Colin Powell dies from Covid-19 complications
COLIN POWELL, the former United States joint chiefs of staff and secretary of state, has died from Covid-19 complications, his family said.
In an announcement on social media yesterday, the family said Mr Powell, who was 84, had been fully vaccinated.
“We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father and grandfather and a great American,” the family said.
Mr Powell was the first African American to serve as secretary of state in the US government. A veteran of the Vietnam War, Mr Powell rose to the rank of four-star general, and in 1989 he became the first black chairman of the US military’s joint chiefs of staff. In that role, he oversaw the US invasion of Panama and later the US invasion of Kuwait to oust the Iraqi army in 1991.
However, his legacy was forever marred when, in 2003, he went before the United Nations Security Council as secretary of state and made the case for US war against Iraq.
He cited faulty information claiming Saddam Hussein had secretly stashed away weapons of mass destruction. Iraq’s claims that it had no such weapons represented “a web of lies”, he told the world body.
Former US president George W
Bush said he and former first lady Laura Bush were “deeply saddened” by Mr Powell’s death.
“He was a great public servant” and “widely respected at home and abroad,” Mr Bush said, “and, most important, Colin was a family man and a friend.
“Laura and I send Alma [Powell’s widow] and their children our sincere condolences as they remember the life of a great man.”