| April 8, 2006 | - It emerged that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told a grand jury that when he leaked classified information favorable to the case for war in Iraq to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, he was acting under the specific authorization of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Bush authorized the leak even though the intelligence in question (regarding Saddam Hussein's
nuclear ambitions) was considered unreliable by key administration members such as then Secretary of State Colin Powell.
| Source:
The New York Times
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| December 25, 2005 | - Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said that there was "absolutely nothing wrong" with President Bush authorizing the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans.
| Source:
AP
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| November 5, 2005 | - Vice President Dick Cheney was pressuring Republican senators to grant the CIA an exemption from a proposed ban on torturing terrorism suspects. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, suggested that Cheney was ultimately responsible for the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere. “There was a visible audit trail,” he said, “from the vice president's office through the secretary of defense down to the commanders in the field.”
| Source:
The Seattle Times
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| January 5, 2005 | -
Colin Powell toured Indonesia and called it "amazing" and "heartbreaking."
| Source:
ABC News
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| November 22, 2004 | -
Colin Powell visited Israel and the West Bank.
| Source:
BBC
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| November 17, 2004 | -
George W. Bush named national security advisor Condoleezza Rice to replace Colin Powell as secretary of state.
| Source:
Washington Post
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| September 26, 2004 | -
Colin Powell said that the Iraqi insurgency is "getting worse," and U.S. forces arrested a high-ranking officer in the Iraqi National Guard, one week after he was appointed commander of the Diyala province, because he supposedly has ties to insurgents.
| Source:
BBC
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| September 15, 2004 | - Many of those governors praised Putin's plans; few politicians dared criticize them. Colin Powell expressed "concerns."
| Source:
New York Times
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| September 2, 2004 | -
Colin Powell admitted that the Bush Administration misjudged the potential for armed resistance in Iraq.
| Source:
Associated Press
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| July 2, 2004 | -
Colin Powell sang and danced to "YMCA" for foreign ministers at a conference on Asian-Pacific security.
| Source:
Associated Press
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| June 25, 2004 | -
Colin Powell said that declaring martial law in Iraq would make things worse.
| Source:
Reuters
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| May 15, 2004 | - Secretary of State Colin Powell said that U.S. troops would leave Iraq if an interim government asked them to.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 17, 2004 | - Bob Woodward reported in a new book that Colin Powell warned President Bush that if he invaded Iraq he would have to face the "you break it, you own it" rule. "You're going to be the proud owner of 25 million people," Powell told the president in the summer of 2002. "You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all." Powell also let it be known that Dick Cheney was the "powerful, steamrolling force" behind the decision to invade.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 6, 2004 | - Secretary of State Colin Powell said that American prosecutors were thinking about prosecuting Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the recently deposed president of Haiti, for corruption; Powell rejected a call by the Caribbean Community for an investigation into the events surrounding Aristide's removal from Haiti. "I don't think any purpose would be served by such an inquiry," he said.
| Source:
New York Times
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| April 4, 2004 | -
Colin Powell admitted that the Iraqi National Congress, the U.S.-funded Iraqi exile group, was the source of "the most dramatic" bits in his notorious United Nations presentation on Iraq's mythical weapons of mass destruction.
| Source:
Miami Herald
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| February 21, 2004 | -
Colin Powell said that the conquest of Iraq was justified because Saddam Hussein would have used weapons of mass destruction if only he had had some.
| Source:
Associated Press
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| February 4, 2004 | - Secretary of State Colin Powell said that he might not have supported the invasion of Iraq if he had known that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction; within a few days he corrected himself and affirmed that the president had made the right decision no matter what the facts really were.
| Source:
New York Times
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| January 9, 2004 | - Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that he never saw any hard proof of Iraqi links to Al Qaeda but failed to explain why he lied to the U.N. Security Council last February.
| Source:
New York Times
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| December 16, 2003 | -
Colin Powell underwent surgery for prostate cancer.
| Source:
New York Times
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| September 15, 2003 | -
Colin Powell claimed that Americans "are not occupiers" of Iraq.
"We came as liberators," he said.
"We have liberated a number of countries."
| Source:
New York Times
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| July 30, 2003 | -
Colin Powell called Saddam Hussein "a piece of trash."
| Source:
New York Times
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| April 29, 2003 | -
After former congressman Newt Gingrich accused Colin Powell and his staff of a string of diplomatic failures, an assistant secretary of state responded, “He is an idiot and you can publish that.” Scientists concluded that humans “are truly not that far in genetic complexity from the common bread mold.” Primate expert Jane Goodall pant-hooted like a chimpanzee at a federal hearing to bring attention to the problem of deforestation.
