WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell ( news - web sites) plans to step down at the end of President Bush ( news - web sites)'s current term in 2005, Time magazine reported on Monday.
The magazine quoted sources close to Powell as saying that he has a firm plan for an exit after serving out the entire term.
“He will have done a yeoman’s job of contributing over the four years,” a close aide was quoted as saying. “but that’s enough.”
The aide stressed that Powell was determined to serve out the entire term, even if the United States launches an invasion of Iraq, which Powell has fought to delay or derail.
If Bush wins a second term, only the imminence of a major diplomatic victory – in the Middle East, for example – could induce Powell to stay on the job a short while longer, the magazine said.
In an interview with BBC television scheduled for broadcast on Sept. 8, Powell struck a moderate tone in the debate over whether to invade Iraq, insisting that the return of weapons inspectors to Baghdad was a priority.
Until an excerpt from the interview was released on Sunday, Powell had been a silent voice in the public debate. A senior State Deportment official said on Friday the secretary, seen as the leading dove in an administration dominated by hawks, was keeping his powder dry until Bush decides how he intends to convert his policy of “regime change” into a plan of action.
**AS THE PRESIDENT took questions, the Defense secretary chimed in confidently, and Bush treated him like the “matinee idol” he once joked Rumsfeld had become. “Mr. Secretary, would you like to say a few words?” Bush asked. “I want to learn how you answer questions. They tell me you’re quite good at it.” Since the U.S. military victory over the Taliban in December, Rumsfeld has become—”the big stud in town,” as one Washington official describes him, famed for his frank talk at the podium about killing Al Qaeda and imperious but jocular manner. Even some White House press aides are said to study Rumsfeld’s briefing transcripts for tips. So rampant is Rummy worship at the White House that one insider says, “I think they’re kind of afraid of him.”
The scene in Texas was also about the man who wasn’t there—and who represents the opposite pole in a foreign-policy team ever-riven by infighting, especially over Iraq. Colin Powell was off vacationing with friends in the Hamptons, and in an atmosphere of war talk, the absence of the Bush team’s leading moderate was widely noted. Bush went out of his way to stress that the Crawford meeting was about missile defense and “contingency plans,” not Iraq. But it was yet another reminder of Rummy’s ascendancy and the partial eclipse of Powell, especially since the war on terror began. After all, it was only 18 months ago, at another dusty Texas stop, that Bush had emotionally introduced his new secretary of State as “an American hero,” saying Powell “believes as I do that we must work closely with our allies and friends [and] project our strength and our purpose with humility.”
Today humility seems in short supply in the Bush administration, critics say. This time the complaints aren’t coming from Europeans, or most Democrats, but Bush’s fellow Republicans, many of them frustrated moderate allies of Powell’s
“It is interesting to me that many of those who want to rush this country into war and think it would be so quick and easy don’t know anything about war,” said Sen. Chuck Hagel (a longtime Powell friend and fellow Vietnam vet). “They come at it from an intellectual perspective versus having sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off. I try to speak for those ghosts of the past a little bit.” Cheney, Wolf-owitz and Perle all avoided Vietnam—Rumsfeld was a Navy pilot between wars—and Bush was one of the “sons of the powerful” whom Powell, in his 1995 memoirs, condemned as a group for managing “to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units.”**
