Colin Powell says some “adult supervision” could have kept an altercation between Henry Louis Gates, a black Harvard University professor, and Sgt. James Crowley, a white policeman, from blowing up into a “federal case” about race in America.

The former U.S secretary of state, who says he has been racially profiled “many times,”  weighed in on the arrest of his friend “Skip” Gates on Tuesday evening, telling CNN’s Larry King that it was a fascinating story that unfolded in several acts.

Gates was arrested at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and charged with disorderly conduct. Crowley had responded to the call when a neighbor reported a possible break-in at Gates’ home. Gates had just returned home from a trip to China and found his door jammed. This is how the two men came face-to-face.

“This is where act two begins. We’re not quite sure what the nature of their conversation was, but apparently it disturbed Sgt. Crowley and apparently Dr. Gates was disturbed by being challenged in his own home,” Powell said.

“Then it becomes a federal case when the president feels obliged to say something about it, ” Powell said.

The charges against Gates were quickly dropped, but Powell says the incident might have been resolved in a different manner had cooler heads prevailed.

“I’m saying that Skip, perhaps in this instance, might have waited a while, come outside, talked to the officer and that might have been the end of it,” Powell said.  “I think he should have reflected on whether or not this was the time to make that big a deal.”

And the police could have handled things differently too, Powell said.

“Once they felt they had to bring Dr. Gates out of the house and to handcuff him, I would have thought at that point some adult supervision would have stepped in and said, OK, look, it is his house… Take the handcuffs off.  Good night Dr. Gates.”

Dr. Gates and Sgt. Crowley will meet again on Thursday at the White House, this time over beer with President Barack Obama.  Who’s bringing the adult supervision?

With General Motors expected to file for bankruptcy next week, former Vice President Dick Cheney said on Wednesday that he wanted the company to take that step months ago when George W. Bush was still president.

“Some of us at the time wanted GM to go bankrupt, go to Chapter 11,” Cheney said in an interview with CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report”. But Cheney apparently was in the minority with that view at the time.

“The decision was made that, in the final analysis, since our administration was almost over and a brand-new team was about to take over that the president wanted, in effect, not to take a step that wasn’t necessarily going to be followed by his successor, but rather to set up a situation which the new guys could address that issue and make a decision about what the long-term policy was going to be,” he said.

Cheney, who has been in a very public fight with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden over national security policies, took on the Obama administration’s economic policies in the interview with CNBC’s Larry Kudlow.

Asked whether he agreed with criticism that Obama was pursuing some kind of socialist agenda, Cheney  said he would not use that label but did not like what he was seeing.

“I agree with the criticism without using the labels. I don’t want to get into trying to label President Obama. He’s our president. At this point, he’s the only one we’ve got. He won the election, and he obviously is entitled to pursue those policies that he wants to pursue,” Cheney said.

“What we’ve been seeing, though, and what’s been advocated by the president and what looks to be in store if he’s successful is that we’re seeing a vast expansion, not only the power of the federal government over the private sector but also in terms of spending,” he said.

The former vice president also tried to take back a rebuke of retired General Colin Powell.  Cheney previously said that the former secretary of state in the Bush administration had left the Republican party.

“Well, we’re happy to have General Powell in the Republican Party,” Cheney said.

For more Reuters political news, click here.

- Photo credit: Josh Roberts (Cheney before giving a speech on national security on May 21.)

Colin Powell wants you to help out more.

The former Secretary of State and Joint Chiefs chairman urged Americans on Friday to help out their country by volunteering, and pointed to a Web site set up by Barack Obama’s inaugural committee where they can find opportunities in their communities.

Powell said ordinary Americans could help Obama dig the country out of its economic rut by helping out in nearby schools or nursing homes.

“I think there’s a fervor for the new administration coming in, and I think the new president can tap into this fervor through this program,” Powell said at a news conference.

Powell, 71, served as Secretary of State for Republican President George W. Bush but endorsed Obama, a Democrat, shortly before the Nov. 4 election.

He said he had no interest in taking on a formal role in the Obama administration.

“I have not been offered a job and I’ve kind of made it clear that I’m not looking for a position,” he said.

Obama and his vice-president elect, Joe Biden will along with their families spend the day before the inauguration on a volunteer service project, inaugural commmittee spokeswoman Linda Douglas said.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (Powell announces a volunteer initiative in Washington on Jan. 9, 2009)

WASHINGTON - The largest U.S. Islamic civil rights group was among the first to congratulate President-Elect Democrat Barack Obama, a man who some opponents tried to portray as a Muslim because of the childhood years he spent in Indonesia.

