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| Powell, Armitage goners in next cabinet- Post | ||
| 2003-08-04 | ||
| Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, have signaled to the White House that they intend to step down even if President Bush is reelected, setting the stage for a substantial reshaping of the administration’s national security team that has remained unchanged through the September 2001 terrorist attacks, two wars and numerous other crises. That’s a big, not unexpected shake up. No matter where you stand on issues, we’ve gotten our money’s worth out of Powell, IMO. Armitage recently told national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that he and Powell will leave on Jan. 21, 2005, the day after the next presidential inauguration, sources familiar with the conversation said. Powell has indicated to associates that a commitment made to his wife, rather than any dismay at the administration’s foreign policy, is a key factor in his desire to limit his tenure to one presidential term. Rice and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz are the leading candidates to replace Powell, according to sources inside and outside the administration. Rice appears to have an edge because of her closeness to the president, though it is unclear whether she would be interested in running the State Department’s vast bureaucracy. The thought of Wolfie in State should have the mullahs sprucing up their hiding caves. With 18 months left in Bush’s current term, many officials said talk of a new foreign policy team is highly premature — particularly because Bush’s reelection is not assured. No one inside or outside the administration agreed to be quoted by name or affiliation in discussing possible Cabinet choices. But on the eve of the country’s first post-Sept. 11, 2001, presidential campaign, in which foreign affairs will play a prominent role, the national security lineup for a second Bush term is already a major topic of conversation, at least among those who make and analyze U.S. foreign policy. Indeed, Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet is already the third longest serving CIA chief and is expected to depart, perhaps before the current term ends. Tenet’s role in the Iraq weapons controversy has led to calls on Capitol Hill for his dismissal, fueling speculation he will quit soon.
Courtesy the Watchful Eye of Drudge.
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| Posted by:Mark IV |
| #15 Sorry, y'all are letting Colin off the hook too easily. It was his job to clean out the Foggy Bottom muck and he's failed miserably at doing it. Compare Rumsfeld, who reengineered the Pentagon in no time flat. If State is dominated by a bunch of anti-American fifth-columnists -- and it is -- it means Powell is either sympathetic or incompetent. In either case he has to go. |
| Posted by: someone 2003-8-4 11:49:31 PM |
| #14 Now that Colin has gone ballistic at the Wash press corpse, I would conjecture that this rumor was floated by the leftist cabal in State trying to put a twist in Colin's knickers. Whether he stays or leaves, I think that a thorough house cleaning is in order, starting with the pencil neck that floated the rumor to the Wash Post. Much like faculties at west coast universities, state is full of whiney academics that took way too much polisci in college and read way too much Hegel, Marx and Malreaux. |
| Posted by: SOG475 2003-8-4 6:01:05 PM |
| #13 SM - OK, so you have an opinion or ten. Good. It's America. Knock yourself out. No, we shall not - obviously you hadn't read all the posts before you plopped this one down, did you? And I have friends who would dearly love to discuss LBJ - oh and let's toss in his good buddy and unparalleled history revisionist McNamara, too. Some of them can't do the talking for themselves, however, but the slack will be taken up by others. |
| Posted by: ·com 2003-8-4 5:23:52 PM |
| #12 I remember a Wash. Times article within the past few months which talked about the caricatures that abound at State portraying Bush as stupid, arrogant, and unsophisticated. Like out of Le Monde's Platu. So, OP, maybe this is the type of mindset Powell got sick of. |
| Posted by: Michael 2003-8-4 5:03:50 PM |
| #11 SOG457 may well have the true reason Powell is leaving - there IS a well-organized "resistance" within State to President Bush's programs, and Colin is tired of fighting them with little support. If you're a commander under fire, and you can't trust the intelligence your G2 gives you, you find yourself standing in the midst of disaster. I think Powell is tired of being in the middle of two forces, and wants to call it quits. Someone, and I think Rice is the best candidate, needs to do some major house-cleaning at State, and get rid of some of the striped-pants deadheads who have been wrong every time a decision has to be made. She might need the help of the 101st, but then, she's a tough one herself. I'd be glad to lend a hand (holding a white-ash axehandle) in support. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2003-8-4 4:53:14 PM |
