Colin Powell Changes His Mind

I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed and so many professional athletes (who were probably healthier than any of us) managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to our country.

-- Colin Powell, My American Journey


Thanks to Campaign Desk.

And Media Whores Online has this delightful exchange:

In an exchange between Colin Powell and Rep. Sherrod Brown during an appearance before the House International Relations Committee, Powell expresses phony outrage over the notion of a "political fight" - all in the context of being asked why he changed his position 180 degrees in 24 hours after making a politically disastrous statement:

BROWN: You are one of the very few people in this administration that understands war. We have a president who may have been AWOL from duty.

POWELL:  First of all, Mr. Brown, I won't dignify your comments about the president because you don't know what you are talking about

BROWN:  I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean, Mr. Secretary

POWELL:  You made reference to the president

BROWN:  I say he may have been AWOL

POWELL:  Mr. Brown, let's not go there.  Let's not go there in this hearing. If you want to have a political fight on this matter, that is very controversial, and I think is being dealt with by the White House, fine. But let's not go there.

Just three years ago Powell's reaction might have been regarded as highly embarrassing for Brown, since Powell was widely respected at that point in history.

Today, the reaction of most observers to Powell's sad attempt to scold Brown in defense of his disgraced boss is to simply shake their heads and wistfully observe, "Poor Colin. Such a shame what they've done to him.

I came across Uggabugga because of the announcement of the Kerouac awards (I wasn't even nominated by the academy, but congratulations to those who were and especially those who won). The award is named after the greatest left-handed picture in the history of the game, so it's appropriate for the best lefty blogs. Anyway, Uggabugga has done the fuzzy math.

John Snow now says, "Nevermind." Brad Delong asks, "Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps and Why Oh Why Are Ruled by These Idiots?" combining two of his favorite rants.

Billmon expands on the theme.

With friends like these, who needs lefty blogs? I came across one of the more novel excuses for Bush's National Guard "service:"

An excellent point on GWB's National Guard service, and his past in general, was made by Mark Steyn in last Sunday's Daily Telegraph : "[W]hatever Bush did or didn't do back in those days is consistent with who he is. As horrified European commentators are fond of pointing out, Mr Bush is a 'born-again' Christian. We don't need to see grainy home movies of a soused goofball in a Mexican bar face down in the beer nuts to know more or less the kind of guy he was 30 years ago. But he changed; he was born again. If you found some video of Bush rat-arsed (as the British say) in 1974, how relevant is that to the abstemious tucked-in-by-nine family man of 2004? In that sense, even if everything the accusers said was true -- that he was an absentee Guardsman -- it's not inconsistent with the official Bush narrative."

That little gem was found on National Review Online's The Corner

"Rat-arsed." How presidential?