Colin Powell: Obama Should Have Given BP Oil Speech A ‘Few Weeks Earlier’

On This Week this morning former Secretary of State Colin Powell told Jake Tapper that the government needs “to move quickly and move in with – to use my favorite expression – decisive force to demonstrate that it’s doing everything that it can.”

Powell didn’t go so far as to criticize President Obama directly but he did say that Obama had failed to convey the impression that that he has been monitoring the spill from the start “and the comprehensive speech he gave the other day, I think he would have been better served and the nation would have been better served if he’d given it a few weeks earlier.”

Nor did he say that the military should take over the effort — a decision which would likely start an entirely new debate about the allocation of forces in Afghanistan — though his language certainly sounded very military-esque. Video below.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!