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Colin Powell

Do not understand the reverence for someone who used fraud to launch a pointless, cataclysmic war. Few individuals in recent history have caused so much death and misery.

Cut a statesmanlike figure though, so I guess it all balances out.
 
Seanm said:
Do not understand the reverence for someone who used fraud to launch a pointless, cataclysmic war. Few individuals in recent history have caused so much death and misery.

Cut a statesmanlike figure though, so I guess it all balances out.
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He didn’t know at the time though about WMDs.
 
Hook said:
Agreed completely. For all his faults, Clinton was a top drawer debater and communicator. Also, not sure that the country was ready to elect an African-American to be President in 1996.
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Close to half are still wondering how Obama won, and are trying to make sure that never happens again.
 
flatpopely said:
He didn’t know at the time though about WMDs.
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It's not quite as simple as that:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/18/colin-powell-un-security-council-iraq
Powell however, had made the decision to believe the CIA over the state department’s own office of intelligence and research (INR), which submitted two intelligence reports before the speech questioning the solidity of the evidence.

Asked about Powell’s decision to ignore the INR’s findings, one of its senior analysts, Greg Thielmann, told the CBS News show 60 Minutes: “I can only assume that he was doing it to loyally support the president of the United States and build the strongest possible case for arguing that there was no alternative to the use of military force.”

“For Colin Powell, the situation put reputation and duty in conflict,” said Sir Christopher Meyer, who was Britain’s ambassador in Washington at the time. “I think the sense of duty came from being a fighting soldier … When the commander in chief of the United States of America says ‘Go to New York and deliver a presentation’, a man like Powell doesn’t say no.”

“He probably should have said no and I think later on, he thought to himself: ‘I should have resigned,’” Meyer said. “I think it crushed him. For the rest of his life he was mortified. I felt desperately sorry for him.”
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If I remember rightly, much of Powell's "evidence" had already been debunked and most European leaders remained (rightly) sceptical.

If we must have reverence for can we at least save it for people who have the courage to make a principled stand under pressure? Not erasing hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians from the history books would also be good.

As an aside, Gordon Brown comes out of the BBC's New Labour documentary pretty well (a traditional social democrat, basically) but he failed miserably on Iraq in his reluctance to rock the boat.
 
Hans Blix (?) seemed pretty confident there were no WMD, it looked as though the inspectors were proving that iirc, so I guess there had to be an unseemly rush to war.
 
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