And I was as disappointed as anyone, since I was the principal presenter of the case, when it turned out that so much of it was flawed, and it was single-sourced on a very unreliable source that we should have been aware of was unreliable."īut it was another military debacle - in Vietnam - shaped Powell as a young officer, and he would learn lessons that would recall as he made his way up the ranks. "The United Kingdom and other nations believed in the intelligence. "So we all believed the intelligence," he told NPR's Steve Inskeep back in 2011. That evidence proved "flawed," as Powell said later. Secretary of State Colin Powell holds up a vial he said could contain anthrax as he presents evidence of Iraq's alleged weapons programs to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. ''Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world,'' he declared.
He forcefully argued that same Iraqi leader possessed chemical, biological and perhaps nuclear weapons that made him a serious threat, and the assembled intelligence proved it. Such chilling bravado - and the subsequent victory over Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein - made him one of the most formidable and admired public figures.Ī decade later, Powell's public image lost some of its luster when he appeared at the United Nations and pointed to two large screens of satellite photographs and drawings, depicting secret facilities, mobile laboratories, trucks and rail cars. would do to the Iraqi army that had invaded neighboring Kuwait: "We're going to cut it off, and then we're going to kill it." In the first Iraq war in 1991, he famously described what the U.S. Powell became a household name during the first Gulf War.Ĭolin Powell became a household name because of the four stars on his Army uniform and his iconic statements about Iraq. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell points to Iraqi airbases at a Pentagon briefing on Jan.
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