Once upon a time I had a lot of respect for Colin Powell – he seemed like a sensible, straight ford person, he had Jamaican roots, he had been to Trinidad, had been a fan of Sparrow. So why not? I was disappointed when he decided to serve as Secretary of State for Bush – I felt he was giving them too much credibility. By the time he made the “mobile weapons lab” speech to the UN though, I had lost all faith in him. He had been tainted by their evil.
Since leaving the job, Powell has shown integrity, but far too little, too late. Still, I am happy to see some of his recent comments; on the issue of the 2008 Presidential elections he said:
Asked about how he plans to vote in 2008, the lifelong Republican would not commit to supporting the GOP nominee. “I’m going to support the best person that I can find who will lead this country for the eight years beginning in January of 2009,” Powell said.
And more importantly, on the issue of Guantanamo he said:
“If it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo. Not tomorrow, but this afternoon. I’d close it,” he said.
“And I would not let any of those people go,” he said. “I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system. The concern was, well then they’ll have access to lawyers, then they’ll have access to writs of habeas corpus. So what? Let them. Isn’t that what our system is all about?”
It would be nice to have him back among to sane.
Filed under: Politics, World affairs
