Actually, there is an explanation for Powell's inaction, and it has little to do with his uniformed past. True, he is a military man, accustomed to falling in line; as Caspar Weinberger once put it, "Colin is essentially a good soldier. He does his duty and carries out orders." Habits formed over a lifetime are hard to break, and Powell's natural inclination is to swallow his differences and salute. Yet it's the fact that those differences are never strongly held that mainly accounts for Powell's inaction. He has opinions but few, if any, real convictions, and there's no ground he won't cede in the interest of expediency and ambition. Says Richard Kohn, "He's a man with no core of ideology, vision, or principle other than to serve the United States."

- Colin Powell Misoverestimated

Tapped Blog Edition: Tapped has a lot of good stuff lately, especially since they address various themes I myself like to express. Arianna Huffington addresses the importance of blogs [you can add message boards and the like] to passionately keep alive stories that the mainstream press report and soon go on to the next story. Only by passionate (and/or diligent) repetition and sifting through various sources (a hard job, one I respect immensely from doing it myself in a small way) will the public truly "get" things.

One issue so discussed is how the Bush Administration corruptly ties together various threats as if they are a united whole. Also, the fact that an administration that is supposed to be made up of grownups that are not afraid to aggressively fight our enemies turn out to be strangely passive in various ways (especially Dr. Rice). Their incompetence is obviously a main theme, especially given the other side is loathe to admit error. Finally, some follow the theme of the quoted article and suggest the public (and even libs) honor the "good guys" like Colin Powell too much.

As to Dr. Rice, to update my Instapundit rebuttal [see 4/9], I offer this from the LAT: She is already engaged in a semantic tangle with critics of her repeated claim that Clarke never presented her with a plan for combating Al Qaeda. In her testimony last week, Rice acknowledged receiving a memo from him soon after taking office, but characterized it not as a plan but rather a "set of ideas." No wonder William Safire, a conservative, is also "Mr. Language Person" -- you need to be with the semantics prevalent in this administration.

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Googling: For some reason, an old citation of something I posted over in the Slate Fray a year ago now shows up on Google. I have this idea that references to me or my material are out there, but inferior search capabilities are not letting me find them. This is a problem given my ego.