Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
November 15, 2004
Powell Resigns

Powell resigns, Zell Miller heading State?

There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust [my families] future, and that man’s name is George W. Bush.
Zell Miller

Update:
Others out are: Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Education Secretary Rod Paige, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Commerce Secretary Donald Evans.
It is pretty save to assume Armitage will leave State too.

Comments

Good riddance. And what makes it even more sickening is he’ll be collecting millions in speaking fees talking about how hard he tried to prevent the disaster in Iraq. Ok, other than Dr Zell mentioned above, who’s the MOST odious choice for State? That’ll be who they pick.

Posted by: semper ubi | Nov 15 2004 15:18 utc | 1

According to “Der Spiegel”, the New York Times quotes Scott McClellan, who said that he expects four resignations today.
WTF?
Go Wolfowitz? Rice? Perle? Some unemployed former dictator who knows how to handle dissent?

Posted by: teuton | Nov 15 2004 15:26 utc | 2

Boy, Zell Miller really should be the man to make friends around the world. I hope this is a joke, but with Bush one never knows.

Posted by: Fran | Nov 15 2004 15:31 utc | 3

The GOP hasn’t many people who have an international standing, frankly, and even less that aren’t notoriously disliked and mistrusted abroad.
If they really wanted to pick the worst, they should get Michael “Savage”, but he’s not a pol, just a wingnut talk-radio guy.
I think they should just give Chalabi US citizenship and pick him. Or even funnier would be Netanyahu; at least, they’ll stop pretending.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Nov 15 2004 15:41 utc | 4

Ledeen, der Kriegsstifter, will not be satisfied until the hole ME is drowned in blood. At least three more wars that can be blamed on terrorists.

it is a mistake — a potentially enormous mistake — to look at Iraq as a thing in itself instead of one battle in a far larger war. We will never have security in Iraq so long as fanatics rule in Tehran, Riyadh, and Damascus.

How about ‘securing the borders’? Would that work?

This unpleasant fact [it’s not a fact, Ledeen. It’s your ‘opinion’ – MG] does not play well among the doyens of the State Department and the misnamed intelligence community

You see, since the CIA analysts disagree with Ledeen, they are obviously non-intelligent beeings aka stupid. No debate necessary.

Posted by: MarcinGomulka | Nov 15 2004 15:56 utc | 5

Does Powell have a book coming out? hmmmm?

Posted by: beq | Nov 15 2004 16:10 utc | 6

MG You see, since the CIA analysts disagree with Ledeen,
forget that. The current “clean up” at the CIA will make sure that there is nobody left to disagree.

Posted by: b | Nov 15 2004 16:20 utc | 7

this purge is one of the more alarming recent events. I have no love for CIA, but some people there are at least rational pragmatists — deficient in conscience, perhaps, but at least in touch with reality. looks like the RBC is being purged and CIA is likely to slip its moorings and drift off into lala land as it did under the Brothers Kray, oops, I meant Dulles.
what this all is like… it’s like having worked your way up an ice slope foot by foot and inch by inch for gruelling hours, only to lose a piton and do an uncontrolled slide right back to the base. 30 years of desperate effort went into reining in the Secrecy State, exposing the high crimes of the Nixon gang, bringing some kind of moderation to US policy, breaking the zombielike trance of the postwar period, bringing just a wee whiff of internationalism to US culture. all gone in the blink of an eye. back to the Planet of McCarthy, almost overnight.
if you knew all that I knew / my poor Jerusalem…

Posted by: DeAnander | Nov 15 2004 17:19 utc | 8

Personally, I hope it is Miller – or Gingrich – or someone just as nasty. Powell cast a thin veneer of civility over a truly venal cabal. Rip the masks of civility off all their faces so that what has been obvious to the rest of the world finally becomes apparent to the sleeping masses here.
If people like Miller are appointed to prominent positions, 2005 may be the year that the Friendly Fascist no longer felt the need to smile, leaving nothing to look at but those cold, dark soulless eyes.

Posted by: Anonymous | Nov 15 2004 17:26 utc | 9

Sorry – me above.