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| April 22, 2003 | -
The White House was said to regard Syria, Cuba, and Libya as members of a “junior varsity axis of evil,” but although the administration repeated accusations that Syria was providing sanctuary to Iraqi fugitives, Colin Powell assured the world that Washington has no war plan “right now” to address that country's disobedience.
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| April 1, 2003 | -
Secretary of State Colin Powell called on Israel to end “settlement activity” in the Occupied Territories.
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| March 18, 2003 | -
Secretary of State Colin Powell mentioned France 12 times during a Sunday-morning television appearance and seemed to be more angry with Jacques Chirac than with Saddam Hussein.
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| February 18, 2003 | -
Al-Jazeera, the popular Arab television station, broadcast another Osama bin Laden tape; Bin Laden, or someone who sounded like him, made the usual denunciations of the United States and called on the Iraqi people to resist the upcoming American invasion.
Colin Powell claimed that the tape was proof of an alliance between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, even though Osama referred to Saddam as an “apostate.”
| |
| February 18, 2003 | -
Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief U.N.
weapons inspectors, gave an updated report to the Security Council and declared that they were making good progress and had found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; Blix dismissed much of Colin Powell's presentation before the United Nations last week and said that the satellite photographs of weapons installations he featured could easily depict routine activity.
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| February 11, 2003 | -
Colin Powell presented the United Nations Security Council with America's latest case against Iraq. He played recordings of what he said were intercepted conversations of Iraqis discussing the removal of “forbidden ammo” from weapons sites, and he showed satellite photos in which trucks appeared to be parked next to warehouses.
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| February 11, 2003 | -
“If the Security Council were to allow a dictator to lie and deceive, the Security Council will be weakened.” The British government admitted that its new “intelligence” dossier on Iraq, which purported to provide “up-to-date details of Iraq's network of intelligence and security” and which Colin Powell cited approvingly in his presentation to the United Nations, was largely plagiarized from various published articles, including one by a student that described Iraqi intelligence activities in 1990 and 1991.
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| February 11, 2003 | -
France, Germany, and Belgium vetoed a NATO plan to reinforce Turkey's defenses in anticipation of an attack from Iraq; American officials were said to be “livid,” and Colin Powell said the action was “inexcusable.” There was talk of a “crisis of credibility.” Ansar al Islam, the militant group that supposedly has links both to Saddam Hussein and to Al Qaeda, gave reporters a tour of the camp that Colin Powell identified as a poison factory.
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| February 4, 2003 | -
The president said that Secretary of State Colin Powell will soon present new evidence of Iraq's evildoing, including its alleged ties to Al Qaeda, to the United Nations Security Council.
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| January 28, 2003 | -
Secretary of State Colin Powell was said to be “incandescent” with rage at the new opposition, which took him by surprise and has purportedly undermined his position among President Bush's advisers.
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| January 28, 2003 | -
Colin Powell told participants that it would be useless to give the inspectors more time.
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| January 14, 2003 | -
Bush Administration sources said they had largely completed their plans for administering Iraq after the war and securing the Iraqi oil fields; Colin Powell recently stated that the goal is to “protect those fields and make sure that they are used for the benefit of the people of Iraq.”
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| December 31, 2002 | -
The Bush Administration revealed that it is preparing a comprehensive strategy of political and economic measures to pressure North Korea into backing down from its aggressive pursuit of additional nuclear weapons, though Secretary of State Colin Powell refused on television to characterize the situation as a “crisis.” Administration officials privately admitted that it was difficult to explain why it is necessary to go to war with Iraq, where United Nations weapons inspectors have the run of the country, while counseling patience and diplomacy with North Korea, which has threatened “uncontrollable catastrophe” and “merciless punishment” for the United States and which just announced the expulsion of U.N. inspectors.
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| December 24, 2002 | -
Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that Iraq has already committed a “material breach” of the latest Security Council resolutions by failing to disclose information about its putative weapons-of-mass-destruction programs.
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| May 28, 2002 | -
Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters that “you need time for an administration to grow,” and that because of September 11 the President has come to understand “the value of coalitions and friends.”
