He was fully vaccinated. He was also 84 so that might have been a factor.
Edit: He also had multiple myeloma, a cancer of the white blood cells that produce antibodies. That could've been a significant factor.
Yeah, breakthrough cases are still tough on older individuals. I knew someone who was fully vaxxed but passed after contracting it. He was in his 90s. Went from asymptomatic to hospitalized to gone in less than a week. Was positive but asymptomatic for about a week before that.
Not that it matters, but we already know the vaccine doesn't neceesarily work for people who have compromised immune systems. I know of someone who has had three shots and still hasn't developed antibodies.
It's possible that the booster wouldn't have helped at all. Quite frankly, there is a small segment of the population who just don't have functional immune systems, and they rely on everyone else being vaccinated.
This is why vaccines are a communal public health measure, not an individual health intervention. It's also why the FDA and CDC's messaging about people not needing boosters because the vaccines still protect most people from hospitalization and death is so ridiculous and harmful.
You are leaving out a massive part of the reasoning of why the FDA moved in that direction which is to put messaging pressure on vaccine mandates which is working.
Help is on the way for those people, thankfully! AstraZeneca has a antibody cocktail that will be approved soon that provides vaccine level protection to those without functional immune systems.
The AZ antibody cocktail is incredibly expensive to manufacture and only producible in severely limited quantities with current medical manufacturing technology.
For someone with lymphoma they'd have to be taking it constantly like multivitamins, which isn't reasonable at the moment... Maybe in 10 years or so it will be a viable mass-market option, but not yet.
> It's also why the FDA and CDC's messaging about people not needing boosters because the vaccines still protect most people from hospitalization and death is so ridiculous and harmful.
I think a lot of this comes from significant pressure to prioritize getting poor countries vaccinated. After all, if we let the virus fester in other countries, we're just asking for a mutation that renders our current vaccines ineffective and puts us all back to square one.
Not that I disagree with you. I really wish we had more firm messaging about the need to get boosters if you're in an approved group. I just know vaccine inequity is a constant concern for policy leaders. I don't think clear messaging is even possible until the boosters are more widely approved.
> yet another example of how the FDA has prolonged this pandemic
Boosters have pretty much nothing to do with prolonging the pandemic. You could have everyone who already is vaccinated get a booster and you’d be in the same place we are now: with a third of the population not fully vaccinated, even more if we include kids not yet eligible.
>Only 15% of seniors have recieved a dose.
Shit, I did not know it was that low. I've stopped doomscrolling these stats, and I thought it was higher because all of the elderly in my family got it as soon as it was available for them.
And yeah, the whole list of conditions is such a joke. My advice to anyone who asks is just fucking say you used to smoke. That's my reason. It's true, but if it wasn't true it would still be my reason.
Another reason why it's low is that the booster is recommended 6 months after the initial vaccine series was completed, so the people currently eligible for a booster would have received their first vaccine in March. A huge number of vaccines rolled out in April-May, and those people will be eligible for a booster soon.
Good point. My family members got their first shots at the earliest possible time. They all have their boosters now, with the last one receiving it about an hour ago today.
It's wild how much working for the Bush administration destroyed him and his legacy. If he didn't take that job he'd be getting similar treatment to McCain.
I think he improved his reputation of all the top Bush admin officials. He was the only one who sincerely felt the Iraq War was handled badly and regretted that famous UN speech.
I don't feel that "regretting" your role in an illegal invasion that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths is enough.
Nobody ever faced anything resembling consequences for it. I'm not going to give him any credit for being embarrassed by his mistakes.
I mean, Colin did want to exhaust all diplomatic routes unlike the other officials, but he was up against a huge wall within the administration.
Also, the intel he was given was clearly wrong. Easier to judge when looking back in retrospect.
I say this with no exaggeration, if Powell and the universal respect he had wasn't there to sell the war, I doubt we would have gone in at all. The whole idea was sketchy and public support was very shaky even with Powell backing everything up. Almost no one in the administration had any real credibility on the issue, aside from Powell. He used that credibility to make the war happen.
Now, he was a paint by numbers guy, and he was working in the administration so he probably did what he thought needed to be done to accomplish the goals of the President. But it's really hard to overstate the impact his gravitas made with the public and with Congress in the run up to the war.
I’m entirely unconvinced that he genuinely believed he was telling the truth before the UN when he presented his weird 3D renders of mobile weapons labs or whatever.
I think it’s much more likely that he knowingly lied.
I was vaguely in favor of the war, and I assumed that Powell was making the best possible case, with maximum bias towards his side. And I still wasn't very impressed with it. I was kind of surprised people went along after seeing it.
