Wouldn't it be a great Memorial Day if ...

If we'd had a great start to it last night?

In other words, if during the "national" Memorial Day event at the Mall in DC on Sunday night, the one always hosted by Joe Mantegna and this year including Colin Powell ...

Powell actually admitted he knew that he was telling the United Nations a bunch of lies in early 2003, helping lie us into war in Iraq, a war that he knew was also breaking his old "Pottery Barn" rule about sufficient force?

You know, something like giving an actual apology for the dead — starting with the nearly 5,000 US troops killed, but, since he lied to the United Nations, also acknowledging the estimated 500,000 Iraqi war dead. (That number does not count the dead from the war-spawned ISIS movement and other things, either.)

It's didn't happen. Of course. (More related cartoons here.)

But, wouldn't it be nice?

True, he did have a weaselly half-assed non-apology "apology" four years ago, calling putting out some of this information as accurate as having "blotted my record," but the rest of that statement was blame-shuffling.

If a lot of us at the time of his speech knew stuff in there was inaccurate, Powell's sad trombone that he was forced to speak to the UN with just four days to review stuff

And, he knows it. And should be called out on it. Like this. He's still a liar, only one who is self-consciously trying to preserve his political legacy.

And, while Bush and Cheney were bad enough, in some ways, Powell was worse.

Beyond his Pottery Barn rule (and he surely knew that Don Rumsfeld's military force plans were inadequate), a career military man lying us into war, and lying soldiers to their deaths, is even worse than a civilian doing that.

And, at least one active-duty field general, Lucian Truscott, even apologized to his own dead from WWII.

And, beyond that, a straight non-apology from Shrub, or a snarl from Darth Chaney, is better in my book than a non-apology "apology" that's about a political legacy.

Also, he's spawned elected civilian politicians getting even more nutty since then, like potential GOP presidential candidate Huckleberry J. Butchmeup, among others, blaming Obama for the Iraq War not being a "success." Strange that he doesn't blame Powell/Bush/Cheney for the Afghanistan War not being a success because of all the force we diverted to Iraq.

Of course, the biggest apology is owed by tea partiers who continue to lie about what led to Memorial Day in the first place.