At the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival in Boulder, Colorado, former Secretary of State Colin Powell stated on Thursday that President George W. Bush failed to sufficiently consider how Iraq’s political situation and factors would shape the success of the U.S. mission there.
Powell said that the Adminstration didn’t plan in advance politically for becoming “an occupier of Iraq.”
“When we became liberators, we also became occupiers,” Powell told the audience. “There was no governing structure and we had to become that structure.”
During a separate panel on Iraq, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she had never known a time when “Americans are hated as much as they are today. And that’s a sobering thing.”
The Aspen Ideas Festival is a four-day conference that gathers scientists, artists, politicians, historians, educators, activists, and other influential thinkers to discuss various ideas and topics.
