Requiem for Colin Powell

I won't be lamenting his loss. No matter how much worse things get. Maybe he thinks about what he's done. Maybe he looks at the pictures of the maimed and homeless Iraqi children and cries. Maybe his heart wants to scream out of his throat when he thinks about Abu Ghraib. Maybe he secretly gives his time and money to the Iraqi Red Crescent and pleads the case against war crimes and humanitarian atrocities to the Soulless Machines in the White House. But maybe he's still the same guy who provided a cover-up for the My Lai massacres, and if you're wanting me to make my best guess at what's inside Colin Powell, it's going to align with Roger Ailes':

There won't be a wet eye in the Ailes household when Colin Powell relieves himself of the burden of avoiding responsibility and starts collecting those six-figure speaking fees. General Powell's legacy won't be the "Powell Doctrine," it will be his United Nations Power Point presentation, the one presenting a fictitious case for invading Iraq.

No evidence for the weapons has been found, and Mr. Powell is said to have been dismayed that he made a case for the administration based on faulty information.

Not as dismayed as the Iraqi citizens and American soldiers killed and maimed in Desert Sham, of course. Maybe a little pang of regret when he wakes up in the middle of the night to take a piss.

No, I won't miss Colin, the man who wasn't there. He claimed to have principles but was never seen applying them or standing up for them. His commitment to affirmative action extended only as far as getting his otherwise unemployable son, Michael, a patronage job as America's tit monitor. His devotion to integration of the military was only skin deep. Powell once may have had integrity, but he's long since cut it off and killed it.

Maybe now he can get off the Ambien.

Update 9:40pm: Zeynep has a good post on Powell and suggests he can now team up with Kissinger and some notable others to form a "War Criminals All-Star Tour."