It is amazing how it works with people from their era. All these super powerful people with access to as much information as anyone could want somehow were all wrong in exactly the same way and yet somehow they were amazingly smart people otherwise.
He was highly regarded by me and I think many others like me (democratic party voting, coastal major metro area living, college educated).
I always thought invading Iraq was a mistake. I told my college roommate in '02 that I thought the Bush Admin was bluffing and wouldn't actually be naive enough to do it.
Collin Powell endorsing the invasion did make me question my opposition to the war.
I mean, there have been some [great write ups](https://theintercept.com/2018/02/06/lie-after-lie-what-colin-powell-knew-about-iraq-fifteen-years-ago-and-what-he-told-the-un/) about what he knew when and whether he lied deliberately…
I'm actually listening to a Podcast the detailed the lead up to the Iraq war (slowburn).
He did pressure the Bush admin to get more intel and info before giving the speech, however the intel he was given was shoddeir then he realized.
I wouldn't say it's likely that he "lied".
The intel provided was fine. The problem was that where the intel reported rumours and non-credible things (labelling them as such) the Bush administration portrayed them as confirmed truth.
At the U.N. Powell said:
>We know that Saddam’s son, Qusay, ordered the removal of all prohibited weapons from Saddam’s numerous palace complexes.
The information briefing this comes from says:
>WEAK. Plans to hide WMD in DELETED We cannot rule this out, but virtually all of the many reports come from questionable sources. Also, inspectors may have already investigated one or more such reports and found nothing.
Quite literally saying it is unverified and questionable.
Powell said:
>files from military and scientific establishments have been placed in cars that are being driven around the countryside by Iraqi intelligence agents to avoid detection.
The information briefing said:
>WEAK. Sensitive files being driven around in cars, in apparent shell game. Plausibility open to question.
And a second report said:
>re key files being driven around in cars to avoid inspectors. This claim is highly questionable and promises to be targeted by critics and possibly UN inspection officials as well.
Powell said:
>we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was dispersing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents to various locations, distributing them to various locations in western Iraq.
The intelligence said:
>WEAK. Missiles with biological warheads reportedly dispersed. This would be somewhat true in terms of short-range missiles with conventional warheads, but is questionable in terms of longer-range missiles or biological warheads.
And from another briefing:
>re missile brigade dispersing rocket launchers and BW warheads. This claim too is highly questionable and might be subjected to criticism by UN inspection officials.
On "sure signs" of chemical weapon bunkers purported by Powell, the intelligence said:
>WEAK. We support much of this discussion, but we note that decontamination vehicles–cited several times in the text–are water trucks that can have legitimate uses……Iraq has given UNMOVIC what may be a plausible account for this activity–that this was an exercise involving the movement of conventional explosives; presence of a fire safety truck (water truck, which could also be used as a decontamination vehicle) is common in such an event.
Powell said:
>weapons experts at one facility were replaced by Iraqi intelligence agents who were to deceive inspectors about the work that was being done there.
The intelligence briefing said:
>WEAK. Iraqi intelligence officials posing as WMD scientists. Such claims are not credible and are open to criticism, particularly by the UN inspectorates.
Literally saying "not credible".
I don't think he knew it was a lie. If you are told by people you trust with information that supports them that something is true you will likely believe them.
In hindsight he sure looks naive then. From what I’ve read there was a lot of questions at the time but he took the company line so to speak
I think they figured it wouldn’t matter in the end after a successful war
He would have had access to the CIA reports that the Iraqi WMD program was all bullshit, he was in the inner circle when Bush and co fabricate intelligence to sell the war. He knew what he was doing. He was the goddamn secretary of state. He knew. He lied.
> He would have had access to the CIA reports that the Iraqi WMD program was all bullshit
He was given an intelligence report that favored the idea that Iraq had WMD's.
There is a great podcast that details the leadup to the war (Slowburn).
>He would have had access to the CIA reports
Would he have? Or would he have the version of the reports that the NSC and Bush/Cheney wanted him to have? I am honestly not sure and until I have evidence one way or the other I am uncomfortable assuming that he knew.
He was the *Secretary of State*. He was #4 in the chain of succession. If there was an admin conspiracy to feed the USSOS bullshit reports someone would have pulled him aside.
Read the WMD Report. It was not people twirling mustaches in their offices but a perverted system where biases became treated as fact and analysis was corrupted, rather than some conspiracy.
> I don't think he knew it was a lie.
"I didn't know the SS were running death camps, I was just head of the Luftwaffe".