| #10 I think the best policy comes from hearing an exchange of views, within the limits of acceptable policy, and then making a decision with all relevant voices heard. Reagan ran one such cabinet, and by most accounts GWB runs another. Though I'm a hawk, I would not want Big Decisions made, with only the input of Superhawks heard. There's more to every story. Powell has often fulfilled this role, and as aptly stated above, allowed the good-cop-bad-cop routine to work in many foreign policy scenarios (furriners will tell him things they won't tell a Rummy). His first memoirs, My American Journey, were a very good read. Parties do change over time, don't they? At least one segment of the electorate seems to have gotten past the historical record of the Dems as slave-holders metamorphosed into apartheidists (and Republicans as the liberators of the slaves, and the passers of the civil rights legislation of the 50s), and now sees the DP as their salvation. I don't think Hoover will be on the GOP ticket in '04, and some voters seem to have gotten that message. The Dems own poll shows only 22% party ID among white males. No doubt this is because of their selfish preoccupation with national security, lower taxes, and ranking sexual issues as somewhat lower in terms of Presidential priorities. Those "die-hards" do die, eventually, and the up-and-coming wave of voters and wage earners is accustomed to a DP that treats them as a traditional enemy, and whose priorities are so out of whack with the average guys' own values that they seem surreal. There are all kinds of "malfeasance" and professing leadership while promoting class warfare is one of them. Explaining the effects of the global economy as "corporate malfeasance" is like blaming winter on coat manufacturers. Good luck with the outreach program. |
| Posted by: Mark IV 2003-8-4 2:11:59 PM |
| #9 I think that NMM's post was a fairly polite, if anecdotal, one so lets not come down on him like a ton of bricks, shall we? He seems be working harder towards achieving the "polite, well-reasoned discourse" ideal of Rantburg; we should encourage not discourage that. I'd rather have another Liberalhawk than another troll any day of the week. For my money, the last great Democratic president was the late, great, and ever knuckle-headed LBJ - the last, and probably final, truly redneck Democrat president. Three cheers for superbird! Look, up yonder in the sky, now, what is that I pray ? It's a bird it's a plane, it's a man insane, it's my President LBJ He's flying high way up in the sky just like Superman, But I have got a little piece of kryptonite, Yes, I'll bring him back to land. Said come out Lyndon with your hands held high, Drop your guns, baby, and reach for the sky. I've got you surrounded and you ain't got a chance, Gonna send you back to Texas, make you work on your ranch, -Country Joe and The Fish |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2003-8-4 1:37:56 PM |
| #8 SOG - on the money! Armitage has been a striped-pants set buttboy for quite a while, and Colin's supported him way too long. I agree with the house cleaning - you get with the Presidents' program or get your EU-Arab loving ass out |
| Posted by: Frank G 2003-8-4 11:31:46 AM |
| #7 The biggest problem with State is that there is a large entrenched group of very liberal pro european, anti-isreal, pro-arab types running the middle east desk. There are a number of state types who were hired out of college in the 70's and 80's that are very left leaning in their thinking. This leads to some very interesting diachotomies in US foreign relations.....which explains why many of the insiders at Foggy Bottom do not like Wolfie or Colin...they loved Madeline. That is why in my uninformed and sometimes mercurial opinion that many of the problems with terrorists such as Arafat, Saddam, the Assads and the Saudis are due to a lot of pro-arab manueverings by State. Why else would Arafat have survived for so long and why hasn't he been "outed" by leaks from state about his fatherhood of most of the really violent antiamerican terrorism? I also think our problems with NK and our continuing peculiar approach to the PRC are a result of some lingering romantic political ideas about communism. AND in some ways the absolutely astounding blind eye turned by State toward the Cambodian disasters and the Sudanese atrocities were/are due to the sometimes hard left view that many insiders at state have. This goes all the way back to the fawning and sniveling and breast clutching over the Sandanistas. Remember all of the pro-sandanista press that was flying around DC? All of that crap and blather came from inside state. Those dimwits thought Ortega was some kind of saint instead of the Cuban sponsored thug that he was. I would say that a complete house cleaning is needed at state. I have never liked those guys, the insiders always seem to be running games and agendas completely counter current to the best interests of the US and they seem to more often than not fall on the side of the arabs and marxist/communists regimes. |
| Posted by: SOG475 2003-8-4 10:45:32 AM |
