Requiem

Powell's gone... not that anyone is really surprised.

The consensus around the blogosphere is a pretty solid "Good riddance." I count myself among their numbers... Powell had good intentions, but his unwillingness and/or inability to fight for what was right by the US and instead suborn (or, more accurately, whore) himself and his principles to others was one of the real tragedies of the past four years. As far as I am concerned, there is a lot of blood on his hands...

Steven Clemons still has a bit of regret though...

Powell's record is not completely clean -- and I wish he had resigned as soon as he learned how profound and deep the administration's lies to Powell and the country had been.

But Colin Powell kept this administration out of what could have been an even worse mess.

That's setting the bar a little low, isn't it? Kinda like diving into a pool of liquid pig shit and then being grateful you had the presence of mind to take your cap off before you did so.

Steven has a few more thoughts:

On the one hand, I'm sorry he won't be in the situation room as a sane and steady voice.

It didn't do any good... the only thing it did was provide us liberals with an illusory flicker of hope that disaster would be avoided.

On the other, I hope he shares what he knows about the nuts and bolts of this first term with Bush with the rest of us -- and I hope he runs for the presidency.

Nuts and bolts: Most certainly... he should have done so a long time ago.

Presidency: Huh? Like many folks, I like the theory of President Powell quite a lot... but in practice he has shown himself to be incapable of SoS... what makes you think he will be able to navigate the choppier waters of the presidency?

IMO, Powell is a dried up husk as a political entity... not that I really like it, but there it is.