Colin Powell: "It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-05-29/colin-powell-it-worked-me-life-and-leadership
(AP Photo/CBS News, Karin Cooper)
Colin Powell has spent most of his life as a leader. He’s a retired four-star general and served as National Security Advisor and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His new memoir is filled with advice on succeeding in the workplace and beyond. But Powell is still dogged by his tenure as former President George W. Bush’s first secretary of state. He had misgivings about invading Iraq, but agreed to make the administration’s case for war in a speech at the United Nations. Much of what he said is now known to be based on false information. Diane talks with Powell about his storied career and his thoughts on political leadership today.
Guests
Gen. Colin Powell
former Secretary of State
Related Items
Video Extra
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell discussed his views toward gay marriage, abortion and lifting the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Powell, who said he has voted for Democrats and Republicans, said he also considers what presidential candidates say about the economy, education and foreign policy.
Read An Excerpt
Excerpt from "It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership" by Colin Powell. Copyright 2012 by Colin Powell. Reprinted here by permission of Harper Press. All rights reserved.
Comments
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For a few well-placed suck-ups following orders without question works.
You start out covering up the My Lai massacre and before you know it the Declaration of Human Rights (And Picasso's painting Guernica) is being covered with a shroud at the United Nations so you can comfortably power-point war crimes perjury. In the end you write memoirs and the Oligarchs you served buy a million phantom electronic copies from themselves. Then you're a perpetual roll-model, showing future sell-outs how to go with the flow. All this from a C-student in geology with a tacked on MBA. Ain't America grate?
The comfort and lure of the conspiracy theory no matter how complex, convoluted and unworkable coupled with mass distrust of certain administrations, makes it fait accompli. I gravitate to the simpler explanations when it concerns human motivations and actions, in this case I think it far more likely to be a case of typical government bungling of intelligence and the mass hysteria that gripped our country for several years after 9/11 that brought about the invasion of Iraq. The fact that 9/11 even happened is proof that our intelligence gathering agencies were and probably still are incapable of preventing most attacks. Our government had the information to stop the 9/11 attacks but they ignored it or could not put it together. Colin Powell as far as I can tell is not extraordinary in any way and is just another cog in incompetent government decision making. People who now ten plus years later look back at 9/11 with the clarity of hindsight and without all the extreme emotionalism forget that both political parties were thrashing out wildly in all directions with most Americans on board for any proposed invasion to prevent another attack. Talk shows like this one were wall to wall 9/11 fear mongers for three years following the attacks. Strange how the left now condemns the invasion of Iraq when they facilitated it while knowing the intelligence was weak. Oh they were duped! Right.
I guess if we're not going to send any bankers to jail and we're not going to pursue our own advocates and executives in what other countries consider to be war crimes, then it's possible to rehabilitate the reputation of this guy.
I'm aghast, but I think it can be done.
General, God bless you on the celebration of this past Memorial Day. I remember your story of visiting President Reagan after he left office and you invited your driver in to meet the President. That was a true measure of your outstanding leadership. Diane should hear that story. No doubt you made a great impression on that young soldiers life.
Please General Powell do not say that we based our decisions on the "intelligence we had". And please do not say if only we knew then what we know now. Former Cia analyst, former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, Zbiniew Brzezinski, questioned the intelligence and the sources of the intelligence before the invasion Senator Durbin and 20 some other Senators voted against the Iraq war resolution. There were plenty of alarms. Please do not hand us that hooey.
Colonel Wilderson has written and talked about what happened the nights before your UN speech. That you folks had serious questions about the valitidy of that intelligence. Please be honest talk about those questions
General you knew something was up with the pottery barn metaphor. If you had resigned you would not have stopped the invasion but you would have been considered almost a hero. i think you might have had a shot at the presidency in 2008 . that whole sad lying and fear mongering for war thousands dead for george to look presidential i like to share this link to a story
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2005/06/20/why_george_went_to_war.php
I'm tired of heaing Powell saying everyone bought off on Iraq, everyone looked at it, all the "experts" said it was so, then "Curveball" cinched the deal. For a guy that made it all the way to General and Sec. of State, Powell displays an astounding lack of awareness or curiosity, and simply relies on the statements of noted liars and fools. If I never believed any of these clowns, why did he, with all the information at his fingertips. Powell was a willing tool/fool for the neocons who wanted to invade at any cost, and drive our country into ruin. This whole operation was run by incompetents and paid for by the population of all countries involved for the benefit of the very wealthiest and well placed. Well done, General, now you can sell a book to fatten up your wallet too.
