As Afghanistan fades from the headlines. The international rescue Committee is staying in the country to prevent a full scale- humanitarian crisis, as well as working across the United States, to resettle many of the thousands of Afghans evacuated last month, learn more about how you s, communities are coming together to welcome afghan refugees and how the Irish Sea is planning to keep health, education and financial services running for women and children across Afghanistan, visit rescue, dot org slash help Afghanistan to find out how you can help from New York Times. I movable BAR This is a daily today across three presidencies Colin Powell served as America's top soldier diplomats

and national security adviser. His great fear was that he would be remembered for just one moment. I spoke with my colleague, Robert Draper from the Times magazine, it's Tuesday October nineteenth rubber Were you thinking when you heard the news just a few hours? that Colin Powell had died. The first thing came to mind. Michael was a conversation that I learned that then Secretary of State Colin Powell had happened. it was actually more than one individual. It was the year two thousand, for it was to be his last year as secretary of State in the Bush administration and the Iraq war was on

way well underway. But at that juncture it was already clear that Saddam in fact did not possess weapons of mass destruction. Contrary to the speech that common power given in February two thousand and three a month before the invasion saying that he did and and will pass said to, individuals was that he recognized it has all been wearing, was going to begin with Colin Powell sold Americans on going to war in Iraq based on intelligence. That turned out to be bogus, in other words, pow realise that the totality of an otherwise distinguishing, even singular military and political career would forever be.

painted and would in a way be subordinated to what had happened in Iraq, and he fell like that. There was plenty more to say about Colin Powell that he was not the sum total of a single, fateful speech that he gave to United Nations in February. Two thousand three will tell us about that story that he feared might be erased by an obituary that focused on his role in Iraq. Pals history was a history. Unlike anything, I think we seen before in America. He was son of jamaican emigrants, a father who is a shipping clerk and a mother who is a seamstress. He grew up in the south. Bronx was an undistinguished high school student, went to the city College of New York, because he was an interested and athletics. He gravitated instead to ROTC, where he truly found his calling and from their became-

and was a member of the army and was deployed to Vietnam. He endured racism both in the ranks and that matter during training in Georgia, but was not deterred by the EP became instead. I highly decorated military veteran receiving both the purple heart and these star for sustaining injuries saving others in a helicopter crash from there in nineteen sixty nine pal after having received an MBA George, sound, one a White House fellowship was moved over to the Office of Management and budget. After that, a he moved back to the military, but State on the right are of the political world and was brought up to be national Security Advisor

during the ragged administration and got to know then Vice President George, Herbert Walker, Bush and developed of relationship such as that win. Bush became president probably came a natural choice of his to be chairman of the joint Chiefs of staff. Three came German adds the youngest age ever for anyone to hold opposition. Fifty two, and also for that matter, was the first african American to be chairman of the EU. Cheese and along the way developed what became a very coherent, muscular and sensible military policy. the Powell doctrine is, we all came to know it. Would you describe the? sure I mean it was something very much informed by our experience in Vietnam and the recognition that a war was not politically sustainable if it had no in game and if it had no political support. So the hell doctrine,

essentially held that first one had to exhaust all diplomatic options, then to determine just what a path to victory would be, what victory would look like and then to muster support both at home and amongst a coalition abroad? And after having, she's all of those things then to go, and we have to use his phrase overwhelming force to use any in every means necessary to she's a decisive victory and then to get out as quickly as possible right the idea being don't get into endless wars, get into quick and decisive, worse and worse, by the way that the public can understand and under the public could be behind those or bars that the Vietnam WAR failed to clear and power would later say that he was part of the careerists mentality of the american military that caused the Non war to go on as long as it did without any clear objective user

to make sure that he wouldn't be a part of any such enterprise and, what's an illustration of the pallid doctrine, once compounds in opposition to oversee the Us S daughter sure the most obvious one was operation desert storm s two hours ago, allied airforces began in it on military targets in Iraq. In Kuwait, the First Gulf WAR, also known as which took place in early ninety ninety one in the first Bush administration five months ago, Saddam Hussein started this cruel war against Kuwait. Tonight the battle has been boy am power, was a leading technician of that. Obviously, as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, we remember power not only for being a strategy of this that I'd like to turn the briefing