Posted by: lonesomeG | Nov 15 2004 17:27 utc | 10

why does anyone in politics/media/society-at-large tolerate the idea that anyone has to show their loyalty to bush? isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? it pissed me off in the first four years everytime i heard about a diplomat or public official leaving office b/c they didn’t agree w/ the admin’s policy. great, so leave the lunatics in office. more groupthink. less resistance. if people don’t start standing up to these thugs, it won’t be long before they start disappearing people. last stage before complete totalitarianism. lookout. there’s four bills circulating now to let ah-nald become prez in four yrs. ARRGGGGHHHH!!!

Posted by: b real | Nov 15 2004 17:46 utc | 11

Just heard on BBC radio……….. according to an excellent source………
It’s drumrollsssssssssssssssssssssss
Condi Rice.
Oh fuck

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 15 2004 18:11 utc | 12

Condi Rice didn´t get anything done as NSA. If she gets the State title, foreign policy will we done by Wolfowitz exclusivly.

Posted by: b | Nov 15 2004 18:21 utc | 13

b
911 cover/cock-up gets her the ticket methinks.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 15 2004 18:53 utc | 14

So there really was a shoot-out in the administration, and the bad guys won (to be continued)…..

Posted by: alabama | Nov 15 2004 21:08 utc | 15

Now for a good laugh –
As Loony Tunes as wittle georgie “winning” on Forbes-Heinz///Kerry’s landslide victory….(is there something wrong w/me that I’m missing the comedy there)
Is that 9/11 Whitewash was nominated for National Bk Award in Non-Fiction, ….While, happily, the underwriter for WTC has just issued a report saying Sorry Nazis, but that steel wouldn’t burn from those minor fires!!!!!
(Sorry, I don’t have link handy. It’s @Rense & truthout, I think.)
People trying to put tog. coalition, hopefully – go to donotconcede.com. Shoulda called it ConcedeNowGeorge.com. If anyone wants to join me in suggesting that, email away.
Maybe we could get Carter Center to say they wouldn’t certify the election NOW. Anybody know about that. In ’00 they issued report way after the fact.
I’d bet Georgie’s Diaper Changer @Nat. Security, was eased out to put Wolfie in.
We need some new names. One for America, which if election fraud stands is no longer America; or do we just follow the German example & call it Nazi2 America? By any miracle, does anyone know the name of the NYT of Weimar Germany? And maybe anything about them & how they handled the takeover?

Posted by: jj | Nov 15 2004 21:23 utc | 16

whatever one might think about powell, the person who will occupy the post after him will be more extreme, more intransigent and more agressive in implementing the nutty wishes of the neocons.
wars which are *known* to be on the shopping list are
– syria
– iran
– north korea
wars which will probably come a bit later are
– cuba
– venezuela
– china
– russia
– saudia arabia
and at last, what the nuts have added to the queue lately are a bunch of south american countries building up some semblance of democracy and slowly improving their economies after having been raped for decades by the US. these countries, like brazil or argentina, apparently dont jump high enough when commanded to do so, thus they are “anti-american”.
to get all this and probably more done, somebody with a stronger grip of steel than powell will be needed, or somebody who is decidedly nuts, what i have to concede powell is decidedly not, as little as i like his politics.

Posted by: name | Nov 15 2004 21:32 utc | 17

You don’t really believe these folks will “resign”, as in retreat to the pond and fester in isolation? No, this is all a giant game of musical chairs.

Posted by: Lupin | Nov 15 2004 21:43 utc | 18

Rice? My God! To misquote Mr. Gray, “The Lights are going out all over Washington. I doubt they will be lit again in our lifetimes.”

Posted by: Diogenes | Nov 16 2004 1:49 utc | 19

Wolfowitz unbound. The idea is terrifying.
Killing Hope
“[American leaders] are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It’s not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It’s that they just don’t care … the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren’t happening to them or people close to them … then they just don’t care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home-the ones who make it back alive-with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things.” William Blum

Posted by: fauxreal | Nov 16 2004 2:30 utc | 20

Rice? And Hadley for NSA? Well, OK, I didn’t figure they’d settle on just plain ol’ incompetence. I thought they’d shoot a little higher on the Evil-Meter than Rice. But I have no fear that she’ll screw things up just fine, just like she has for the last 4 years.
Now our friends overseas will get a taste of her too. I’ll bet they’ll all enjoy that.