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| May 21, 2002 | -
After NATO agreed to give Russia a more active role in the alliance's decision making, particularly concerning terrorism and arms control, Secretary of State Colin Powell observed that “we don't yet quite have a cliché to capture this all.”
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| May 21, 2002 | -
Colin Powell also cast doubt on the charge.
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| April 23, 2002 | -
Secretary of State Colin Powell failed to achieve anything notable in his mission to the Middle East, and President Bush, after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon refused to “heed the call,” backed down from his demand that Israel withdraw from the West Bank.
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| April 16, 2002 | -
Colin Powell met with Yasir Arafat.
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| April 9, 2002 | -
President Bush told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to withdraw his troops “without delay,” and he dispatched Secretary of State Colin Powell to stop the violence.
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| March 19, 2002 | -
The White House refused to recognize the outcome of the flawed election: “Mr.
Mugabe can claim victory, but not democratic legitimacy,” noted Secretary of State Colin Powell.
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| March 5, 2002 | -
Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters that he approved of President Bush's “axis of evil” doctrine. “In my judgment,” he said, “any country right now that has a despotic leadership, that is unrepresentative of its people, that is not putting in place market economic systems, that is rife with corruption, a lack of transparency and no rule of law, that thinks it can achieve a position on the world stage through development of weapons of mass destruction that will turn out to be fool's gold for them, is a loser.”
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| February 19, 2002 | -
Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate that President Bush had decided to overthrow Iraq's
Saddam Hussein but had not yet settled on a strategy and was considering his options.
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| February 12, 2002 | -
At the urging of Secretary of State Colin Powell, President Bush changed his mind and decided to extend Geneva Conventions protections to Taliban prisoners (but not members of Al Qaeda) taken in the Afghan war, though they will not be classified as prisoners of war, which would require their repatriation if the war ever ends.
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| January 29, 2002 | -
Colin Powell, the secretary of state, reportedly believes that the Geneva Conventions do apply to the prisoners and has requested a review of the President's decision.
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| October 30, 2001 | - Secretary of State Colin Powell appointed Charlotte Beers, an advertising executive best known for the Head and Shoulders campaign, to be undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs; Beers said her job would be the rebranding of America: “It's the battle for the 11-year-old mind.” Bush Administration officials met with television executives to discuss effective propaganda strategy.
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| October 23, 2001 | - American officials let it be known that President Bush and President Vladimir Putin had come to an historic understanding that would transform relations between their two countries. “Not only is the Cold War over,” said Secretary of State Colin Powell, “the post-Cold War period is also over.”
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| September 18, 2001 | - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Colin Powell that Yasir Arafat was “our bin Laden.”
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| September 4, 2001 | - Secretary of State Colin Powell stayed away from the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance because some countries were insisting on using impolite language to criticize Israel for being an unkind master.
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| July 31, 2001 | - Secretary of State Colin Powell played a cowboy in love for a skit marking the end of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference; his Vietnamese paramour was portrayed by Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka.
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| July 3, 2001 | - Secretary of State Colin Powell stood next to Yasir Arafat and endorsed the idea of international observers to help enforce a cease-fire with Israel; later, standing next to Ariel Sharon, Powell clarified his previous statement, which had seemed clear enough, and said he did not support “some outside group of forces coming in.” Powell's trip also included a visit to Jordan, where King Abdullah let him drive at the “king's speed limit” in his custom silver BMW convertible.
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| May 29, 2001 | - Jack Kemp was exasperated with criticism that President Bush was governing from the far right, noting that Colin Powell was off in darkest Africa talking about AIDS. “What more do they want from this president?”
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| March 6, 2001 | - Secretary of State Colin Powell traveled to the Middle East and proposed easing the ten-year-old sanctions on Iraq that disproportionately harm innocent civilians.
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| February 13, 2001 | -
United States Secretary of State Colin Powell defended President George W. Bush's plans to deploy the national missile defense system despite its technical and political flaws: “I don't consider it as being an arrogant position,” he said. “Or one where we are trying to force anything on the rest of the world.” Russian
defense minister Igor Sergeyev warned that Russia still had “three mighty programs to asymmetrically counteract U.S. national missile defense forces,” which were developed to defeat President Ronald Reagan's pie-in-the-sky Star Wars program.
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| December 19, 2000 | -
President-elect George W. Bush named Colin Powell to be secretary of state; Powell said he was glad they weren't at Bush's ranch because he was afraid of those scary-looking cows.
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