but to my colleague Colin Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, thank you, Mr Secretary. Let me also for being explain or of it. This is the end of the first week of operations, and what I'd like to do is for a few moments, take stock with you in the tenth damp and outlaw associations between euphoria in distress that sometimes catches up every hour on the hour, because He was a guy that we saw behind the podium and I'd like to do that by first reminding you of the military operational objectives that we set out to accomplish, and that is simply to reject the iraqi Army from Kuwait, explaining and very very succinct phraseology that this is what we are up to our strategy to go after. This army is very, very simple. we're gonna to cut it off and then we're gonna kill it. We identify the enemy, we cut it off, and then we could accept there was a war that was lightning fast. The actual ground invasion took place over a period of

One hundred hours, it succeeded it's very narrowly defined objective of removing and sometimes army from Kuwait. It did not extend itself beyond that, and so it was compressed. It was successful. It was coherent right and it was very much pals overwhelming forced doctrine put into place and power was the personification of the decisiveness that was in fact the Gulf WAR, a victory. In and of itself and offered a kind of new approach to military strategy, at least in the United States. as a what did that victory mean for Colin Powell? Well, we became acquainted with power for the first time as a result of this He became a darling and republican political circles in Washington political circles writ large a fixture on the Deserve Georgetown

dinner circuit was immediately talked about both amongst Democrats and Republicans as somebody's ideal version vice presidential running May and perhaps even something greater than that down. The line. Pal receives a something like six million dollar book contract the book for his memory immediately became a number one best seller. Here's book tour itself became a kind of national event where cameras followed him. Ever. Where he really became an american celebrity in what he chose to do, that celebrity seem to be entirely up to him, but that basically, the sky was the limit for Colin Powell and what how end up doing with all the celebrity and limitless possibility, will ultimately what we decided.

You was rain or the government, in the form of becoming the Secretary of State for George W Bush indirect S. Speech is tearing integrity is deep respect for our democracy and his soldiers sense of duty and honour Bush actually have been referencing pow, with admiration on the campaign trail trying to appeal to moderate voters. Colin Powell demonstrates the qualities that made George Marshall, a great secretaries, qualities that will make him a great representative of all the people of this country. and when a bush, ultimately one the present see what aim razor found, if, if even there, mandate is a great honour for me to submit the name to the United States Senate of Coronel PAL, as Secretary of State

The first person who turned to as a cabinet selection was Colin Powell as his Secretary of state, but significant though Michael, that Bush wasn't necessarily looking for a mentor in foreign policy. If anything, you kind of have that already with Dick Cheney. What ultimately came to pass was the President Bush would use the public standing of Colin Powell that he Bush himself lacked the credibility the power had to sell a sceptical american public on a war against a country that had not attacked America and would ultimately use pow as the spokesman for that endeavour.

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In the immediate wake of September eleventh, there was first the determination of who it was attacked us that was our Qaeda, and this led to the deployment of troops to have Ghana stand to rout the Taliban. Then Bush turned his attention to what he described as the next theatre in the war in terror- and this was not something you the secretary POW, had in mind. He assumed that in the wake of September eleventh, we had one clear objective and that was to go after terrorist organizations like the ones that head tat the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but Bush had Saddam Hussein and mine in and why well Bush or are talking about the past, Lee of invading Iraq, because first of all, he viewed Saddam Hussein is a ban actor. I think for a couple of Since he remembered Saddam Hussein as the person whose intelligence service had apparently attempted to assassinate his father, George Herbert Walker, Bush

ninety nine ninety three and secondly, he also noted yet in the immediate aftermath of September, eleventh when pretty much every country in the world, including IRAN, indicated solidarity towards the United States, Erect stood alone in kind of jeering, the. U S essentially saying you had it coming to. Saddam, in fact, did give a speech on September, the twelve in which he said that America has reaped the thorn its own foreign policy. So Bush gave a speech at the state of the union address the famous axis of evil speech in which he called out Saddam and Iraq and indicated that they were state sponsors of terror. So he was not only putting Saddam but Only the? U S and the world on notice that Sir on his right arm up how kind of figured like a lot of people in the foreign policy establishment. That's. It did have some weapons capacity, but we also believe that surround didn't pose a threat to the? U S. This put him in direct opposition with Dick Cheney device, prose