Posted by: semper ubi | Nov 16 2004 2:34 utc | 21

Full Spectrum Bush Doctrine
2001: “If we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don’t try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do very well, and our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”
2001: The Bush administration’s “Nuclear Posture Review”, directing the military to prepare contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries- China, Russia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Syria-and to build smaller nuclear weapons for use in certain battlefield situations.
2002: In September, the White House issued its “National Security Strategy”, which declared:
Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States…. America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed…. We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed…. We cannot let our enemies strike first…. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.
Preemptiveness is essentially the rationale imperial Japan, without being overly paranoid, used to justify its attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and which Nazi Germany, asa sham pretext, used to justify its invasion of Poland in 1939.
To one observer, the meaning of the “National Security Strategy” was this:
It dashes the aspirations of those who had hoped that the world was moving toward a system of international law that would allow for the peaceful / resolution of conflicts, through covenants and courts. In place of this, a \, single power that shuns covenants and courts has proclaimed that it intends to dominate the world militarily, intervening preemptively where | necessary to exorcise threats…. Those who want a world in which no | power is supreme and in which laws and covenants are used to settle conflicts will begin a new debate-about how to contend with imperial America.

Posted by: fauxreal | Nov 16 2004 2:38 utc | 22

semper ubi- I think she’s being put into place because she will not try to stop Wolfowitz, or however they put her place.
Powell was a fly in the holy American Empire ointment.

Posted by: fauxreal | Nov 16 2004 2:41 utc | 23

Actually, at this point, no one in the rest of the world cares who they name. That person will have no credence. Helluva way to run a State Department.

Posted by: Allen/Vancouver | Nov 16 2004 2:52 utc | 24

Juan Cole’s 2cents
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Powell’s Resignation
Colin Powell’s resignation as secretary of state may be a more important development than meets the eye.
It could be argued that he has been so marginalized and ineffective that he might as well resign, and that it makes no difference whether he is in office or not. Powell wanted to devote great energy to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after September 11, and for a brief moment seemed to have Bush’s ear, but then Bush capitulated to hard line Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Powell was never able to make any headway. At one point Bush even sent Condi out to meet with Middle East leaders, which one would have thought would be the job of the secretary of state, not of national security adviser.
Powell was not enthusiastic about a war on Iraq, and his own doctrine called for the US to go in with massive force if it did go in. Instead, Rumsfeld sent in only 100,000 troops, laying the ground for the subsequent disaster. But you get no credit in Washington for having been right. You only get credit if you win the policy battle, regardless of how it turns out. Powell almost never did.
Powell was sent to the UN Security Council to read a lot of shaky charges against the Saddam regime. Indeed, Powell is said to have thrown out the charge of attempted uranium purchases from Niger, saying “I’m not reading this garbage.” But he read enough garbage to sink his reputation for probity and solidness. The UN security council was openly derisive of his speech, to the extent that one UN official bet me there couldn’t be a war after that disastrous performance. I told him the war had been decided long ago. He should give the money to charity if he ever remembers the bet. I don’t want it.
But insiders in Washington have told me enough stories about Powell victories behind the scenes that I am not sure the marginalization argument is decisive. Powell had an alliance with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the two of them could sometimes derail the wilder plans of the Department of Defense. Blair, and probably Powell, convinced Bush to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan before going on to an Iraq war. Imagine how dangerous the situation would be if the US were bogged down in Iraq as it is now, but Bin Laden’s 40 training camps were still going full steam!
Likewise, I have it on good authority that Powell and Blair derailed a Department of Defense plan to install Ahmad Chalabi as a soft dictator in Iraq within 6 months of the fall of Saddam. Jay Garner had been given this charge, and Powell was able to get Paul Bremer in, instead, with a charge to keep the country out of Chalabi’s corrupt hands.
So at some crucial junctures, Powell has played an essential role in ensuring the implementation of a more sensible policy. Without him in the administration, hotter heads may well prevail.
I saw Lawrence Eagleburger on CNN Monday evening say that he thought Condi Rice was not right for Secretary of State because she had been in the White House for four years and, he implied, would be incapable of offering George W. Bush independent advice. Eagleburger was secretary of state very briefly at the end of the Bush senior administration, succeeding James Baker, with whom he continued to have an association. Eagleburger has been critical of the Neoconservatives, and I suspect he feels that Dr. Rice will be no counterweight to them whatsoever.
Rice seems to me to have two major drawbacks as Secretary of State beyond her inability to challenge Bush’s pet projects. One is that she is an old Soviet hand who still thinks in Cold War terms. She focuses on states and does not understand the threat of al-Qaeda, nor does she understand or empathize with Middle Easterners, about whom she appears to know nothing after all this time. The other drawback is that she is virtually a cheerleader for Ariel Sharon and will not be an honest broker between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Powell was much more fair on such issues, though he wasn’t exactly pro-Palestinian either. Of course, with Elliot Abrams as the national security council staffer in charge of Arab-Israeli things, you might as well have Sharon just run US Middle East policy himself.
If the second Bush term is going to be mainly full of Fallujahs, though, I suppose Colin is well out of it. Seeing the iron fist lowered over and over again to little political advantage would be the more depressing the closer you were to the decision-making process.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 16 2004 8:26 utc | 25

