Brilliant Answer…
Posted on September 11, 2007
by: Dr. Jerome Pestlebottom
From an interview just posted on GQ online…
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GQ:Your hero General George Marshall, when he was secretary of state, oversaw the creation of amazing new institutions and doctrines—NATO, the Marshall Plan—to deal with the global threat posed by Soviet Communism. Now that we’re faced with new global threats, what type of creative responses would he and his wise men be devising?
Colin Powell: To some extent, he faced a more dangerous threat, and it was an easier one to work with. There was one identifiable enemy that was on the other side of an identifiable terrain feature. It was state versus state. They were able to put in place state-based structures.
GQ:Isn’t the new global threat we face even more dangerous?
Colin Powell: What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it’s terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing?
I would approach this differently, in almost Marshall-like terms. What are the great opportunities out there—ones that we can take advantage of? It should not be just about creating alliances to deal with a guy in a cave in Pakistan. It should be about how do we create institutions that keep the world moving down a path of wealth creation, of increasing respect for human rights, creating democratic institutions, and increasing the efficiency and power of market economies? This is perhaps the most effective way to go after terrorists.
The rest of the interview is great as well… Colin Powell continues to make me like him even after he was involved in all this bullshit…
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GQ: Do you feel responsible for giving the U.N. flawed intelligence?
Colin Powell:I didn’t know it was flawed. Everybody was using it. The CIA was saying the same thing for two years. I gave perhaps the most accurate presentation of the intelligence as we knew it—without any of the “Mushroom clouds are going to show up tomorrow morning” and all the rest of that stuff. But the fact of the matter is that a good part of it was wrong, and I am sorry that it was wrong.
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That first part might not be totally wrong, but Powell must have had some doubts as to the authenticity of the info the was being presented, both to him and to the American people. Most of the info we were using was years old (think pre-2000), and involved fellows we were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to a month (which falls in the same line of reasoning as torture; you’re just gonna get told what they think you want to hear). One of our main sources on Iraq told us, and I’m quoting a Knight Ridder correspondent off the top of my head, “The Iraqi special forces final test is being dropped into a muddy puddle and being forced to kill a dog with their bare hands.” he also told us that “Iraq has built a scale model of a US battleship on a man-made lake deep in the heart of Iraq, that they use to practice hijackings.” I can tell you that is some bullshit, without even having to look at satellite images to do it (although if I were working for the CIA, I would).
While this isn’t the first time someone from the inside said it (the intelligence) was wrong… But I believe that is the first time I’ve heard someone from the inside say they were *sorry* it was wrong…
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