"Powell thought that he could use the credit he had banked as the president's 'good cop' in foreign policy to rein in Ariel Sharon, he was wrong".

Seen by those he worked with including his subordinate under-secretary, John Bolton, as a peacemaker, Powell's conciliatory style forced America to the United Nations table to prevent a unilateralist attack on Iraq in 2002, a decision finally taken by President Bush, which many were not pleased with.

His "arts of diplomacy, patience and negotiation" wore thin in the Bush Administration over issues such as 'preventing' a war with China over the US EP-3 Spy plane incident in 2001, and his position against regime change policies of Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz who advocates "ending states who sponsor [alleged] terrorism".

"Powell thought that he could use the credit he had banked as the president's good cop. He was wrong"

Such a strategy never endeared him to his hawkish colleagues in the Bush camp, the likes of Dick Cheney, John Bolton, Donald Rumsfeld and Condeleza Rice. Cheney and Bolton both supporters of a foreign policy to rid Iran of alleged nuclear weapons were are the heart of plans to have him replaced. Both of them neo-conservatives and pro-Israeli supporters "lobbied Mr Bush to replace him [Powell]".

With the United Nations being unable to 'force' Israel to comply with UN resolutions to surrender usurped Palestinian land. The inability of Israel's American ally to urge the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as she does with other nations, to get Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, designed to prevent the global spread of nuclear weapons, of which Israel has over 200 warheads  thus preventing Israel from being subject to inspections or the threat of sanctions by the IAEA.

Was the reason to rid the 'White' house of Powell just about the Israeli-Palestine question or does it have more to do with a future plan that the hawks in the 'Whitehouse' want to see come to fruition? An attack against Iran for developing nuclear technology that they see as a threat to Israel. Germany and Russia are helping to build Iran's nuclear capacity and the country is being engaged by Europe to the anger of America now losing her sphere of controlling influence over events in that strategic region of the world - the Persian Gulf.

Perhaps Iran should be minded that Europeans, Russians, Canadians, Australians, Americans, the British and wherever they are in the countries of the earth, are 'all' one big 'Caucasian' family - though they disagree often - whose control of the planet based on the strategic positioning around the globe easily collude and connive to maintain the status quo.