If I didn’t know better, I’d say the Bush administration is starting to get a little rattled. Colin Powell made this point abundantly clear yesterday.
First, Powell was trying, in vain, to defend the administration’s decisions about Iraq in the months leading up to the war. When a Hill staffer, who apparently wasn’t terribly impressed with the Secretary of State’s unpersuasive arguments, shook his dead in Powell’s direction, Powell erupted.
Powell was recalling for the panel his review of the prewar intelligence. “I went and lived at the CIA for about four days to make sure that nothing was,” he began, when he paused and glared at a staffer seated behind the members of Congress.
“Are you shaking your head for something, young man, back there?” Powell asked. “Are you part of these proceedings?”
Powell’s unusual remarks threatened to derail the hearing. Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a 12-year veteran of the House, objected, “Mr. Chairman, I’ve never heard a witness reprimand a staff person in the middle of a question.”
Powell shot back, “I seldom come to a meeting where I am talking to a congressman and I have people aligned behind you giving editorial comment by head shakes.”
“Well, I think people have opinions,” Brown responded.
I know things are getting rough at the White House, but the Secretary of State, who’s seen war first hand throughout his life, is now worried about some kid’s head shakes?
It got worse. Later in the hearing, Rep. Brown tried to recognize Powell’s military record, while taking a not-so-subtle slap at the president’s lack of a military record.
“You are one of the very few people in this administration that understands war,” Brown said. “We have a president who may have been AWOL” from duty.
“First of all, Mr. Brown, I won’t dignify your comments about the president because you don’t know what you are talking about,” Powell snapped.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Secretary,” Brown replied.
“You made reference to the president,” Powell said.
“I say he may have been AWOL,” Brown repeated.
“Mr. Brown, let’s not go there,” Powell retorted. “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.”
Atrios noticed one reason Powell may be getting a little hot under the collar, and why he doesn’t want to go near the controversy surrounding Bush’s Guard duty, or lack thereof.
In Secretary of State Colin Powell’s autobiography, My American Journey, he says, “I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed managed to wangle slots in the Army 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 their country.”
Hmm. I wonder who might qualify as a “son of the powerful” who “managed to wangle slots in National Guard units”?