“President-elect Obama’s victory sends the unmistakable message that America is a nation that offers equal opportunity to people of all backgrounds,” the Council on American Islamic Relations said in a statement just minutes after Obama’s victory speech in Chicago.

Nihad Awad, executive director of the group, said they hoped to offer the Obama administration some support and advice.

“We look forward to having the opportunity to work with the Obama administration in protecting the civil rights of all Americans, projecting an accurate image of America in the Muslim world and playing a positive role in securing our nation,” Awad said.

Obama, who will be the first black U.S. president and whose middle name is Hussein, is a Christian. But throughout the campaign, false rumors circulated on the Internet that he was Muslim and therefore not a suitable candidate for the White House.

Son of a Kenyan father and white American mother, Obama spent part of his childhood in largely Muslim Indonesia.

More than 20 million copies of a film called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” were included as advertising supplements in newspapers across the country, many in battleground states.

CAIR lashed out against the film, which was distributed by a private group unaffiliated with the McCain campaign and featured suicide bombers, children being trained with guns, and a Christian church said to have been defiled by Muslims.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican and African American, endorsed Obama last month saying that he was troubled by the attempts to link Obama to Islam.

“Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?” he asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion ‘he’s a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists.’ This is not the way we should be doing it in America,” Powell said.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton (Obama speaks at his victory rally)

WASHINGTON - Colin Powell, a retired U.S. Army general and former secretary of state in the Bush administration, criticized fellow Republicans on Sunday and endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

The Republican Party “has moved more to the right than I would like to see it,” Powell told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Powell described Obama as an inspirational figure and denounced some efforts by White House contender John McCain and other Republicans to defeat him.

He ripped into McCain for trying to tie Obama to Bill Ayers, a one-time violent anti-Vietnam War activist who decades later served with Obama on a charity board.

“What they’re trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings,” Powell said. “This goes too far and I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow.”

Powell said he was also troubled that some members of the Republican Party — not McCain — have said, “‘Well you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’”

“He is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian,” Powell said. “But the really right answer is ‘what if he is?’ Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no.”

Powell said Obama understands the issues and has reached out across across ethnic, racial and generational lines.

“He speaks authoritatively. He speaks with great insight into the challenges we’re facing of a military and political and economic nature,” Powell said. “He has both style and substance — he has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president.”

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage

Photo credit: Reuters/Alessia Pierdomenico (Colin Powell at an event on London on Oct. 14)

ROANOKE, Va. - Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said he has “no idea” if former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican, is about to endorse him.

Powell, a four-star Army general who has advised three presidents including current President George W. Bush, is scheduled to appear on the NBC Sunday talk show, “Meet the Press”.

That has sparked speculation that he could throw his support to Obama during that appearance. Earlier this year Powell had been mentioned as a possible running mate to Obama’s rival, John McCain.

Asked on Friday at the Total Elegance hair salon whether he would win the retired general’s endorsement, Obama replied, “I have no idea.”

During the Democratic primary, Powell offered some praise for Obama in a discussion on ABC’s “Good Morning America”, saying at the time that while the first-term Illinois senator did not have a long foreign policy resume, he was probably someone who could “learn quickly.”

Obama said afterwards that the former Secretary of State was someone he consulted on occasion and someone whose advice he valued. The campaign was keeping mum on whether the two had had more recent contact. 

Powell, who like Obama is African American, also had kind words for the speech on race that the candidate delivered in March.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Alessia Pierdomenico (Powell in London)

Colin Powell was President George W. Bush’s first secretary of state, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s supporting the presidential bid of fellow Republican John McCain.

“I’m looking at all three candidates, I know them all very, very well, I consider myself a friend of each and every one of them, and I have not decided who I will vote for yet,” Powell said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Powell, like McCain, is a military veteran who publicly supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and he served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Gulf War in 1991.

But while McCain wants a continued U.S. military presence there, Powell said the armed forces will simply be unable to maintain 140,000 troops in Iraq beyond next year.

Whoever is president next year, “they will face a military force, a United States military force, that cannot sustain, continue to sustain, 140,000 people deployed in Iraq,” Powell said. “They will have to continue to draw down at some pace.”

Powell said he was impressed with fellow African-American Barack Obama, despite the Democratic Illinois senator’s relative lack of experience.

“Sen. Obama, he didn’t have a lot of experience in running a presidential campaign, did he, but he seems to know how to organize a task and he seems to know how to apply resources to a problem at hand,” Powell said.

“So that gives you some indication that (despite) his inexperience in foreign affairs and domestic affairs, he may be somebody who can learn quickly.”

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

Photo credit: REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won (Powell speaks at the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul October 17, 2007)