Woodward describes a relationship between Cheney and Secretary of
State Colin L. Powell that became so strained Cheney and Powell are
barely on speaking terms.
Cheney engaged in a bitter and eventually winning struggle over Iraq
with Powell, an opponent of war who believed Cheney was obsessively
trying to establish a connection between Iraq and the al Qaeda
terrorist network and treated ambiguous intelligence as fact.
Powell felt Cheney and his allies -- his chief aide, I. Lewis
"Scooter" Libby; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz; and
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell
called Feith's "Gestapo" office -- had established what amounted to a
separate government.
The vice president, for his part, believed Powell was mainly concerned
with his own popularity and told friends at a dinner he hosted a year
ago celebrating the outcome of the war that Powell was a problem and
"always had major reservations about what we were trying to do."
Before the war with Iraq, Powell bluntly told Bush that if he sent
U.S. troops there "you're going to be owning this place."
Powell and his deputy and closest friend, Richard L. Armitage, used to
refer to what they called "the Pottery Barn rule" on Iraq:
"You break it, you own it," according to Woodward.
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You don't *really* want these clowns back next year, do you? I didn't
think so.
Harry
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