‘You break it, you own it’
COLIN POWELL
WASHINGTON: Colin Powell became the first black United States secretary of state and top military officer during decades as one of America’s most prominent leaders, but his reputation was tainted in 2003 when he touted spurious intelligence at the United Nations to make the case for war with Iraq despite deep misgivings.
Powell, who died on Tuesday at age 84 from complications of Covid19 despite being fully vaccinated, was the son of Jamaican immigrants who rose to hold senior military and civilian posts and helped guide American actions during two Iraq wars.
Powell was one of America’s foremost black figures for decades. He was named to senior posts by three Republican presidents and climbed the ranks of the US military as it regained its vigor after the trauma of the Vietnam War.
Powell, who was wounded in Vietnam, served as US national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan from 1987 to 1989. As a fourstar army general, he was chairman of the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush during the 1991 Gulf War in which USled forces expelled Iraqi troops from neighbouring Kuwait.
A moderate Republican and a pragmatist, Powell considered a bid to become the first black president in 1996 but his wife Alma’s worries about his safety helped him decide otherwise. In 2008 and again in 2012, he broke with his party to endorse Democrat Barack Obama, who became the first black person elected to the White House.
Powell, who became increasingly disenchanted with his party amid its further shift to the right and embrace of Donald Trump, subsequently endorsed Democrats Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden last year in their presidential races against the businessmanturnedpolitician. Powell called Trump a habitual liar who posed a danger to the United States.
Powell will forever be associated with his presentation on February 5, 2003, to the UN Security Council, making President George W. Bush’s case that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein constituted an imminent danger to the world because of Iraq’s stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
He admitted later that the presentation was rife with inaccuracies and twisted intelligence provided by others in the Bush administration and represented ‘‘a blot’’ that will ‘‘always be a part of my record’’.
Bush had picked Powell, the top US military officer during his father’s presidency, as secretary of state in 2001.
Powell endured four stormy years as the top US diplomat, often outmaneuvered by Vicepresident Dick Cheney — with whom he had served closely under the first President Bush — and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
With US troops already fighting a war in Afghanistan launched after Afghanbased alQaeda leaders plotted the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, hawks within the Bush administration began to advocate war with Iraq.
Powell argued within the administration to let diplomacy run its course on Iraq. He held grave reservations about a war, as well as the veracity of intelligence about Iraqi weapons, and the Pentagon’s insistence on a relatively small invasion force.
Colin Powell holds up a vial that he described as one that could contain anthrax, during his presentation on Iraq to the UN Security Council in 2003.
Powell privately warned Bush about the monumental difficulties of invading and occupying Iraq, invoking the socalled Pottery Barn rule invoking the name of a retail store: ‘‘You break it, you own it.’’
Nevertheless, Powell — the most respected member of the Bush cabinet globally — agreed to publicly sell the case for war in order to gather international support.
In the Security Council chamber, he displayed photographs and diagrams purporting to detail Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, as well as translations from US intelligence intercepts. At one point, Powell brandished a small vial containing a teaspoon of simulated anthrax, warning that Iraq had not accounted for ‘‘tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons’’ of the deadly pathogen.
The invasion came six weeks later but no such weapons were found, undermining American credibility for years. US forces fought in Iraq from 2003 to 2011, with nearly 4500 American troops killed and 32,000 wounded.
Powell told the author of a 2006 book that he spent five days ahead of the UN presentation ‘‘trimming the garbage’’ that Cheney’s staff had provided as evidence of Saddam’s weapons programmes and alleged links to alQaeda.
‘‘There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn’t be relied upon, and they didn’t speak up. That devastated me,’’ Powell told interviewer Barbara Walters in 2005.
At the time, Powell remained the loyal soldier — a reluctant warrior who did not threaten to quit in protest or voice his concerns to the world.
‘‘Well, loyalty is a trait that I value, and yes, I am loyal,’’
Powell said in the 2005 interview. ‘‘And there are some who say, ‘Well, you shouldn’t have supported it, you should have resigned.’ But I’m glad that
Saddam Hussein is gone.’’
Powell announced his resignation in ‘‘mutual agreement’’ with Bush after the president’s November 2004 reelection. Bush called Powell ‘‘one of the great public servants of our time’’. ‘‘Punji stick’’ booby trap near Vietnam’s border with Laos and injured in a helicopter crash.
He earned a White House fellowship while in the army during Richard Nixon’s presidency and won the respect of officials who later would serve in senior posts under Reagan. He served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993.
Powell became a celebrity during the 1991 Gulf War with crisp televised briefings, at one point saying of Iraq’s army: ‘‘First we’re going to cut it off, then we’re going to kill it.’’
As the top US military officer, he opposed allowing gays to serve openly in the military, but reversed his view in 2010 after Obama became the first president to endorse gay marriage.
After deciding not to run for president in 1996, Powell gave a speech at that year’s Republican convention endorsing Bob Dole against Democrat Bill Clinton, who was president during Powell’s final months as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
There were scattered boos from conservative delegates in San Diego when Powell said he supported abortion rights and affirmative action to help minorities.
Powell married his wife Alma in 1962.
They had three children, including Michael Powell, who served as US Federal Communications Commission chairman under George W. Bush. — Reuters