Over at Pressing The Flesh, another politics blog, I ran across this recent YouTube video of the late Tim Russert interviewing John McCain on Meet The Press. He traps McCain by making him eat some of his own words about Congress’s responsibility in wartime situations.

According to an article in The Vancouver Sun, former U.S. Secretary of State, General Colin Powell criticized George W. Bush’s handling of the aftermath of the Iraq War and the American occupation. He was giving a speech at the Vancouver Exhibition & Convention Centre, and he went on to acknowledge his part in building a global case for the Iraq War by delivering a now infamous speech to the United Nations:

Powell told the audience that he wouldn’t have agreed with the decision to go to war had he known that the data about Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction was exaggerated.

Powell said that every word of what he called his “infamous” presentation about WMD had been vetted by the intelligence community – “and I had no reason to disbelieve it.”

The former secretary of state has previously described his prewar UN speech as a “blot” on his record.

Powell went on to say that the Bush administration fell into “disarray” over how to govern Iraq after it overthrew Hussein.

“If we had handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad differently then we wouldn’t be where we are today,” said Powell.

He went on to call upon our next president (whoever he may be) to draw down U.S. troops and hand over power to the Iraqi government. From a 4-star general with a record like Powell’s, one hopes the new American guard will give his advice serious consideration.

Reuters is reporting that Turkey began attacking rebel positions along the Turkey-Iraq border on Friday, and the US has discouraged this move. It seems they think Turkey should seek diplomatic solutions. This is interesting, considering that the primary reason we’re in Iraq ourselves is that we ignored similar advice. Added to that the fact that Turkey actually has a legitimate threat to its national security what with Turkey and Iraq actually sharing a border. It would be interesting to see how Condoleeza Rice would respond to the question of whether or not Turkey should take military options off the table– something the US continually says it will not do when it comes to our difficulties with other far-flung nations like Iran and North Korea, where it unfortunately seems exceedingly likely that we’ll turn our military attention if we ever get ourselves out of Iraq.

The US government has said it’s considering joint action against the PKK, which seems to suggest that they’re not actually opposed to military action as long as we’re the ones running the show.