"Colin and the Crazies"

Sidney Blumenthal, The Guardian

The culling of the US secretary of state is symptomatic of a swing
even further to the right.

Colin Powell's final scene was a poignant but harsh exposure of his
self-delusion and humiliation. The former general held in his head an
idea of himself as sacrificing and disciplined. But the good soldier
was dismissed at last by his commander-in-chief as a bad egg. Bush,
Cheney and Rumsfeld regarded him either as a useful tool or a vain
obstructionist. They deployed his reputation as the most popular man
and the most credible face in the US for their own ends, and when he
contributed an independent view he was isolated and undermined.As secretary of state he has been a peripheral figure, even a fig
leaf, ever since his climactic moment before the UN security council
on which he staked his credibility. There he presented the case that
WMD in Iraq required war, a case consisting of 26 falsehoods, and
about which he later claimed to have been "deceived". When the statue
of Saddam was toppled, he offered President Bush 17 volumes of his
Future of Iraq project, but it was rejected. Predicting everything
from the looting to the insurgency, and suggesting how it might be
avoided, the project was politically incorrect.

Powell had wanted to stay on for the first six months of Bush's second
term to help shepherd a new Middle East peace process, but the
president insisted on his resignation. Condoleezza Rice was named in
his place. She had failed at every important task as national security
adviser, pointedly neglecting terrorism before September 11,
enthusiastically parroting the false claim that Saddam had a nuclear
weapons programme, while suppressing contrary intelligence,
mismanaging her part of postwar policy so completely that she had to
cede it to a deputy, and eviscerating the Middle East road map.

As incompetent as she was at her actual job, she was agile at
bureaucratic positioning. Early on, she figured out how to align with
the neo-conservatives and to damage Powell. Her usurpation is a lesson
to him in blind ambition and loyalty.

Powell's sacking and Rice's promotion are more than examples of
behaviour punished and rewarded. His fall and her rise signal the
purge of the CIA and the state department, a neocon night of the long
knives. Bush's attitude is that of the intimidating loyalty enforcer
that he was in his father's political campaigns.

The CIA has not been forgiven for failing to support Cheney's
phantasmagorical case linking Saddam to al-Qaida. And the release in
September of the outline of the most recent National Intelligence
Estimate, laying out dark scenarios for Iraq, was considered an act of
insubordination intended to help oust Bush in the election. The new
CIA director, Porter Goss, has installed partisan aides at the top,
and senior officials have been fired. He has issued a party line
diktat that the CIA's mission is to "support the administration and
its policies".

At the state department, senior career officers, especially those who
were close to Powell, believe they are next on the chopping
block. Indeed, Bush has charged Rice with bringing the department
under control. Its bureau of intelligence and research, which has
provided the most accurate analysis of Iraq, is a special target for
purging. Cheney is heavily involved in the planning, and he intends to
fill key slots with neocons and fellow-travellers. "By the time she
takes over, Rice will have been manoeuvred into a prestructured
department staff," one state department source, who has been close to
Powell, told me.

The dictation of a political line has conquered policy-making. Since
the US emerged as a world power, the executive, because of immense
responsibilities and powers, has relied upon impartial information and
analysis from its departments and agencies. But vindictiveness against
the institutions of government based on expertise, evidence and
experience is clearing the way for the intellectual standards and
cooked conclusions of rightwing think-tanks and those appointees who
emerge from them.

A system of bureaucratic fear and one-party allegiance is being
created in this strange soviet Washington. Only loyalists are
rewarded. Rice stands as the model. One can never be too loyal. And
the loyalists compete to outdo each other. Dissonant information is
seen as motivated to injure the president, disloyalty bordering on
treason. Success is defined as support for the political line; failure
perceived as departure from the line. An atmosphere of personal
vendetta and an incentive system for suppressing realities prevails.
This is not an administration; it does not administer — it is a
regime.

On one of Powell's futile diplomatic trips, his informal conversation
with reporters turned to a new book, The Accidental American: Tony
Blair and the Presidency, by James Naughtie. In it, Powell is quoted
as describing the neocons to British foreign minister, Jack Straw, as
"fucking crazies". That, the reporters suggested, might be an apt
title for his next volume of memoirs. Powell laughed uncontrollably.

[Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is
Washington bureau chief of salon.com.]