Colin Powell and 'The Power of Audacity'

To be an honest, objective and fair-minded reporter of the Bush Administration's policies requires pointing out repeatedly and without sentimentality that just about all the men and women responsible for the conduct of this nation's foreign (and many of its domestic) affairs are entirely without personal honor when it comes to the affairs of state. This simply isn't done in respectable journalism, and the Bush people understand that. Arthur Miller, speaking at a Nation Institute dinner last year, termed the willingness to use this kind of knowledge "the power of audacity."

Powell employed all kinds of weasel words in his UN address that should have set off alarm bells in any first-year journalism student. Over and over, Cranberg notes, he attributed his charges to the likes of "human sources," "an eyewitness," "detainees," "an Al Qaeda source," "a senior defector," "intelligence sources." At a meeting at the Waldorf Astoria just before his talk, reported by the Guardian, Powell complained to British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw that the claims coming out of the Pentagon--particularly those made by Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz--could not be substantiated (Straw denies that the meeting took place). Powell allegedly told the Foreign Secretary that he had just about "moved in" with his intelligence staff to prepare for his speech but had left his briefings "apprehensive," fearing that the evidence might "explode in their faces." A U.S. News & World Report story describes the Secretary of State throwing the documents in the air and declaring, "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit!"

It's quite a trick: Lie to the American people and then fall back on the fact that they bought the lies to demonstrate that truth really doesn't matter anyway. It is in this and only this Alice-in-Wonderland universe that a dishonest propagandist like Colin Powell may be considered an "internationalist," a "moderate" and, sadly, a "man of honor."