Colin Powell was on Face The Nation today. Bob Schieffer lead the interview by asking him first about a recent volley of remarks that one might say started with Powell critizing conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh during Q&A at a cybersecurity conference, as reported by Chris Strohm of Congress Daily. Then Cheney went on the record, also on Face The Nation, after being asked by Schieffer, saying he’d pick Limbaugh over Powell. Powell’s response this morning was, in part, to affirm he still saw himself as a Republican and to invoke Jack Kemp as an example he admired.

Washington’s stenographers must’ve started scribbling as soon as they heard this because that has become the headline of the day at both the Washington Post (“Still a Republican, Powell Urges Party to Become More Inclusive“) and the New York Times (“Powell Still a Republican, Despite Party Differences“).

But Schieffer also asked Powell if he agreed that EITs were effective and when he knew about them. Powell claimed to have been kept apart, without direct knowledge, and that the CIA “had to be given some room” (really, given their history of abuse?). Schieffer didn’t ask Powell why he didn’t insist on knowing the nature of the elicitations in which were given to him and his aid, Lawrence Wilkerson, as evidence for claims he had to make to the world.

While admitting being party to some discussions, Powell pleaded ignorance, saying “I don’t know know what I don’t know.” Logic hard to deny, but he’s really not saying anything there. Almost Rumsfeldian.

At the same time, in saying “we” used “EITs” — a pseudonym for torture — he admits to his complicity in human rights abuses. He seems to think it was OK to do that, but maybe just for a year or two. “It’s easy now to look back … to say … you shouldn’t have done anything. … Now we see that these [tactics] are not appropriate,” Powell said.

The Geneva Conventions didn’t make that clear before? Isn’t there some contradiction suggested in what Powell admits being a party to and what he says he didn’t know at the time? Such questions were not pressed in the studio.

If we take Powell at his word, he seems to have conveniently not known and not asked (and if he asked and got no answer, still proceeded in his role as an apparent cog rather than a principal), despite his responsibility.

The importance of this issue and the overall shallowness of Powell’s replies, as a one-time “principal,” seems more critical to me than his political affiliation and political name-calling. To me this subject of national security, the answers, the questions and the un-asked questions would make a more substantive lead.

Isn’t it relevant to ask why Powell was making claims apparently based on assertions with little context from an agency (CIA) with a known track record of lying? An agency whose other primary source for other claims (“Curveball”) was challenged by the Defense Intelligence Agency? This was when Powell was Secretary of State and reports say that the State Department’s own Bureau of Intelligence and Research was skeptical of these claims.

My friend Sam Husseini was outside Face The Nation, and followed-up to ask Powell about torture that produced lies used in support of the specious claims Powell made before the United Nations. Jonathan Schwarz sees a disparity between Powell’s comments now and what he said before the UN.

Ray McGovern, an ex-CIA analyst (who once had a sting briefing the first President Bush) and Catholic activist, has written a piece based in part on an email interview with Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell’s chief aide during his reign over the State Department, that should leave even more questions in your mind. One might even wonder if Powell is leaving Wilkerson out to dry.

Updated (26 May 2009): Robert Parry at Consortium News follows-up on Powell’s Face The Nation appearance and Sam’s question, bringing along analysis that goes deeper into Powell’s career.

In January of 2003 I attended a press conference held by the Joe Foss Institute, commemorating the recent passing of their namesake and announcing the launch of a program where veterans were to go to schools and talk of their service in hopes of inspiring children to want to join the military. Foss was concerned that “there might be an exodus of draft age Americans in the event of war,” according to literature being handed out at the time.

The event, which included a luncheon that I missed, was reportedly attended by then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Representative William Janklow. I saw neither Wolfowitz nor Janklow; it is my understanding that Wolfowitz left before I arrived and I don’t know about Janklow. Honorary spokespersons for the effort included John Glenn and Oliver North, as well as Jack Kemp. They were made available to the press for a question and answer session.

The backdrop was a specious drumbeat for war with Iraq and I was skeptical of the most of the named figureheads of this organization’s effort. So were my producers, who worked daily to surface news about Iraq and policy critiques to widen the debate on the prospect of a war which had not yet started but seemed fated to some. (An aside: The body of work aggregated and produced by Peace Watch and others, including the Institute for Public Accuracy, where I also once worked, is evidence to me that there was reason to be unconvinced of claims before the war and that the lack of persistent skepticism in some media and on the Hill wasn’t merely a case “if we knew then what we know now.”)

When the press conference opened-up, I was allowed the first question.

