October Surprise?

Liberals were expecting a Bush/Rove/Cheney October surprise, so go figure that it would actually come from Woodward, Foley and Powell.

The buzz had just started around Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial when news broke about Rep. Mark Foley's sex scandal. And now The Washington Post magazine tells us that former Secretary of State Colin Powell was fired by the Bush Administration.


The Post excerpt from Powell's official biography:

ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2004, eight days after the president he served was elected to a second term, Secretary of State Colin Powell received a telephone call from the White House at his State Department office. The caller was not President Bush but Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and he got right to the point.

"The president would like to make a change," Card said, using a time-honored formulation that avoided the words "resign" or "fire." He noted briskly that there had been some discussion of having Powell remain until after Iraqi elections scheduled for the end of January, but that the president had decided to take care of all Cabinet changes sooner rather than later. Bush wanted Powell's resignation letter dated two days hence, on Friday, November 12, Card said, although the White House expected him to stay at the State Department until his successor was confirmed by the Senate.

All this, and October has just begun! Stay tuned.