from Chapter 19


When Adolfo Aguilar Zinser walked into the Security Council on Wednesday morning, the first things he noticed were the video screens and computers that had been installed for Powell's multimedia presentation. It was a sure sign, Mexico's U.N. ambassador thought with some disdain, that "this show wasn't for us. It was for an international audience, for the U.S. media."

Outside, New York City police officers directed limousine convoys through the high iron gates and onto the circular U.N. driveway, where they deposited arriving foreign ministers and dignitaries. Television satellite trucks were lined up wheel to wheel along First Avenue, and reporters stood shivering in the icy February wind as they shouted into handheld microphones.

The speech was being broadcast live around the world, but a long line of spectators, hoping to watch history being made firsthand, snaked through a white security tent. Every seat in the visitors' gallery was filled when Powell entered the chamber just before 10:30 a.m., smiling and stopping to shake hands as he made his way across the floor. By the time he took his chair at the horseshoe-shaped Council table at the center of the room, with Tenet seated behind his right shoulder and Negroponte behind his left, his features were composed in a mask of gravity.

With war hanging in the balance and the power and prestige of the United States on full display, it was a moment of high drama that owed as much to the player as to the play. A nationwide poll released just that morning had found that "when it comes to U.S. policy toward Iraq," Americans trusted Powell more than Bush by a margin of 63 to 24 percent. His reputation as the "reluctant warrior" and as the administration's leading dove--arguably its only one--would lend incalculable credibility to the case he was about to make.

"I cannot tell you everything that we know," he began after a brief introduction. "But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling." The facts and Iraq's behavior "demonstrate that Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort--no effort--to disarm as required by the international community." He moved quickly into his first demonstration, an audiotape of two Iraqi officers he said were discussing the concealment of a "modified vehicle" on November 26, 2002, the day before inspections began. As the scratchy Arabic words echoed through the chamber, an English translation appeared on the video screen.

"My colleagues," Powell said, "every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

For an hour and fifteen minutes, he condemned what he called Saddam Hussein's efforts to conceal and to lie about his weapons programs. He played more tapes, showed satellite photographs and displayed artists' renderings of the mobile biological weapons labs he said had been described in detail by eyewitnesses. He showed a picture of an aluminum tube he said had been intercepted in an Iraq-bound shipment and of the wooden crate it had been packed in. He held up a small vial of white powder--fake poison that had been carried to New York in Boucher's pocket. "Less than a teaspoon of dry anthrax . . . about this amount . . . shut down the United States Senate in the fall of 2001" when it arrived in an anonymous envelope, he said. Although there had been little suggestion of Iraqi involvement at the time, Powell implied a connection, saying that Iraq had never accounted for 25,000 liters of anthrax that U.N. inspectors in the 1990s estimated...

 

Narrator Coleen Marlo's soft, almost serene, voice may seem incongruous and appeared to this reviewer to possibly be an attempt to echo author DeYoung's voice. Marlo's delivery has a certain detachment in reading the many events in Powell's life. DeYoung goes to great lengths to establish Powell as being "non-ideological" and "pragmatic." Indeed, one hears this so much as to conclude that "pragmatism" is Powell's ideological framework. Much of the work focuses on the events of the past six years. Marlo rarely renders a unique voice for dialogue; one that stands out is an attempt at a Jamaican accent. Her attempts at military acronyms sometimes fall short but do not detract from an overall solid performance. M.T.F. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

 

"Judicious, thorough, unstinting . . . Karen DeYoung's fine new biography, with its privileged glimpses into policy battles and high-level backbiting in the Bush administration, is sure to be one of this year's top newsmaking books."

 

"It becomes clear that Powell--who harbored serious doubts about the wisdom of invasion and who frequently found himself an outsider in an administration dominated by neo-conservative hawks--was prescient about a host of issues, from the difficulties of rebuilding a postwar Iraq to the need for higher troop levels and multilateral support."

 

"DeYoung . . . imbues this story with narrative tension and a steady accumulation of detail that shows exactly how [Powell] allowed himself to be used, mastered and then cast aside by his antagonists in the administration . . . A fascinating study in bureaucratic maneuvering, groupthink and subtle self-deception."

 

"The most explosive book of the fall. An early look reveals . . . new information about the White House's preparation for war, internecine conflicts within the war Cabinet, and--most surprising--Powell's account of his unceremonious exit from the administration."

 

"DeYoung brings nuance and psychological depth to her analysis."

 

"The story of a good soldier sacrificed . . . An excellent study in leadership--and lack thereof."

 

"Diligent, sympathetic, but not uncritical . . . It doesn't pull punches."

 

"DeYoung comes into her own . . . discussing Powell's brief flirtation with presidential politics and the bureaucratic infighting that has characterized this Bush administration from the start . . . Sheds further light on a story whose broad outlines are well-known."

 

"A consistently interesting recollection of [Powell's] varied career, shot through with heavy doses of duty, honor, and rectitude."

 

"DeYoung covers Powell's entire career in this nuanced, comprehensively researched first complete biography . . . DeYoung presents her subject as above all a soldier."

 

Soldier by Karen DeYoung
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