyone dared to speak against the war back then) to show that Iraq clearly didn’t have much manufacturing going on, especially not of weapons. Just change the labels from “missile factory” to “charcoal plant” or “biological weapons facility” to “opium refinery,” and the same presentation could be used to argue the other side. And now he’s pretty unapologetic about it despite that title from Al Jazeera.

    @1 I suppose what they say is true that we brought down one regime and now we are the stabilizing force in that country. Not a good situation, but it seems at least partly true.

  4. Saddam used weapons of mass destruction against the Kurds and Iranians.

    Get over it, bitches…..

  6. I came back from six months in Iraq with about twelve grand in the bank, but that was only because I was separated-but-married and collecting a housing allowance and some other benefits I didn’t really deserve. Most soldiers at my paygrade came back with about five grand.

  7. @2: for the record, our current chairman of the joint chiefs, Mike Mullen, is a decent guy. I met him when he was the chief of naval operations.

  8. If he captures any combination of two of a bruised Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice, and delivers them along with himself to the Hague, then maybe I’ll consider some measure of forgiveness.

  9. @3, black people can make their own decisions about what political parties and ideologies they’d like to follow. Don’t act like they are poor children who are being fooled. It’s demeaning.

  10. @10 Republicans are the one’s who demean everyone. They find a minority who will do their dirty work. How many black people think Republicans care about things like social justice and economic equality? Damn few. And why? Because they don’t. So why would a black person join them and then engage in injustice and economic inequality?

  13. Depends on the paygrade, whether you’re single or not, and a few other things. But generally, you make an extra $450-$600 a month when you’re in country. And since you don’t have a lot to spend money on, you can come back with a bit of cash in the bank. Most guys use it as a down payment on a truck or something.

    God, a million would have been nice, though.

  15. Seriously? Even a very important issue like this is being politicized as Use Versus Them, give it a fucking rest, political parties are meaningless, get back on the topic of how our country (us citizens included) allowed these people to be fucked over just because of a stupid war most people didn’t want in the first place, you Reps, you started the war based on bad intell (does not surprise me). Dems, you little shits have promised to bring the soldiers back, but not one of you has had the balls to actually do it. Neither of your blind followers has even an ounce of room to complain about the other. Bring them home, fix the mess we made, or you are both just blathering windbags.

  16. Is it right to call that a lie (as it says in the heading of your post)? He seems to have honestly believed what he was saying, and he was aghast to find out that it was false. Just because you say something that turns out to be false does not mean you’re lying.

  18. @18: lie, noun:
    “1. An intentionally false statement.”
    A falsehood is not a lie unless the person expressing it knows it to be untrue. Please stop being such a dumbass; we’ve already got Bailo and Will in Seattle to deal with.

  19. Does not matter how many apologies and self-flagellations General Powell makes; he contributed pivotally to the wrongful death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and the destruction of the fragile economic and social fabric holding America together. He’s lost a lot more than my respect. He’s earned his spot in history as one of the great stooge-liars on the world stage.

  20. Does not matter how many apologies and self-flagellations Danny Savage makes; he contributed pivotally to the wrongful death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and the destruction of the fragile economic and social fabric holding America together. He’s lost a lot more than my respect. He’s earned his spot in history as one of the great stooge-liars on the world stage.

  21. It’s warm and cuddly and all, but the “gosh, I feel horrible, but there’s nothing I can do to change it” part is utter, utter bullshit and he should not get away with saying it.

    His perceived honor and truthfulness and standing in the country was the basis of his being used to front what turns out to have been a lie. That took the country to war. That killed thousands of Americans, untold thousands of Iraquis, and has trashed the US economy and done long-term, if not permanent, damage to the standing of the US in the world.

    An interview a few years later about how bad he feels about it is meaningless. If his honor meant anything, he would have stood up and demanded that explanations be made. WHY did the CIA verify blatantly false information? How did this information get presented to him and the president as valid? What else is out there that hasn’t been reconsidered? And so on.

    If his honor meant anything, he would be absolutely on fire to repair the damage that was done on his watch, in his name, using his reputation. This “oops” a decade later is disgusting.

  22. @19
    Sorry. It may -and I remain very skeptical- have been the truth as he knew it at the time, but his silence and complicity in it after he knew damn well that it wasn’t truth made it into a lie after the fact, whether it was one at the time or not.

  23. @17,

    There were reports *at the time* that Powell was, in private, shouting that he wouldn’t present the information the White House gave him because it was “bullshit.” They may have cleaned it up just enough to let the Security Council pretend it wasn’t a complete fabrication, but Powell absolutely knew that everything coming out of his mouth was hot, steaming, liquid shit.

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