Day of Reckoning – 4 November 2008

Republican rats deserting a sinking ship to support Obama? No one questions the proposition that politicians are opportunists, but when Cakewalk neocon Ken Adelman, big-time promoter of the Iraq invasion, jumps the GOP ship to swim into the Obama camp... it should scare the hell out of the Democrats – you do not want this rat to contaminate your tent. Some, like Adelman, search for redemption as a fig leaf to cover opportunism. Others, like right-wing journalists, Peggy Noonan and George Will, are just embarrassed over the McCain/Palin ticket and want to make it clear they are not part of that ridiculous self-destructive traveling circus.

General Colin Powell's motives endorsing Obama are more complicated. Powell was a product of affirmative action. He was picked by a black Secretary of the Army, Clifford Alexander who pushed qualified black field grade officers for promotion over equally qualified and better qualified white officers. Powell was assigned to the White House OMB office where he drew the attention of the President Harold Walker Bush's operatives.

Powell, though having almost no policy national security experience or an academic back-ground to qualify him, rose to head the National Security Staff and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Bill Clinton even kept him on for a while as OJCS Chairman. Powell had issues in these billets over Gulf War I and Somalia intervention. His insistence on use of overwhelming force in the Gulf invasion and extended time required for force build up branded him as a civil war McClellan by eager-for-war Bush pistoleros. Right wing hawks still blame him for not going to Baghdad in the invasion of Kuwait. He later developed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy on gays in the military.

He was to reach his level of incompetence as GW Bush's Secretary of State. Up until then his career pattern had been meteoric and astounding.

Powell, because of his mixed race, was appealing to the Bush republicans as a token of inclusiveness for the party. He was always a gentleman, tactful, loyal and like most military men of his generation, a republican heart beat in his chest. He was intelligent. Best of all, he was not imbedded in the civil rights movement and was not a freakish, sometime preacher. His great failure was to lie for GW Bush publicly before the UN on the Iraqi threat – in this process he grievously ignored his own State department (INR) documented, opposite intelligence on Iraq. He has been deeply haunted by this tarnish on the blade since he left government.

His MEET THE PRESS interview several days ago was his day of reckoning when he categorically supported Obama against McCain. If there was a racial component in his support, it was minimal. Instead, there was redemption by supporting one of the politicians who was against the Iraq war. Expiation and the satisfaction of finally doing the right thing were his main reasons for turning on his Party – a Party hollowed out by excessive self-indulgence, recklessness, and ideological and religious fanaticism.

Neocons, the oleaginous David Frum whose claim to shame as a White House speech writer of the Axis Of Evil and Bill Kristol, the resident Likud columnist in the US are up in arms against their own party. Frum is upset that Bomb Bomb's tactics are destroying other Republican candidates and Kristol, over Bomb Bomb's mishandling of Palin. Republicans devouring their own – Obama should beware of neocons bearing gifts.

Obama has crushed the republicans like an anaconda. First, he coiled around his blue states with a firm squeeze by eliminating Hillary. Second, he focused on the battle states, bringing them tightly toward him. And he now is compressing Bomb Bomb in many of the solid red states to include Arizona.

Despite this, Bomb Bomb claims he has got Obama just where he wants him. Is this 72 year old man galloping to senility? YOU BETCHA.

When Obama wins, there will be something for most elements of American society; that is, except for the social conservative/religious right; but even those will have Pentecostal Palin. Question remains will she be their prize or surprise or consolation prize. Colonel Robert E Bartos USA ret