Colin Powell, 84, dies of Covid complications
COLIN POWELL, the former US secretary of state, has died from Covid-19 complications aged 84.
In an announcement on social media, his family said he had been fully vaccinated.
‘We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father and grandfather and a great American,’ they said.
Mr Powell (pictured) was the first African American to serve as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and secretary of state – taking the latter role in 2001 under president George W Bush.
The Harlem-born son of Jamaican immigrants served in Vietnam and was awarded military honours for saving fellow soldiers from a burning helicopter crash.
As the nation’s highest-ranking military adviser, he won praise for helping guide US forces through Operation Desert Storm after the Gulf War began in 1990.
But his reputation suffered a setback when, in 2003, he went before the UN Security Council and made the case for the war against Iraq. He cited faulty information claiming Saddam Hussein had secretly stashed weapons of mass destruction.
He later described the speech as a ‘blot’ on his record. Paying tribute, George W Bush said he and former first lady Laura were ‘deeply saddened’.
Mr Powell was ‘a great public servant’ and ‘widely respected at home and abroad’, Mr Bush said.
Former prime minister Tony Blair, who led the UK into the 2003 Iraq war, praised Mr Powell for his ‘immense capability and integrity’ and called him ‘a great companion, with a lovely and self-deprecating sense of humour’.
Condoleezza Rice, Mr Powell’s successor as secretary of state and the first black woman in the role, called him ‘a truly great man’ whose ‘devotion to our nation was not limited to the many great things he did while in uniform or during his time spent in Washington’.
And current secretary of state Antony Blinken called his life ‘a victory of the American Dream’.
‘His life stands as a testament not only to dedicated public service but also a strong belief in willingness to work across partisan division,’ he said.
Mr Powell had Parkinson’s disease and multiple myeloma, a blood cancer likely to have made him more susceptible to Covid.