Colin Powell is a large, overweight liar

Over at Tiny Revolution, Jon Schwarz does yeoman work in exposing what an egregious, not to say four-star, liar Colin Powell is, both in his recent book, It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership, and elsewhere. In his book, the large general harrumphs* re his abysmal 2003 presentation at the UN, giving to the world the General Powell seal of approval to the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq: “I get mad when bloggers accuse me of lying–of knowing the information was false. I didn’t.” In fact, as Schwarz repeatedly demonstrates, Powell was repeatedly told that justification for the “information” he was peddling was “weak.” On one occasion, the “information” was directly contrary to what Powell had been told, and in another Powell simply made up the “information” himself.

I don’t know how big Colin Powell’s head was prior to the ’89 War in Iraq (you know, the “good” war in Iraq), but afterwards it expanded rapidly in size, eclipsing the circumference of the Ritz in the summer of 1990. I suspect that Powell assumed that he would enjoy an Ike-like ascendency to the presidency, and, when that didn’t happen, he’s never forgiven America for the slight.

Although he never gets tired of telling us what a good soldier he is, he happily undermined Bill Clinton, his commander in chief, to ingratiate himself with the Republican Party, which has always used him as a front man and nothing more. His nadir came in the Bush Administration, in the UN speech that Schwarz demolishes, providing the Bush Administration with the fig leaf that it desperately needed to conceal its unjustified, unnecessary, and stunningly incompetent invasion of Iraq. Your moment of glory, Colin, was serving as Donnie Rumfeld’s beard. And after that you were discarded like a squeezed-out lemon. Which, basically, dude, is what you are.

Hat tip to Brad DeLong.

*Multiple props to Word for knowing that “harrumph” comes with two “r’s”. I didn’t. According to Webster’s III, “harrumph” is imitative in origin.