Colin Powell and the Potemkin election system

U.S. elections have devolved into a Potemkin Villages constructed by oligarchs to deceive the people into believing their votes count.

With the overthrow of the US government in 2000 the Bush Administration dismantled over 200 years of government of, by and for the people.  Clinton is the last president in the US elected by the people.  The Help America Vote Act turned elections into Potemkin Villages constructed to give the appearance of democracy while protecting the two parties from the people.

White washing Colin Powell’s record

No war criminal has ever been so protected by the media as Colin Powell.  The NY Times’ coverage of the Powell’s hacked e-mails speaks volumes. According to the Times, “Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has long been one of the high priests of the Washington establishment, staying quiet in this year’s raucous presidential campaign while tending to his reputation as a thoughtful officer and diplomat.”

Powell’s real record

In 1963 Colin Powell, as an advisor in South Vietnam, promoted the idea that the way to discourage support for Viet Cong was to burn villages to the ground, or to “drain-the-sea.”  Other U.S. military advisers found the Powell strategy “brutal and counter-productive.”  In 1968 Powell returned to Vietnam as an officer where he investigated a complaint by a U.S. soldier claiming there were atrocities committed in My Lai. 

According to Consortium News, “after a cursory review Powell wrote "There may be isolated cases of mistreatment of civilians and POWs…. this by no means reflects the general attitude throughout the Division." Powell went on to say, “relations between Americal (sic) soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent."  Powell had told his superiors exactly what they wanted to hear, he lied.

It was a US infantryman named Ron Ridenhour who, upon his return to the US that conducted his own investigation into events in My Lai.  He interviewed participant soldiers who witnessed the slaughter and uncovered the truth. In 1968 with helicopters circling overhead, a US Division stormed into a hamlet called My Lai, rounded up old men, women and children, herded them into irrigation ditches and emptied their M-16s into the civilians and killing 347. 

Powell behind Iraq Wars

In 2003 when Powell presented his cartoonish drawings and vial of powder before the UN as proof of Saddam’s nuclear weapons, Counter Punch that recalled Powell’s previous lies to promote war. 

“The setting was eerily reminiscent of the presentation of the key propaganda event that justified the first Gulf War. At that time, also at the United Nations, the Hill & Knowlton propaganda specialists concocted the “throwing babies out of incubators” charade, starring the daughter of the Kuwait ambassador…  A bit of historical context should perhaps guard us from lending too much credence to “evidence” concocted by the US and presented by Powell himself.”

The disastrous results of Colin Powell’s lies live on today as does the media’s white washing Powell’s legacy.  The media has gleefully repeated Powell’s attacks on Donald Trump calling him “a national disgrace” and an “international pariah.”  America’s Potemkin village elections, constructed to give the appearance of democracy while protecting the politicians, will go on.  The only uncertainty is whether the American people will continue to buy the lie.

By Patricia Baeten