Why Powell Decided

Colin Powell talked yesterday on Meet The Press [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo_WZi0eV1U] about one of the ugliest sides to this ugly election - the continual unabashed discrimination against Muslims and Arab-Americans. That idiot woman who said "I don't trust Obama. I have read about him and he's an Arab" the other week was vocalizing the inner thoughts of a mass of people who have read emails falsely claiming Obama is Muslim. Its a confusion that McCain is happy to go along with, and didn't for instance say at that gathering "He's a Christian."

Powell, who said he has watched and waited and decided on the basis of who performed best over a number of criteria, also spoke of the life and death of a man who no doubt would have been jeered at and threatned by the myopic knucklers that turn up to McCain and Palin's rallies.

He was speaking about Karim Rashad Sultan Kahn, a man who lived his life in a way that would confuse the knucklers;

Powell: "I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery. And she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards - Purple Heart, Bronze Star; showed that he died in Iraq; gave his date of birth, date of death. He was twenty years old. And then at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian cross. It didn't have a Star of David. It had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Karim Rashad Sultan Kahn. And he was an American. He was born in New Jersey, he was fourteen years old at the time of 9/11 and he waited until he could go serve his country and he gave his life."

Al Giordano has the entire trascript over at The Field [http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/]