Summarized -- Powell Speaks Out on Domestic Spy Program - New York Times

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/politics/26powell.html

Powell said on Sunday that it would not have been "that hard" for  
President Bush to obtain warrants for eavesdropping on domestic  
telephone and Internet activity, but that he saw "nothing wrong" with  
the decision not to do so.

...He spoke on the ABC News program "This Week" about the disclosure,  
first reported in The New York Times, that Mr. Bush had authorized  
the National Security Agency to intercept communications by Americans  
without approval from a special foreign intelligence court.

Though Mr. Powell stopped short of criticizing Mr. Bush, his  
suggestion that there was "another way to handle it" was another  
example of his parting company on a critical issue with the president  
he served for four years.

This fall, Mr. Powell broke with the administration on the issue of  
torture, endorsing a move by Senator John McCain, Republican of  
Arizona, to pass a measure in Congress banning cruel, inhuman and  
degrading treatment of detainees by all American authorities,  
including intelligence personnel.

...Since leaving office at the end of Mr. Bush's first term, Mr.  
Powell has been involved in several business and public service  
ventures, including the establishment of the Colin Powell Center for  
Policy Studies at City College of New York, his alma mater.

On Iraq, Mr. Powell repeated earlier statements that differed  
somewhat from those of Mr. Bush, saying he did not know whether he  
would have advocated going to war with Iraq if he had known that the  
country had no stockpiles of illicit weapons.

Referring to the case for going to war if there were no such weapons,  
Mr. Powell said he would have told the president, "You have a far  
more difficult case, and I'm not sure you can make the case in the  
absence of those stockpiles."

Mr. Powell said he expected American troop levels to continue to go  
down in the coming year out of necessity, because it will become  
difficult to sustain the current high levels and because the effort  
to train Iraqis should be successful.

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