Yet Another Reason to Dislike Colin Powell

His flunky Dick Armitage strengthened the hand of Iranian mullahs:

In a much-noted 2003 speech, President Bush said, "In Iran the demand for democracy is strong and broad ... The regime in Tehran must heed the democratic demands of the Iranian people, or lose its last claim to legitimacy."

But the whole Bush team has not been reading from the same talking points. It was a senior State Department diplomat, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who in the same year bizarrely called the Iranian regime "a democracy."

Rubin says Armitage's remark "set back the reform movement by two or three years. It really deflated morale."

If Powell runs for President, I'm going to vote for a Democrat for the first time in my life. At least the GOP Congress will keep a Democrat president from damaging foreign policy or the military too badly.