Colin Powell's Former Chief Of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson Claims Powell Was 'Manipulated' Into Making Case For Iraq War

Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, appeared on "MSNBC Live" tonight and discussed Powell's role as Secretary of State during the lead-up to the Iraq War. Wilkerson said he believes that Former Vice President Dick Cheney's office "manipulated" Powell into justifying the case for war and that "the Secretary of State was not told the complete truth." He went on to state his belief that the Bush Administration was "using" Powell due to his respected reputation.

A key moment in the interview comes when host Cenk Uygur asks Wilkerson about Powell's speech to the United Nations in which Powell made the case for war:

Uygur: Do you think the Vice President's office manipulated you and Secretary Powell into giving a speech?

Wilkerson: Absolutely. Absolutely.

link to video

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/17/colin-powell-lawrence-wilkerson-iraq-manipulated_n_824884.html

Like he was "manipulated" during his service in Vietnam?

Behind Colin Powell's Legend -- My Lai

By Robert Parry & Norman Solomon

While a horrific example of a Vietnam war crime, the My Lai massacre was not unique. It fit a long pattern of indiscriminate violence against civilians that had marred U.S. participation in the Vietnam War from its earliest days when Americans acted primarily as advisers.

In 1963, Capt. Colin Powell was one of those advisers, serving a first tour with a South Vietnamese army unit. Powell's detachment sought to discourage support for the Viet Cong by torching villages throughout the A Shau Valley. While other U.S. advisers protested this countrywide strategy as brutal and counter-productive, Powell defended the "drain-the-sea" approach then -- and continued that defense in his 1995 memoirs, My American Journey. (See The Consortium, July 8)

After his first one-year tour and a series of successful training assignments in the United States, Maj. Powell returned for his second Vietnam tour on July 27, 1968. This time, he was no longer a junior officer slogging through the jungle, but an up-and-coming staff officer assigned to the Americal division.

By late 1968, Powell had jumped over more senior officers into the important post of G-3, chief of operations for division commander, Maj. Gen. Charles Gettys, at Chu Lai. Powell had been "picked by Gen. Gettys over several lieutenant colonels for the G-3 job itself, making me the only major filling that role in Vietnam," Powell wrote in his memoirs.

But a test soon confronted Maj. Powell. A letter had been written by a young specialist fourth class named Tom Glen, who had served in an Americal mortar platoon and was nearing the end of his Army tour. In a letter to Gen. Creighton Abrams, the commander of all U.S. forces in Vietnam, Glen accused the Americal division of routine brutality against civilians. Glen's letter was forwarded to the Americal headquarters at Chu Lai where it landed on Maj. Powell's desk.

"The average GI's attitude toward and treatment of the Vietnamese people all too often is a complete denial of all our country is attempting to accomplish in the realm of human relations," Glen wrote. "Far beyond merely dismissing the Vietnamese as 'slopes' or 'gooks,' in both deed and thought, too many American soldiers seem to discount their very humanity; and with this attitude inflict upon the Vietnamese citizenry humiliations, both psychological and physical, that can have only a debilitating effect upon efforts to unify the people in loyalty to the Saigon government, particularly when such acts are carried out at unit levels and thereby acquire the aspect of sanctioned policy."

Glen's letter contended that many Vietnamese were fleeing from Americans who "for mere pleasure, fire indiscriminately into Vietnamese homes and without provocation or justification shoot at the people themselves." Gratuitous cruelty was also being inflicted on Viet Cong suspects, Glen reported.

"Fired with an emotionalism that belies unconscionable hatred, and armed with a vocabulary consisting of 'You VC,' soldiers commonly 'interrogate' by means of torture that has been presented as the particular habit of the enemy. Severe beatings and torture at knife point are usual means of questioning captives or of convincing a suspect that he is, indeed, a Viet Cong...

"It would indeed be terrible to find it necessary to believe that an American soldier that harbors such racial intolerance and disregard for justice and human feeling is a prototype of all American national character; yet the frequency of such soldiers lends credulity to such beliefs. ... What has been outlined here I have seen not only in my own unit, but also in others we have worked with, and I fear it is universal. If this is indeed the case, it is a problem which cannot be overlooked, but can through a more firm implementation of the codes of MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) and the Geneva Conventions, perhaps be eradicated."

Glen's letter echoed some of the complaints voiced by early advisers, such as Col. John Paul Vann, who protested the self-defeating strategy of treating Vietnamese civilians as the enemy. In 1995, when we questioned Glen about his letter, he said he had heard second-hand about the My Lai massacre, though he did not mention it specifically. The massacre was just one part of the abusive pattern that had become routine in the division, he said.

Maj. Powell's Response
The letter's troubling allegations were not well received at Americal headquarters. Maj. Powell undertook the assignment to review Glen's letter, but did so without questioning Glen or assigning anyone else to talk with him. Powell simply accepted a claim from Glen's superior officer that Glen was not close enough to the front lines to know what he was writing about, an assertion Glen denies.

After that cursory investigation, Powell drafted a response on Dec. 13, 1968. He admitted to no pattern of wrongdoing. Powell claimed that U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were taught to treat Vietnamese courteously and respectfully. The Americal troops also had gone through an hour-long course on how to treat prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, Powell noted.

"There may be isolated cases of mistreatment of civilians and POWs," Powell wrote in 1968. But "this by no means reflects the general attitude throughout the Division." Indeed, Powell's memo faulted Glen for not complaining earlier and for failing to be more specific in his letter.

Powell reported back exactly what his superiors wanted to hear (My emphasis /Stewball). "In direct refutation of this [Glen's] portrayal," Powell concluded, "is the fact that relations between Americal soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent."

More at: http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/colin3.html

Colin Powell's Disgraceful Lies By David Swanson February 18,

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2011/021811a.html

Colin Powell's Disgraceful Lies

By David Swanson
February 18, 2011

Editor’s Note: It remains one of the great unacknowledged embarrassments of the American news media: how nearly every top pundit swooned over Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations justifying the U.S. invasion of Iraq – and how they suffered no career damage for their gullibility.

Indeed, the New York Times’ Bill Keller, who hailed Powell’s “skillful parsing of the evidence” on Iraq’s supposed WMD, was actually promoted to the top job as executive editor AFTER he endorsed Powell’s lies. (Keller replaced Howell Raines who became the fall-guy for trusting dishonest reporter Jason Blair.)

In other words, the consequence for getting hoodwinked by a reporter – dismissal – but for buying into lies that get hundreds of thousands killed – promotion.

This upside-down accountability goes a long way to explaining why the mainstream media has become such an integral part of a corrupt establishment, incapable of addressing the profound hypocrisies and injustices that pervade American foreign policy and financial system.

As for Colin Powell, he remains such a respected national figure that he gets to preside over the patriotic fanfare that precedes the Super Bowl. But David Swanson -- in this guest essay -- explains how Powell profoundly betrayed the nation's honor:

In the wake of WMD-liar Curveball's videotaped confession, Colin Powell is demanding to know why nobody warned him about Curveball's unreliability. The trouble is, they did.

more: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2011/021811a.html