I was already nervous and uncomfortable under hot lights in a black turtleneck and was now caught off guard at the invitation to be the first voice heard from the scrum. I squawked out my question, “What confidence should American youth have in these individuals, when it comes to examples of matters as far as life and death go….” I went on to paraphrase my understanding of Wolfowitz’s, Kemp’s, and North’s seemingly hypocritical relationship to the concept of honor-bound volunteer service to one’s country in wartime. I didn’t even touch the veracity of the claims behind the current push for war and the endorsement some had given it.

I didn’t say it so well, and I couldn’t have said it all, but this is what I had stacked-up as the evidence for my question:

My attention was primarily on the invited attended of Paul Wolfowitz, who reportedly attended and probably did so in his capacity as a DOD official, who was also among the vanguard of the neoconservative movement, who never served in war but was an architect of the looming war from his early participation in PNAC.

Then we had Oliver North, a man who had been convicted of crimes with regards to the Iran-Contra scandal, which reminded us of the government’s potential to institutionally deceive the public about its foreign policy and military activities. The convictions against North were later overturned on technicalities, not for lack of evidence, but for the eerily convenient inability of the DoJ to execute a prosecution of a White House official by the book.

And Kemp, to me, had a George Bush-like track record in the military. Serving in the reserves he had a relatively easy burden compared to those activated and later drafted as the Vietnam War began to heat up; it seemed convenient that he was dismissed from service for having a bad knee. No risk of being activated, excluded from being drafted.

That might have been unremarkable, except that he then went on to play professional football while the war raged, before running for Congress. Now here he was, riding on that credibility as part of an effort to encourage others to join the military as a war built on even more transparent distortions and lies than Vietnam was looming, while the largest popular protest against an American war was shaping-up before it was to start.

It didn’t come out of my mouth that well, but that was where I was headed.

The room fell silent for an awkward moment.

Gus Grant, the chairman of the Foss institute, was MCing the event and responded with a coverall response, trying to save anyone from feeling obligated to directly answer my question. “Let me say I’m very proud of everybody at this table and all of their achievements.”

The luncheon attendees clapped in praise of this retort.

I was taken aback — had Grant just lumped John Glenn in with Oliver North? (I wasn’t thinking of Jack Kemp much.)

Glenn seemed amused, possibly by my obviously nervous question and by the response as well.

North just turned red and pursed his lips for a moment.

And I felt like I was about to collapse.

But then Kemp bit.

He spoke up and spoke directly to me and said he’d like to answer my question, but after the press conference. He said he’d like to talk to me directly, he’d be around. It almost seemed friendly, but with a look as if to say “you’ve got it all wrong, son.”

Now my focus was exclusively on Kemp. My actual question had not been answered, and they had moved on, but Kemp had promised to be available. I was still nervous, but looking forward to him sharing his point of view.

But then half-way through the press conference he got up, he said he had to leave for a prior engagement or something like that. He apologized to Grant with nary a glance towards me and he hurried out. I chased him through the lobby of the Press Club as he walked briskly to the elevators. I asked the question of his military service again, if he’d clarify. As I caught-up he simply said “I served. I served, I served in the military.” You can hear the elevator chime on the tape. Kemp stepped into the cab and the elevator doors snapped behind him.

“But not on active duty, and how could you go on to play pro football if you weren’t fit for war?,” I should have asked.

Just as I could’ve been sharper in expressing my grasp of the facts and the rationale of my query, the original question as asked might have been disarmed completely by Kemp. If only he weren’t running away from me hadn’t been apparently disingenuous about his availability and wanting to set the record straight.

It was surely “gotcha” journalism, but I think it was an appropriate attempt to sting — risking being proven remarkably wrong with a direct and detailed answer from the very subjects of my inquiry — and current events further justified challenging the qualifications of advocates of militarism.

At the time of my questioning we had just seen Kemp’s alma mater, the US House of Representatives, forfeit their power and responsibility to declare war and hand it over to President Bush. The same broadcast that aired my encounter with Kemp also included Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee talking with Peace Watch about her attempt to repeal that move, but barring a miracle cross-aisle flip (which did not happen), we had seen the majority of this body join the ranks of the “chickenhawks.” Kemp, North, and Wolfowitz simply seemed way out ahead of them.

For a public figure to advocate a path others should take, his own fidelity to that idea, particularly when he had opportunity to demonstrate it, is fair game for inquiry and challenge. Kemp did not seem to think so that afternoon. Those who don’t demonstrate such action when it comes to war, but advocate war and others to fight are what some call “chickenhawks.” On that day Jack Kemp appeared to be trying to outrun that label rather than face it straight-on.