Up a notch in my estimation

[mcroft]

I have been in the 5% of the country with an unfavorable view of Colin Powell for some time. It goes back to his public statements regarding Manuel Noriega. Now nobody is crying for Noriega, but Powell came out and told flat untruths about what he'd been doing to make the case that he was a bad guy. I have no idea why they didn't just use his actual bad deeds against him. This was part of the pattern with his similar conduct in the drumbeat towards Iraq.

Here's what he had to say on Meet The Press:

"Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no. That's not America. Is there something wrong with a seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion that he is a Muslim and might have an association with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel particularly strong about this because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay, was of a mother at Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone, and it gave his awards - Purple Heart, Bronze Star - showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death, he was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the head stone, it didn't have a Christian cross. It didn't have a Star of David. It has a crescent and star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was fourteen years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could serve his country and he gave his life."

So, yeah, still not a fan, but this impresses me. This needed to be said. This is the kind of thing I could've respected from a Republican candidate for President. Pity it's not what we're getting. This is the guy we need to talk about, not Joe the F'cking Plumber.

Photo via "The New Yorker" and quote from Meet The Press.