the sector, Defence Donald Rumsfeld and Bush himself. How began to realize it was really an outside man. Looking in the guy who had been brought in to be that this credible force in foreign policy for this fledgling administration, was now a guy who was not influencing foreign policy at all. once this realization dance on patents that Bush wants to go to war and that he thinks it's a terrible idea. What does he do you? I spend a lot of time, as somebody wrote a book on the subject looking at this window of the summer and fall of two thousand to one how many aims to realise that he's kind of the outside man looking in and needs to do something about it, and so what he does He reaches out to bushes friend, and national security Visor congolese arise, and says I want a meeting with the president, so it was

How who, on August the fifth two thousand too, dinner in the White House residents with the president- and it was an interesting conversation- interesting- one thing in its singularity, because there was no one else up to this point and for that matter no one else. After this point who Bush would hear from in his administration, who would say, you know, there's a lot of bad things that could happen if you invade Iraq, and so it was pow who basically said If you do this, Mr President, you will become the proud honour of a country and its twenty or so fractious provinces, essential you know, if you break it, you alone, equally saying, as this will not at all the power doctrine like walk them when he was saying that instead could be a mess and Bush then said the power. What should I do and he said, go the United build a coalition through the EU and have them pass a resolution.

have weapons inspectors go in and ultimately he hated what parliament's advice was in power believed. Out of that meeting and in the weeks and months to follow that he had succeeded, but Bush got very impatient during that whole process. So in January, two thousand Threem Bush comes Colin powell- and he said you know what I think I have to do this- I think I have to invade Iraq. Are you with me and what do you think was meant by that? Well, it's important note. First, Michael, that Bush, had already at that point stated his intentions to invade Iraq with his national security.

Eyes or economies arise with Vice President Dick Cheney and with Secretary Defence Donald Rumsfeld. So in essence what Bush was saying was look. I need to do this and I need to know that I have your support. I need you essentially to drop your concerns and be with me on this now when POW heard this, He said yes, sir, I'm with you very much in the manner of the forced, our general that he was, and indeed when I discussed this matter with power, he said to me. What was I going to do? he was the commander in chief after all, but then I went on to add, but you know people call me reluctant warrior, but in fact, in the end a warrior, and so we shouldn't Not a war, A guy to have, with you powers, Assent really saying that at the time he

thinking if bushes gonna go to war, he's gonna need me to supervise this war for him. Even if it's a worried did not at all support, he wanted to be the one to oversee it, where he wanted to make sure that if Bush was going to go to war, that it would be a war done in the most efficacious manner possible by the author of the pale doctrine, and so once he makes this decision to be their reluctance Warrior to sign on the war does not think work out well for the: U S, what is a start like. And what role does he planet? Well, something that I think the power had anticipated, which was that as it turned out, he was not asked to supervise the war to conduct the war. He was to sell the war, and this became clear in the latter part of January of of that same month and two thousand three when power ass by congolese arise on behalf of President Bush. Is power

of a major speech to the United Nations General Assembly and make the case for war based on the intelligence findings that the american intelligence community had Vice President Cheney check, reinforce this tupou sang to him and ask him to look calling. You got you. No more popularity in the rest of us put together. Why don't you spend some political capital and once again, power thing being enormously self. Confident. Man also believed that he was the right guy. For that He was, after all, the chief diplomat of the United States this week, the United Nations General Assembly. He also believed that he could issue more restraint in his speech and make a

the base presentation in a way that others in the administration could not. So how does he approached this speech? Short his pals thinking, so what power did was? He was handed a kind of a working draft of a speech that had been compiled by the Vice president's office. He basically from through it had some of his own intelligence experts, take a look at it and ultimately tossed it in the guards. Ganz note we're starting from scratch. this is got to me. I wandered claims to it. He then spent a long weekend, addled CIA headquarters in a conference room he and a speech rider, surrounded by intelligence, analyse and just went through the intelligence piece by piece, basically deciding Ok, what can we credibly say? What do we really know about Saddam's weapons programme and through this process he kept alive really dubious until out of this

