The Powell Excuse

“It ain’t as bad as you think,” Secretary of State Colin Powell proclaimed in his 1995 autobiography “My American Journey.” “Have a vision,” he wrote. But he didn’t -- at least not one that caught the president’s fancy -- and so it was. As hard as he may have tried to follow his famous rules, Powell seemed inclined to bending them, breaking them and allowing himself exceptions.

(Rules taken from “My American Journey”; exceptions from public comments and reports.)

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Rule: “Don’t be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment.”

Exception: “The photos that I am about to show you are sometimes hard for the average person to interpret, hard for me.” -- speech to the United Nations, Feb. 5, 2003

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Rule: “Remain calm. Be kind.”

Exception: “Are you shaking your head for something, young man, back there? Are you part of these proceedings?” -- comments to a House staff member during testimony defending his prewar statements about Iraq’s presumed weapons of mass destruction, Feb. 11, 2004

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Rule: “Don’t take counsel of your fears or naysayers.

Exception: “I’m sleeping like a baby too. Every two hours, I wake up, screaming.” -- to a British diplomat, when told the president was sleeping well on the eve of the Iraq war

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Rule: “Check small things.”

Exception: Photo of alleged WMD component (U.N. speech).

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Rule: “Keep looking beneath surface appearances ... and don’t shrink from doing so because you might not like what you find.”

Exception: Drawing of alleged mobile weapons lab (U.N. speech ).

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Rule: “Untidy truth is better than smooth lies that unravel in the end anyway.”

Exception: “Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts corroborated by many sources.” -- speech to the U.N.

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Rule: “You can’t make someone else’s choices. You shouldn’t let someone else make yours.”

Exception: “ ‘Yes, sir,’ I answered, ‘I’ll do it.’ I had no choice.” -- to Ronald Reagan after being asked to serve as deputy national security advisor, in “My American Journey”

-- Compiled by Michael Soller