how would be Secretary Cheney and General Colin Powells?”
As the the subsequent events showed much of Powell’s speech to the United Nations was hot air. It was apparent from whatever information leaked out of the White House before the invasion of Iraq that a sharp divide split the political vision of the Secretary of State General Colin Powell and the White House including the office of the Vice President Dick Cheney and the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. President Bush had accepted the foreign policy enunciated by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, particularly in relation to Iraq. The secretary of state in this respect looked largely irrelevant. The decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein had already been made. What was in the offing was the preparation of the groundwork for justifying the invasion of Iraq. The secretary of state was not willingly toeing the line which White House, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had already delineated and “drawn in the sand,? so to say. General Powell’s reasoning for avoiding the war and se
WASHINGTON — Colin L. Powell challenged Dick Cheney on the legacy of the Bush administration and the future of the Republican Party on Sunday, declaring that Republicans should not bow to “diktats that come from the right wing.” The remarks by Mr. Powell, a former secretary of state, amounted to a public rebuttal of Mr. Cheney, the former vice president, and Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio commentator, who have questioned Mr. Powell’s Republican credentials and suggested that he should leave the party. “Rush will not get his wish,” Mr. Powell said Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “And Mr. Cheney was misinformed. I am still a Republican.” Mr. Powell’s appearance underlined an extraordinary public struggle among Republicans over the future of the party and the legacy of the Bush administration, particularly on national security. Mr. Powell broke with Mr. Cheney on the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, saying that he agreed with President Obama that it should be closed and tha
