Colin Powell hit back at Rush Limbaugh, subtly, this morning on CBS' "Face the Nation."
[Limbaugh] shouldn’t have a veto over what someone thinks. And he’s an entertainer. He is a radio figure, and he is a significant one. But he’s more than that. When the chairman of the RNC, Michael Steele, issues the mildest of criticism concerning Mr. Limbaugh, and then 24 hours later the chairman of the RNC has to lay prostrate on the floor apologizing for it, and when two congressmen offer the mildest criticism of Mr. Limbaugh, they too within 24 hours have such pressure brought to bear on them that they have to change their view and apologize for criticizing him -- well, if he’s out there, he should be subject to criticism, just as I am subject to criticism.Powell seems to be suggesting that Steele shouldn't have apologized, but also he seems to knock Steele a bit, talking about him laying prostrate on the floor to apologize to Limbaugh. Then he takes Cheney on over Gitmo:
I felt Guantanamo should be closed for the past six years, and I lobbied and presented reasons to President Bush.
And Mr. Cheney is not only disagreeing with President Obama’s policy. He’s disagreeing with President Bush’s policy. President Bush stated repeatedly to international audiences and to the country that he wanted to close Guantanamo....
But Guantanamo has caused us a great deal of trouble throughout the world. And Mr. Cheney the other day said, well, we’re doing it to satisfy European intellectuals or something like that.
POWELL: No. We’re doing it to reassure Europeans, Muslims, Arabs, all the people around the world that we are a nation of law. It isn’t so much Guantanamo. It’s the people at Guantanamo. How do we deal with them? We can’t keep them locked up forever. This business about making the country less safe by bringing these people to our prison system, we have got two million people in jail in America. The highest incarceration rate in the world. And they all had lawyers. They had all had access to the writ of habeas corpus and they’re all in jail.
