Colin "I Haven't Quit Yet" Powell
Noam Scheiber turned me on to this little nugget in The Washington Post yesterday, on the 9/11 Commission:In his testimony, Powell confirmed one claim by Clarke that Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary who strongly supported U.S. military action against Iraq, suggested an attack on the government of Saddam Hussein during a meeting at Camp David just four days after the 2001 attacks. President Bush "said first things first," Powell said. "He decided on Afghanistan." Wolfowitz, who appeared alongside Rumsfeld later, did not directly address the issue.Scheiber points out that this actually confirms two claims from Clarke's book. Not only does it confirm that Wolfowitz wanted to attack Iraq from the beginning, it shows that the President was planning on it, too. "First things first" usually means second things second -- "We'll attack Iraq, later."
It's well known that Powell has been frustrated by Wolfowitz, his boss Rumsfield and Defense many times since he took over the State Department. Bush depends on the advice of the Pentagon in a way he seems to have learned from Tom Clancy novels. This has to be dragging on the Secretary of State, and I wonder if this buried-in-the-fine-print blow to Defense is a momentary lapse, or if he might be getting closer to the breaking point.
First the Secretary of the Treasury resigned and then wrote a book bashing Bush. Then the NSC's counterterrorism chief did the same. If the Secretary of State resigns -- well, that's to pat a pattern. It won't happen. My prediction: Colin Powell will find a quiet way to resign. The cabinet is required to resign at if a President wins a second term, so he can let them go without a fuss if he'd like to replace any of them. Colin Powell won't try to influence the election one way or the other, because no matter who wins, he won't have a second term.
