Misoverestimated 4/1/04 Op/Ed on Powell and Iraq WMD's claims

[maddezmom]

Misoverestimated
Yes, the hard-liners have outflanked and humiliated Colin Powell. But don't feel sorry for him. He has no one to blame but himself.

By Michael Steinberger
Issue Date: 4.1.04


In July 2003, President George W. Bush made a five-nation tour of Africa. The purpose of the visit was to cast American foreign policy in a gentler light after the diplomatic donnybrook over Iraq -- by, among other things, showcasing the Bush administration's seriousness about combating Africa's AIDS pandemic.
But Africa didn't have the president's undivided attention. En route from Washington to Dakar, Senegal, Secretary of State Colin Powell met privately with Bush aboard Air Force One to discuss North Korea. It was a fraught subject for Powell. Shortly after taking office in 2001, he had told reporters that Bush planned to continue the Clinton administration's policy of engagement, only to be forced by the White House to eat his words the very next day: Any policy that carried the taint of Clintonism was to be reversed, and Bush did not do business with evil regimes. The president would later name North Korea a member of the "axis of evil," and just a month before his Africa trip, he had given a speech reaffirming his hard line toward Pyongyang.

For two years, Powell had worked behind the scenes to ease tensions with North Korea and keep the channels of communication open -- going so far as to hold a brief one-on-one discussion with his North Korean counterpart during an Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Brunei in July 2002, a meeting said to be impromptu but that actually was not.

Now, with postwar Iraq spinning out of control and North Korea apparently proceeding with its nuclear-weapons program, Powell felt the time had come to try to get Bush to take a more constructive approach to the simmering crisis in East Asia. During the meeting on Air Force One, Powell made the case for opening bilateral talks with Pyongyang. "You know, we probably ought to have some direct contact with the North Koreans," Powell told the president. Surprisingly, Bush agreed, marking a major about-face for a president not known for about-faces and seemingly paving the way for a bold initiative to help ease the standoff with North Korea. Bush's decision also handed Powell what looked to be a rare and important victory over administration hawks.

more:http://www.prospect.org/print/V15/4/steinberger-m.html

[maddezmom]

1. Prosecutors zero in on memo for clues in CIA agent leak

They want to know who on Bush team saw report on Plame
Douglas Jehl, David Johnston, Richard Stevenson, New York Times

Saturday, July 16, 2005


~snip~
The memo was sent to Colin Powell, then the secretary of state, just before or as he traveled with President Bush and other senior officials to Africa starting on July 7, 2003, when the White House was scrambling to defend itself from a blast of criticism a few days earlier from the former diplomat, Joseph Wilson, current and former government officials said.

Powell was seen walking around Air Force One during the trip with the memo in hand, said a person involved in the case who also requested anonymity because of the prosecutor's admonitions about talking about the investigation.

Investigators are also trying to determine whether the gist of the information in the memo, including the name of the CIA officer, Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, had been provided to the White House even earlier, said another person who has been involved in the case. Investigators have been looking at whether the State Department provided the information to the White House before July 6, 2003, when her husband publicly criticized the way the administration used intelligence to justify the war in Iraq, the person said.

The prosecutors have shown the memo to witnesses at the grand jury investigating how the CIA officer's name was disclosed to journalists, blowing her cover as a covert operative and possibly violating federal law, people briefed on the case said. The prosecutors appear to be investigating how widely the memo circulated within the White House and the administration, and whether it might have been the original source of information for whoever provided the identity of Plame to Robert Novak, the syndicated columnist who first disclosed it in print.

more:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/07/16/MNGJ8DOUOU1.DTL