Extra

In the first eight months of the George W. Bush administration, Powell lost bruising battles with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other neocons, who were really running the administration. Powell was chosen to deliver false claims of overseas threats because his international gravitas and respect. 

While serving as secretary of state under President G.W, Bush, General Powell played a pivotal role in paving the way for the U.S. invasion. It was February 5th, 2003, that Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council and made the case for a first strike on Iraq. Powell’s message was clear: “Iraq possessed extremely dangerous weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam Hussein was systematically trying to deceive U.N inspectors by hiding the prohibited weapons”. the U.S. invasion and occupation killed over 1 million Iraqis and destroyed, much of their country. 

All of Colin Powell’s main claims about weapons of mass destruction turned out to be completely false. He later described the speech as a “blot” on his record. 

In 1991, during the first Persian Gulf War, the U.S. bombed Iraq’s only baby formula factory. At the time, General Powell said, quote, “It is not an infant formula factory. It was a biological weapons facility, of that we are sure.” . U.N. investigators later confirmed the bombed factory was in fact making baby formula. 

He served two tours in Vietnam. He was later accused of helping to whitewash the My Lai massacre, when U.S. soldiers slaughtered up to 500 villagers, most of them women and children and the elderly. 

Powell spent 35 years in the military, rising to chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the 1980s, he helped shape U.S. military policy in Latin America at a time when U.S.-backed forces killed hundreds of thousands of people in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and other countries. Powell also helped oversee the U.S. invasion of Panama and the Persian Gulf Wars. 

Powell retired into relative obscurity tormented by the false messages he delivered on behalf of political bosses who are guilty of horrific war crimes.