It's embarrassing to hear someone who is clearly so articulate and intelligent defending the indefensible. To put it simply, he's lying every time he opens his mouth. He's done enough damage already without adding insult to injury by continuing to support George and Dick's war plan that was in the works as soon as they got into power.
What's amusing is the Freudian nature of the book title that Colin Powell is now hawking; to paraphrase "It's working for me". Indeed. Shame on you, Sir, shame on you.
Powell "the Good soldier" to the end.
General Powell can you please share how the word "massacre" is used by our officials and host in our MSM. Today I heard Joe Scarborough, Mika Brezinski, etc etc describe what Assad is doing in Syria as a "massacre" Can you explain why the American public seldom saw dead children killed in Iraq as a direct result of our invasion on MSNBC etc...why we never hear the deaths of thousands in Iraq or those killed by American drones as "massacres" Why the Israeli attacks on Palestinians in the Gaza and the 4500 killed by Israeli forces as "massacres" Why is killing for alleged U.S. national interest or Israeli killing of innocents defined as national interest but in Syria this type of killing is defined as a "massacre"
Also can you simply report how many people were killed in Iraq as a direct result of the U.S. invasion. Why can our media tell us how many people Assad has killed but can not tell us how may people have been killed in IRaq?
This is a joke, "if I had more time, maybe I could have done more research". Are you kidding me? If you had doubts, you should have spoken up. You were complicit in leading this country into an unjustified war, and you had doubts about it. You discrace the uniform.
As a former army officer, I understand the necessity for loyalty and following orders, but that does not include lying for the commander. Colin Powell is nothing but a shill.
Even after all these years and all of his writings, comments and protestations, I still don't believe him. I'm certainly not interested in reading his book.
It seems as if the neocon PNAC agenda was the overarching and driving force of the Iraq War. The Intelligence was probably fabricated and Mr. Powell was used to present their "compelling" but false evidence in order to justify their invasion. It seems fairly clear to those of us who were following the GOP Middle East objectives.
Colin Powell, along with the whole Bush administration should be tried as War Criminals.
The Patriot Act, NDAA, both are clear signs of a Country heading towards a complete totalitarian police state.
A Country on the brink of decline is precluded by hoards of Bankers looting the system.
And now here this traitor is, pushing his book of lies for profit.
WMDs? Sure, we knew they had them, the U.S. supplied them for profit.
But you won't hear that from this War Criminal!
What a Shame our country has come to when criminals and cowards like this are allowed to run free.
How dare he use his brand to sell another book purported to help others. He is responsible for 5,000 and untold civilian deaths by not standing up to the authority and telling the press and Congress the truth about Bush's wrong-headed war plans. Shame!
Isn't it ironic that a man who had such a public failing is now hawking an advice book? Diane, please ask the four star failure how many hours a day he spends washing the blood off his hands.
gen powell, i'm a 30 year marine and met you in the field during desert storm. i have one question for you: did you think it was a greater strategic priority to pursue the war on terror indirectly by taking down saddam hussien when we did or by pursuing with the preponderance of our resources al qaida directly by continuing the effort thru afghanistan, and why?
Shinseki said early on send in more troops if you want to maintain the peace. Do you think Feith, Wolfowitz and the Office of Special Plans people who stovepiped the false intelligence into the Bush administration's goal was destabilization in the region? Garner who wanted to leave the Iraq military force in place with changes was replaced by Bremer who broke up the Iraq military force putting these men out on the streets without jobs, the US forces did not protect Iraqi treasures, not enough forces were sent in, chaos took place, torture took place. Could this have been the intentions? Hillary Mann Leverett has written about a goal in the region of destabilization. My friend Christian Peace Maker Team Peggy Gish who was in Iraq before the invasion and six years since with CPT has stated that many Iraqi people believe that these procedures were not "mistakes" The documentary "No End in Sight" supports these views. Simple questions about Iraq:
1. How many people in Iraq have died, been injured and displaced as a direct result of our invasion? Why is it that we know how many people Assad has killed but do not know how many people in Iraq have been killed?
2. Why have we not seen one person held accountable for the false WMD intelligence? Niger Documents?
3. Who is in control of Iraq's oil? Where is Ahmad Chalabi?
who is this colin powell? sounds like "i was only following orders".
i am so tired of this line "we only had information from central intelligence", etc. there was an incredible amount of information availiable to the general public contrary to this lets go to war train. for just one example the now famous "what i did'nt find in africa" essay that joesph c wilson penned in the ny times. resulted in savaging of his wife's career. curveball? really. who would believe him? want to buy a used car? of course not mentioned in this story being spun is the death by most exteme means of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, the destruction of culture and the loss forever of our claim to not be a colonial power.
