Colin Powell: Man of Integrity

Colin Powell doesn’t know if torture is “criminal”:

Powell also questioned whether tactics like sleep deprivation, stress positions, or waterboarding were “criminal” — despite specific U.S. statutes and international law forbidding torture:

MADDOW: If there was a meeting though at which senior officials were saying, were discussing and giving the approval for sleep deprivation, stress positions, waterboarding. Were those officials committing crimes when they were giving their authorization?

POWELL: You’re asking me a legal question. I mean, I don’t know that any of these items would be considered criminal. And I will wait for whatever investigations that the government or the Congress intends to pursue with this.

I utterly fail to understand why this man is held in higher regard than the other criminals that made up the Bush Administration.  Perhaps it’s just some desperate public need to believe that there was something good about the crew that was in charge.  If that’s the case, Powell is hardly the place to look for that.  The man traded on his reputation to start an utterly unnecessary war that has killed nearly a hundred thousand people.  He gave cover to an administration that broke laws, ignored treaties, and violated the Constitution.  And don’t give me any “he fought from the inside!” crap.  Even if he did, he lost, and he lost big.  When he left, what did he do?  Stand up for the military kids that were getting killed over there for his mistakes?  Tell us that he disagreed with the President?  Do *anything* that would give any indication that he put country before politics?  No.  He slipped off quietly, and continues to engage in the same self-serving bullshit as the rest of them.  Colin Powell may have once deserved the regard the public held him in.  No more.