| #6 NMM - Very touching. I'm, uh, moved - yeah, that's the ticket. Your story merely confirms what most of us here in Rantburg already know: as with the majority of your ilk you live in the past, fight the battles of the past in your fertile imaginations and, eyes glittering like burning embers, fantasize slaying the dragon. Great - except that dragon's long gone - dead and stone cold in the past. Check your wrists and ankles - you'll find strings attached if you look closely. You're a tool, a puppet, a jester in the grand play of ideologies - and you've been co-opted by the Bad Guys. Its a shame, perhaps, but you've voluntarily chosen to make yourself an irrelevant nuisance - background noise. There are new, improved dragons to be fought - and we will need all the help we can get to fight them, but you and your like-minded sign-totin' tools are MIA - lost in your fantasy. Consider it a coalition of the willing - willing to live in the present, filled with real dragons which are commanded to destroy life as you know it and fight them instead of each other. Many of us have seen them - and they truly breathe destruction and spew hatred more vile than even your childlike imagination can conjure. One thing is certain, you require freedom to pursue your view of life just as much as those who are defending that freedom, in spite of your mindless support for the enemies of freedom. If you pull your head out of your ass in time, you will actually get your chance to fight a real dragon or two. Until then, assuming that magic moment ever arrives, you can simply phuck off and jack into your Jack-O-Matic. At the moment, you're just taking up space, son. |
| Posted by: ·com 2003-8-4 9:03:56 AM |
| #5 Your socialist/democratic teacher/union types failed to teach you American history. That's to be expected. In the 1930s we have Franklin Delano Roosevelt in office with a republican majority in congress. By 1930s under the auspices of this Evil Republican Congress(TM) many of the institutions which bolster unions was established. Congress continued with these institutions through the 30s 40s, etc. You get the picture. An interesting footnote to the story is now high tech employees are getting interested in unions due to the usual corporate malfeasance that screws the people who actually produce something of value I can see it now: Boss: The network is down. Tech Employee: I know. Boss: Do something about it. Tech Employee: I can't. Boss: Why not? Don't you know your job? Tech Employee: Oh, I can bring the network back up, but the work rules state that as a network administrator 'B' I can bring up the network only if there is not a network administrator 'A' in the shop. Boss: Well he/she called in sick. Get the network running. Tech Employee: Okay, but I want to file a grievance. Boss: For what? Tech Employee: Because I am being underpaid. Boss: You make the second highest wages for a network admin. Tech Employee: I know but I am being asked to perform the work of a 'A' network adminsitrator as a 'B' network administrator. Boss: Fine, just the the network running. Tech Employee: The entire day: I get paid as a network administrator 'A'. Boss: Fine, just get the network running. (Next day, network administrator shows up for work) Network administrator A: I want to file a grievance. Boss: For what? Network administrator A: For paying a 'B' network administrator A wages. (OK Rantbourgeois--insert Commie accusations) Accusations? I figure its a badge of honor with your commmies to be called commie from a right wing website. |
| Posted by: badanov 2003-8-4 7:20:03 AM |
| #4 Nmm,Carter,Clinton,J.Jackson sertiling ex-amples of the Democratic Partty. |
| Posted by: raptor 2003-8-4 6:44:01 AM |
| #3 Interesting analysis Mark IV, but I beg to differ on the final point about "decent working men" because people like that, my father and grandfather who worked in steel mills are diehard Democrats and remember when Hoover and the Repooplicans were in charge back in the 20's and 30's and capitalism unrestrained ruled the workplace--whoever brought the boss some wine, a ham etc got to work that day--finally the workers said Enough! An interesting footnote to the story is now high tech employees are getting interested in unions due to the usual corporate malfeasance that screws the people who actually produce something of value (OK Rantbourgeois--insert Commie accusations) |
| Posted by: Not Mike Moore 2003-8-4 2:28:39 AM |
| #2 NMM, the last Democratic president who did not embarrass the whole country... who could arguably have led America to a slightly different version of the same bright future... was JFK. If the JFK of 1963 ran today, I suspect that the entire left would denounce him as a reactionary pterodactyl. His policies and world-view would probably be well to the right of the supposedly conservative GWB. If his name was changed and he ran on policy only, I suspect most of the contributors here would welcome him with a sigh of relief, even if he was a Democrat. I think a lot of former Democrats would welcome him with even more relief. This presupposes that he would not have had 40 years of conditioning by media and academia, and appeared as his '63 self. Even a modern populare would quickly size up the shifts in the power structure, and marvel at what the DP has done to lose the support of almost every decent working man in America. Two since have gotten by the electorate, and the results were not lost on a mainstream that would like to be represented, too. Your chagrin notwithstanding, the last time the Dems came close to running an acceptable choice for the Presidency was Henry Jackson. I hope the next time, it is not Colin Powell. |
| Posted by: Mark IV 2003-8-4 2:11:13 AM |
| #1 IMHO Much to my chagrin, there is no way a Democrat will be in the White House in the forseeable future |
| Posted by: Not Mike Moore 2003-8-4 1:27:42 AM |