General Powell and as far as I know everyone else associated with the last administration neglects to discuss the Office of Special Plans, which was put in place by Cheney and run by Doug Feith. This group cherry picked the intelligence data and was likely decisive in making the case for WMD. Attributing the mistakes to the CIA lets Cheney and this group off the hook, and I think it is a travesty.
The influence of the Office of Special Plans was documented in, among other places, the pages of the American Conservative Magazine BEFORE the invasion of Iraq.
General Powell has been, like the tens of thousands of his fellow soldiers, abused by the United States, the country they serve, and particularly by the previous administration of George Bush and Dick Cheney.
By my estimation and recollection, about half the country just went along with whatever Bush/Cheney wanted regarding all things war.
Minus the single digit percentage (or less) then sure anything coming from the Bush White house was evil and wrong-headed, the other half of America was more skeptical of the need to invade Iraq. Most of us thought we should focus all our military energies on finding Bin Laden and neutralizing his forces, where ever they were.
The single most important thing that brought this second half of America around to supporting, or at least not protesting the Iraq invasion and the Iraq occupation...was the trusted world of General Colin Powell.
It does us little good to hear about General Powell's misgivings now.
Is it too much to ask of those in the highest echelons of public service, that they simply do their jobs?
general I think you were used and with your line of thought during your book tour you are doing yourself no favor. I think it would serve you well to abandon any loyalty to that awful lying fear mongering chicken hawk administration. I mean come on a frat boy as a president really???? save yourself do not go down defending the liar fratboy
911 was an inside job!
How many times does General Powell have to say that he acted without duress regarding the UN speech. Fishing to get him to bad mouth President Bush is not up you your usual standards.
Colin Powell is a true tragic character. He was respected as our most honorable man, a shoe-in for President. My husband and I believe that Colin Powell was set up in order to besmirch his sterling reputation before the American people in order to ensure that Bush and his puppeteer Cheney could continue to control the allocation of our vast military resources to contractor friends without a thought of what such actions would do to our honor as a nation. I wish he had followed his instincts--they were good.
It may have "Worked for you" General Powell but thousands are dead, injured and millions were displaced based on a "pack of lies" Sir and no accountability...there is no way around this even being a good soldier sir...no way around this
Kaili... totally "tragic" Only digging his "tragic" hole deeper. Pathetic..really pathetic
The course of events leading up to the Iraq War seems to support the idea that the Bush Administration sought only efforts to support a war rather deliberate carefully facts and intelligence. The fact that General Powell had to comb through the document provided by Scooter Libby to pull out CIA supported facts makes me wonder what was the sum of all that information- accepted and rejected? Was there any amount of information included in that letter that was against the war?
At this stage, did it not occur to the General that having to do this this act under a 4 day period was in itself questionable? There are lives at stake! All of this seems to support the bogus plot to move the country to war by any means necessary.
Was General Powell aware of the financial connections that the Vice President Cheney maintained with the companies that profited from the war?
The title of your book, sir, seems to thumb your nose at all of us.
Aluminum tubes met all the criteria for rocket bodies (same length and diameter as the Iraqi rockets and anodized - which the administration claimed could only be used for centrifuges when, in fact, the NATO requirements for rocket bodies included anodized bodies). The analysts at the CIA that made the centrifuge argument were not knowledgeable about fuel enrichment.
The administration put tremendous pressure upon the CIA to make the link between 9/11 and Iraq and created a special group to make that link. Good intelligence analysis looks at the evidence and draws conclusions from that evidence. The administration had a conclusion and looked for "evidence" to support it.
General Powell needs to be honest and shed his fear of the political machine run by Dick Cheney. He chose to be a part of the Bush administration, and he chose to remain a puppet. Shame on him.
On Sept. 20, 2001 PNAC sent a letter to Pres. Bush. It said :
We agree with Secretary of State Powell’s recent statement that Saddam Hussein “is one of the leading terrorists on the face of the Earth….” It may be that the Iraqi government provided assistance in some form to the recent attack on the United States. But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism. The United States must therefore provide full military and financial support to the Iraqi opposition. American military force should be used to provide a “safe zone” in Iraq from which the opposition can operate. And American forces must be prepared to back up our commitment to the Iraqi opposition by all necessary means.
This letter was written WELL before the WMD charade at the UN 2/5/2003. It seems obvious that the Intelligence was cooked to justify their agenda. No?!