Secretary of State Colin Powell joined the fray over the weekend.

"I don't know what foreign leaders Senator Kerry is talking about," he told "Fox News Sunday."

"It's an easy charge, an easy assertion to make. But if he feels it is that important an assertion to make, he ought to list some names. If he can't list names, then perhaps he should find something else to talk about."

I also recall a time when Colin Powell was widely respected, and probably could have won the Presidency in a walkover if he had wanted it.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

(This is your brain. This is your brain on neo-con ideology.)

But perhaps I'm being too severe on Powell, perhaps he just can't help himself:

The Stockholm syndrome is a psychological state in which the victims of a kidnapping, or persons detained against their free will - prisoners - develop a relationship with their captor(s). This solidarity can sometimes become a real complicity, with prisoners actually helping the captors to achieve their goals or to escape police.

Maybe it's not too late. Maybe there's still a possibility that we can deprogram Powell and restore his mind before it's all turned into mint jelly. Our only chance will be to throw out the Bush/Cheney regime and immediately whisk Powell away to a remote and isolated farm somewhere in middle America where our experts can do their best to rescue this once-proud man.

FREE COLIN POWELL!!


Postscript: A number of bloggers have pointed out the irony that Powell piled on to the Bush administration dissing of Kerry for not specifying which foreign leaders he was referrring to, but just about a year ago he himself was unwilling to specify some of the countries which were members of the "coalition of the willing" which invaded Iraq.

A coalition is always a coalition of the willing. And this particular coalition of the willing now has 47 nations; 47 nations are openly members of the coalition, and have asked to be identified with this effort. And there are many other nations that for a variety of reasons don't want to be publicly identified, but are also a part of the coalition of the willing.

So, apparently, Powell really does understand that some information is said in confidence and cannot be specifically revealed for any number of reasons -- but, of course, if he didn't understand that, he couldn't function effectively as the Secretary of State, could he?

But here's my question -- why is it that when Powell was "joining in the fray" none of our nation's crack political reporters confronted him with that obvious bit of contradiction and hypocrisy?