page and by the end of it all believes that through this process had a speech now with rock solid intelligence that attested to not just sometimes weapons capability but to the weapons he actually had at his disposal at that point, That's where things stand as Colin Powell heads over to the U N to deliver a speech. I know I watched in that everybody else, in the media was watching that day I call on the distinguished secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, now that's worth things. When on some worry the fifth two thousand? Three, thank you as president. Mr President, Mr Secretary General Secretary of State made it to the podium of United Nations General Assembly. The gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat that Iraq's wept the mass destruction posed to the world and gave a lengthy, seemingly century based recitation us at arms, weapons programme,

Let me now turn to those deadly weapons. Ramsden described why they are real and present dangers to the region and to the world first. Biological weapons. Among the things that pal said, was that Saddam had an active violet. Weapons Programme, one of the most worrisome things that emerges from the second origins, fire we have on Iraq's biological weapons. Is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents consisting of mobile biological laboratories that had been undetectable by the? U S, if biological weapons seem to terrible to contemplate chemical weapons, are equally chilling Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry and that Saddam as pumping out an alarming amount of chemical weapons, also in contravention of the United Nations. Our conservative,

Estimate, is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between. one hundred and five hundred tonnes of chemical weapons agent that isn't agent to cause mass casualties, request more than one hundred square miles of territory and airy nearly five times the size of Manhattan, and that's it possessed the capacity to develop a nuclear programme owing to some aluminum tubes that had been seized. That could used for nuclear centrifuges. We have no indication that Saddam Hussein is ever abandoned. His nuclear weapons programme on occasion we have more than a decade of proof that he remained. determined to acquire nuclear weapons to fully agree in essence, what power

saying was a kind of nightmare scenario that Saddam already had weapons of mass destruction and worst of all, was intent on developing an active nuclear programme is well, we must not shrink from whatever is ahead of us. We must not fail in our duty and our responsibility to the citizens of the countries that are represented by this Thank you, Miss Brayton right, I'm ever watching this beginning. Everyone in the news media at this time watched that speech and the message was Saddam Hussein is a threat and urgent throughout the United States, and there is justification for war, and I think, Michael Viet, anyone who wasn't a real student of the intelligence tended to come to the conclusion you ve just described. Certainly that was the case

I'm Capitol Hill, where, for example, the Democratic sent a majority leader Tom Dash all said to his sent. Carcass look, I know you guys, don't believe vice president chain, but surely you believe, Colin Powell, the sheer dry elaboration of this weapons programme delivered by someone, seemed once again to be in his element, giving basically the most important speech of his career and seeming at the time to be thoroughly up to. The task was itself as persuasive as the evidence that he was presenting so Bush was right to your stand pals, stature and popularity and palace stature clarity alone could overcome the scepticism of even congressional Democrats about this war. Absolutely up for the Secretary of State who had been urged

a diplomatic path. We have been talking about going to the United Nations to makes a presentation that he did was itself an indicator to some people who had been on the fence that ok and now make sense to go to war. And then, of course, the United States invades IRAN. And we eventually learn that all that, until all that evidence that power has used in this speech was too false and that U S, intelligence agencies had gotten it wrong. What power came to realize woefully after the fact was that that weaken when he was putting the speech together, surrounded by intelligence anal then what the man was were basically spouting to him war conclusions. There were the result. Two years and years of group think that had not been challenge that there been a leaving him to worst case scenarios about what's alarm had when, in fact, there was no

