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POWELL'S PRAISE WILL SWING IT FOR OBAMA


Racist voters may turn against Obama

Friday October 24,2008

By Frederick Forsyth

THERE comes a moment in every contest when you instinctively know, whoever you may have started out backing, that it is over. So it must seem with the American presidential contest.

As of this weekend it would take something close to a miracle for John McCain to snatch it back. I believe there were two tipping points, both in the past few days.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words but one image alone must have destroyed Senator McCain. Coming off the podium after Barack Obama had convincingly won the Long Island debate, the younger man strode confidently and upright in the lead.

Behind him the oldster from Arizona was bent almost double, his tongue halfway down his shirt.

It was explained he had almost mistaken the exit door and, seeking to recover, made an unfortunate grimace.

But the image was of a frail old thing hardly in control of his marbles. Sandy, the CO of this farm, said it reminded her of the image of Homo erectus trailed by the missing link in the development of our species. In minutes that picture went round the world.

Tipping point two was the passionate endorsement of Obama (Democrat) by former (Republican) Secretary of State Colin Powell.

What counted was not the career or high office of that man but the respect in which he is held. Powell started out as a simple black soldier in what was then a white man?s army. He rose to a commission, then onwards to a four-star general.

He saw combat in Vietnam, his medals are not pasteboard.

As Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff he headed the military machine during the first Gulf War ? a calm, rational foil to the explosive in-theatre commander Norman Schwarzkopf.

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Eight years later, out of uniform, his reputation was still such that he was urged to stand for the 2000 presidency. Either party would have adopted him. It was his wife Alma who begged for the quieter life and he conceded to her.

But in 2001 he felt able to agree to become George Bush?s Secretary of State. Two years later came his moment of humiliation.

Impelled by the unlovely duo of Cheney and Rumsfeld, Bush was determined to invade Iraq. Excuses had to be found. When history comes to be written, that invasion will surely rate as the biggest Anglo-American debacle of all time; it has already lasted as long as the Second World War. It was accomplished by two deeply dense and, in our case, lying heads of government.

Powell was persuaded to stand up at the United Nations with a vial of baking soda, claim it was anthrax and tell the world Iraq was full of it.

It was supposed to be his ?Adlai Stevenson? moment, recalling the day in 1962 when the US Ambass­ador to the UN showed the world the U-2 photographs of the Soviet missiles in Cuba and proved Khrushchev was lying through
his teeth.

Weeks later we all knew there was not a grain of anthrax in Iraq. The weapons-of-mass-destruction scare had been a hoax and millions had fallen for it, including Colin Powell ? a thoroughly honourable man.

Only a soldier?s loyalty to his Commander- in-Chief prevented him resigning on the spot. At the 2004 election he walked away into private life.

Now he has spoken and his endorsement of Obama, the Demo­c­ratic candidate, coming from one of the few untarnished stars of the Republican side, will surely clinch it.

It would take an earthquake to shift things now. The only chance is that there are enough covert racist voters who, in the privacy of the poll booth, will refuse to back a black man.

Should that happen the image of the US as the land of the free and the home of the brave would be a mere memory.


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