Comments on Rice and her new position.
Rice and No Beans

That illusion is gone. Rice’s face is the game face of the Bushies, bony with Unwavering Resolve, eyes fanatical, mouth tensed. She has shown herself to be not a listener but a dictation machine on playback. “The President believes…” “The President has always said…” “The President has very consistent in arguing that…” “The President has said all along…” And now the dictation machine is in a position to dictate to other nations how they can fight terror and help make America a bigger, better empire. It’ll be the President wants this, the President wants that, the President is firm in his belief that…
But her incompetence precedes her, as does her presumptuous statement that for their failure to support the U.S. in Iraq, France should be punished, Germany ignored, and Russia forgiven. Punished, ignored, and forgiven for being right in the first place and refusing to take part in this debacle?–such nerve.

Europeans wary of Rice replacing Powell

PARIS – The appointment of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state is bad news for the already fragile American-European relationship, European experts and commentators said Tuesday.
Newspaper editorials and interviews with specialists in U.S.-European relations lamented the departure of Colin Powell and predicted more tension between the Bush administration and European countries as a result.
In Spain, the newspaper El Pais said, “The White House has lost its moderate face,” while the Kommersant newspaper in Russia went further: “Now the hawks will attack us.”

Not everyone was convinced that Rice’s appointment is all bad. While predicting that a U.S.-Europe partnership is going to be difficult in the next four years, Victor Bulmer-Thomas, the director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, said there was a silver lining for Europe.
“Europe also wants to develop a unified security and foreign policy,” he said. “Paradoxically, a bad relationship with the United States is an opportunity for Europe. Coming up with a unified European policy will be made easier by not having a sympathetic person” as secretary of state.

Politics Prevails Again In Rice’s Appointment

Until the very moment when the White House announced Colin Powell’s resignation by “mutual” agreement, worried friends of the United States around the world hoped that the Secretary of State would somehow linger to argue for a realistic, multilateral foreign policy. Those friends knew that Mr. Powell was ineffectual in making those arguments more often than not, and they regarded him as sadly discredited by his participation in the fakery that led to the Iraq war. Still they cherished him as a symbol, at least, of an America that sought to lead rather than merely dominate and to listen rather than just dictate.

In the months to come, Ms. Rice can be expected to enforce whatever purging of State Department professionals is required of her. That means throwing out the diplomats who correctly warned of the difficulties and complexities inherent in pacifying post-Saddam Iraq. Those patriotic bureaucrats will soon pay dearly for trying to forestall disaster.

THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL WOMAN

IF THERE were a monkey in the White House – and many reckon there is – then his trainer would be the world’s most powerful person.
In the case of George W Bush, almost everything he knows about foreign policy has been learnt from Condoleezza Rice.

This is all for today, still got some work that needs to be done.

Posted by: Fran | Nov 17 2004 19:02 utc | 26

Jesus Fran, altho’ you’re busy; that is pretty powerful stuff that you’ve just posted.
Off to read this.
Will get back.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 17 2004 19:13 utc | 27

Another on Rice and her position
NY Metro – Intelligencer Briefing

At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, “As I was telling my husb—” and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, “As I was telling President Bush.” Jaws dropped, but a guest says the slip by the unmarried politician, who spends weekends with the president and his wife, seemed more psychologically telling than incriminating. Nobody thinks Bush and Rice are actually an item. A National Security Council spokesman laughed and said, “No comment.”

:-]

Posted by: b | Nov 17 2004 19:31 utc | 28

b, she’s a virgin………… at 50.
No cigars there please, or maybe an immaculate conception?

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 17 2004 19:38 utc | 29