Literally, none of what Saddam did have I was all based on suppositions and that somehow all of the new wants? All the caveats had been lost and what ultimately prove damp was that pal have become a kind of fall guy that he had been set up had been set up, perhaps not intentionally by the Bush administration, but ultimately that's what it turned out to be that he was their presenting intelligence, virtually all of which doubt to be completely false, hidden in essence sold the american public and the international community, and the EU in General Assembly on a phoney pretext for war with tragic consequences, and has he finally comes to understand this, and I know you: VE talked about this. What is his reaction reaction was horror, anger and then bitterness- and it's worth mentioning also the Bible

two thousand for Bush decided he no longer needed pal services and replaced him with congolese arise in months and years that followed his departure from the Bush administration in writing. In his new memoir about your February, fifty two thousand three speech to the EU and which has now become historic, Hilda A number of interviews I attacked in which he himself is penitent. but you help public. I you know I swayed public opinion. There is no question about it. Takes his own lumps recognizes his own risk, disability for this change the ball. I change I train. I turned the dialogue about it, deserves fatigues him to return king over and over about this singular manner that now appears to be legacy defining. He does so What the president wanted me to deal in one eye was hosted. He regretted irony,

it now, because the information was wrong, of course, but I will always be seen as the one who made the case before the international community. But there wasn't a word in that I'm really curious in your conversations with pal about this war and about his role and selling it what kind of responsibility he does or doesn't take for it and for all of its consequences, power. My conversations with him was pretty defensive on the subject, I mean the fact that he had been answering so many of these questions over. Over again indicated a kind of penitence on his part, a recognition that he owed it to history, to answer at least to some serious questions, but that didn't mean that he was gonna, take responsibility for a war. That he believed standing alone among Bush senior officials was inadvisable and he essentially was other position that look. I try to slow down. I tried to tell Bush what could go wrong.

that's basically about his farm. Is power would go. I think that he was really of the view that it seems wrong, headed to suggest the Colin Powell should shoulder so much of the blame for their rights, debacle when he had done more than anybody else in the administration to move off course needs a complicated answer. and it makes me wonder how we should be thinking about. legacy and about this speech all these years later right, I mean in selling a war on false premises, whether he knew there were false or not did he Emily squandered this reputation that he had rightfully earned, or was he kind of robbed of it by the people around Bush is the story of this peerless military leader, who didn't quite have the courage to stop and stand up to about war, or is it worry of a man who was a victim of people. we're so committed to the war.

They were willing to deceive him: I I'm not gonna be the guy who says that this highly decorated military veteran lack courage. If there's anything, I find in particular guilty of its that he was of the same foreign policy establishment. The embrace the same kind of group think that Saddam Hussein cow in agreeing to give the fatal You and speech basically was coming in with a view that yes, Adams, got weapons, he's got weapons of mass destruction and when there were plenty of indicators and the at minimum that baseline judgment needed to be reappraise the power didn't that puts him in the same category, by the way, as then Senator Hillary Clinton, then sender, Joe Biden adds an awful lot of other people, with his decision, not to say to the president, no bad idea,

I'm resigning- I suppose it's fair- to make a judgment against power for that. But american history is not exactly spangled. We of instances of generals who stand up to a president in such a manner and that presents the complicated nuanced view of and arguably tragic, but heroic figure fly tragic, tragic in the sense that, but for his decision to stick with Bush when asked the question: are you with me and his decision to give the speech that he did but for all that Colin Powell would have been viewed as utterly heroic. As someone who was a first in american lives, so many wise who was so admired as a leader in the State Department and the military and who people still speak of who worked with him in reverential. Sounds a person who really live this seemingly, legendary life, but then came a rack and so is tragic.

Robert. I wonder if you could read The first sentence of compounds obituary that was published in the Times ass. The first sentence reads: Coronel POW, who, in four decades of public life, served as a nation's top soldier, Devil man and national security adviser and whose speech at the union, nations in two thousand: three help pave the way for the United States to go to war in Iraq, data one day he was eighty four. This was eventually he fear. This was the first sentence. He did not want. Yeah dummy impel have again tragically a gift of profit. You're the accurately forecast that this was how he would be remembered around

Thank you very much. We prepare time my pleasure model. On Monday, the family of Colin Powell said he had died from complications of covert nineteen despite being fully vaccinated against the virus how the family said was being treated for multiple, my Loma, a cancer of the white blood cells that weakens the immune system and leaves those the disease at greater risk of developing severe cases of covert nineteen

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