If you can't stand the heat....

There was a time when Colin Powell was regarded as a man of honor. To the extent that evaluation was true, the last couple of years of endorsing lies must have been taxing. The strain may be beginning to show. I noted how on the morning of February 3 he said that if he'd known before the war that Iraq had no banned weapons it would have "change[d] the political calculus" before reversing himself to the "justified no matter what" White House line that afternoon. Now comes this from the Washington Post for February 11, with the tip coming from Atrios.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, a retired four-star general known for his even temperament, paused yesterday during a congressional hearing to berate a Hill staffer for shaking his head as Powell offered a defense of his prewar statements on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. ...

Powell was recalling for the panel his review of the prewar intelligence. "I went and lived at the CIA for about four days to make sure that nothing was," he began, when he paused and glared at a staffer seated behind the members of Congress.

"Are you shaking your head for something, young man, back there?" Powell asked. "Are you part of these proceedings?"

Powell's unusual remarks threatened to derail the hearing. Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a 12-year veteran of the House, objected, "Mr. Chairman, I've never heard a witness reprimand a staff person in the middle of a question."

The testy exchanges among committee members that followed resulted in Henry Hyde, who chairs the House International Relations Committee before which Powell was testifying, telling members to calm down despite the "very emotional subject."

Powell also got bent out of shape when Brown referred to Bush as "a president who may have been AWOL."

"You don't know what you are talking about," Powell snapped. "Let's not go there."

The White House is getting very, very testy about some of this. I think they're in trouble and they know it.

Update: Edited to correct the date of Powell's WMD statements and to insert a link to the earlier post. The wording (but not the meaning) of the quote was also wrong; it has been corrected.