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host · 10-02-2006, 10:29 PM

This isn't "news". I thought that everybody already knew that Powell was fired:

Quote:

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000186.php
November 15, 2004
BUSH'S NEW COURT: TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SECRETARY

THE NELSON REPORT, Chris Nelson's intriguing daily report on everything interesting in Washington, is worth reprinting in part today. He sent this before the news that Condi Rice gets Powell's perch, but the line-up that Chris has linked to this State Department decision is fascinating.

Chris Nelson writes:

When is everyone's expectation still a surprise? When Colin Powell resigns months before HE thought was going. Who will succeed Powell? Senate sources say National Security Advisor Condi Rice.

House sources say UN Ambassador John Danforth. As Powell learned last week, it's President Bush who makes the decision. Best bet? Rice. ...

.....If Rice is offered State, expect her to remove the entire top layer of Powell/Armitage career professionals. But didn't Rice tell friends she didn't want State? So what...see this as part of the complete national security overhaul which Powell told Bush was needed.

Powell just didn't think it would start with him. Implications for Iran? North Korea? Watch to see if John Bolton (not Josh) moves up to Deputy Secretary, or perhaps to Deputy NSC. As long as VP Cheney stays (note his heart flutter this weekend) so does Scooter Libby, otherwise a possible NSC chief.

Bet bet? Hard line continues. No ray of hope today? Depends...some folks think Powell's strong right arm, Deputy Secretary Rich Armitage, might be asked to take on the new National Intelligence Coordinator's role.

Other folks think this is delusional...stay tuned.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000255.php
A U.S. FOREIGN POLICY ROAD MAP FOR 2005: VIEWS FROM BRENT SCOWCROFT AND ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

..........And Chris Nelson follows up with his own version of the 'totality' of the purge in his newsletter, The Nelson Report. Here is the preamble to his piece:

BUSH CONTINUES DISSENT PURGES...
SCOWCROFT LOST TO INTEL BOARD

SUMMARY: technically, it is true that neither Secretary of State Powell nor former National Security Advisor Scowcroft have been "fired" from their positions. Technically.

But it's also true that both had expectations of being asked to stay on, a few months in Powell's case, and for another term on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, in Scowcroft's.

The real difference is that Powell's replacement by Condi Rice put everyone "on notice" what Bush 2 would look...and sound...like. But if Scowcroft was not surprised to be dumped, the policy community is shocked and worried as the trend continues...Bush, Rice and Cheney are purging anyone who's stood up to them in any way.

Being right is the kiss of death, it turns out. From now on, there will be, by design, no adult supervision......

Quote:

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...?from=storylhs
The rise and rise of Rice
November 20, 2004

By choosing Condoleezza Rice as his new secretary of state, George Bush has rewarded unwavering loyalty. Peter Hartcher reports.

.......The Australian Prime Minister was reflecting on the many views that he has in common with the US President, but then singled out an issue where they differed - guns.

Gun control, accepted generally as sensible policy in Australia, is anathema to most Americans, and especially to American conservatives. Dr Rice succinctly captured the cultural difference.

Look at me as an example, she told Howard. My father taught me to use a gun when I was eight years old. It was something you had to know as a young girl growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, she said. Her story silenced the Prime Minister.

This anecdote says four things about Condoleezza Rice, who, subject to confirmation by the US Senate, will become America's 66th Secretary of State, replacing Colin Powell.

First, it says that she has a close and easy relationship with Howard. Second, the simple fact that she was there, at the ranch, is a clue to an important fact of her place in the Bush Administration - she and Bush have been virtually inseparable. Alone among the President's inner circle, she is the only official to holiday with the first family.

Third, it says something important about her childhood and her experience of life. She grew up amid some of the most violent spasms of resistance to America's racial modernisation. When a Baptist church in Birmingham was bombed in 1963 in an act of racial hatred, one of her schoolmates was among the four children killed.

And finally, it hints at her attitudes to the use of force. Her performance as National Security Adviser demonstrates that she believes it can be prudent and even necessary to use armed force. Bush has said that in all the agonising and debating that led to the invasion of Iraq, he directly asked the opinion of only one of his advisers. He asked Rice. And she said yes.......

......It was a striking feature of the uppermost ranks of the Bush Administration that the leading voices of moderation, Powell and Armitage, were the only officials with combat experience......

.......One of the celebrated quotes of the presidency of Bush's father was his disdainful reference to "the vision thing". He was a realist. Bush jnr has said of his own presidency: "The job is - the vision thing matters. That's another lesson I learned." He is a visionary.

Is there irony in the fact that the man who cautioned Bush against the invasion of Iraq, Powell, should be removed from power, while the man who bungled the post-invasion planning, Donald Rumsfeld, is still in place?

"This Administration is not one that admits mistakes," remarks Jim Steinberg, Bill Clinton's deputy national security adviser, now a scholar at the Brookings Institution. Instead it rejects dissidents.

And Powell was rejected. "People are shocked when you tell them this, but Powell was basically fired," Nelson says. "As late as Friday last week, Rich Armitage was telling people that he and Powell would be around till the end of June. But the President was tired of reading in Bob Woodward or the Washington Post that Powell didn't really agree with this policy or that policy.".........