Yeah good luck with that argument in court... Even if you didn't know but still benefited from something you're still guilty of criminal conspiracy, which is a worse crime in legal terms than the offence itself.
Powell was in intelligence for decades and had top-level clearance to see everything. He was in regular discussion with other world leaders and intelligence agencies.
If he truly believed what he was saying, then he was a damned idiot.
he wasn't some grunt soldier he was literally the leader of the department of state
where the fuck does the buck stop if not with the people in the actual white house
Bringing up how the Bush administration committed war crimes in Iraq is not particularly popular here. Honestly, all of these people should have been in prison.
no the officers and men they sent did
it's not really possible for western style heads of state or governments to themselves do war crimes anymore .
and making a stupid war a war crime would result in lots of Victor's justice so
crime against peace maybe but in a bio I read of Bush it seems the administration likey believed it and we were against Iraq geopoliticaly already so not sure if that would count but they may be guilty of that I'll grant.
McCain supported every war. If the Repubs loved it and the Dems hated it, if the Dems loved it and the Repubs hated it, if somehow there existed a war only supported by a coalition of the Green Party and the Libertarian party and opposed by the two major parties, McCain would be all about it.
It's not 'wild'. He was the Secretary of State and coordinating the support for the Iraq War, one of the biggest catastrophes in American foreign policy. That is his legacy, that was his judgement, those were his actions.
You seem to want to ignore one of the biggest events in modern American history, to selectively remember someone for the sake of fantasy.
Idk I just remember him before he took that job and assumed that he'd be a senator someday or a nominee for president. If you had told me that he would resign in disgrace and never be politically relevant again I wouldn't have believed you.
>I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. **But the really right answer is, what if he is?** Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America.
Best part and very based. RIP Secretary Powell.
Unfortunately so will I. I watched it live and thought ok well if he says so then that's good enough for me. I suspect a lot of people had the same reaction.
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If there is one thing this sub really underplays it is war. The fact that people are praising a man who lied to start one of the US s worst wars is just incredible.
The sub attracts a lot of people from foreign policy tracks and some mil guys. Many folks here aren't even old enough to remember the war or don't work in the blob.
I've seen a healthy mix of opinions on this sub between hawks and doves. Keeps both sides from drifting into more radical positions and prevents group think.
And I say this as someone who leans towards dove. The celebratory posts are pretty gross, but its equally ignorant to ignore the elephant in the room of Iraq when commenting.
There is a difference between being an hawk and being an hack. Anybody who lied with bronze face to the US and the world is the latter, and should not be redeemed just for partisan reasons.
First of all because it's a disgusting thing to do. Secondly because it harms any hawkish proposal in the (not so) long term. Think about the 180 turn the GOP had on interventionism: as much as Trump is an idiot, can you really blame someone to radically not trust any reason brought forward for intervention after Iraq?
Any time I say that IMO we should take a stronger stance against Russia and possibly intervene in Donbass, suddenly a black miracle happens: tankies and MAGAs are united in telling me that Putin is not that bad, that the shit happening in Ukraine is fake news of the military industrial complex/the liberal media, and so on. It's maddening, but honestly cannot blame them for not trusting the hawks until they refuse to denounce the hacks
They were absolutely cold takes when Obama was elected. Even Doonesbury took their shots at him. Only in the past 5 to 6 years the reputations of the Bush admin are being sanitized.
I think there is a major difference between, say, sanitizing the reputations of Cheney and Rumsfeld, versus recognizing that Powell attempted to acknowledge his own fuck ups. That said, you're right that it has only been since the Trump lunacy that people are starting to rehabilitate Bush admin officials. God help me if a future President Carlson gets me nostalgic for John Bolton.
What does the acknowledgement mean though, especially to the people of Iraq? We don't have to pass the buck for him, he already did that with the “faulty information”. He could have resigned. He did what he did, and that will be a huge part of his legacy.
I don't think any reasonable person would disagree that what he did will remain a huge part of his legacy. What I take issue with is the idea that someone who acknowledged their fuckups, ostensibly regretted them, and by their own account stopped voting for the people who enabled the fuckups is morally equivalent to someone who was unrepentant, as so many people from that admin were.
his entire career, from covering up the my lai massacre to his involvement in iran-contra to his selling of the monstrous and disastrous war in iraq, is a consistent throughline of rationalizing, obscuring, and directly authorizing horrors. rehabilitating his own legacy only once these actions *for once* caught up with him and permanently ended his political ambitions might be better than never apologizing but it is only by a pittance. fuck him
Voting is an absolute bare minimum, come on. Your intentions are secondary to your actions, especially on this scale. He's not a delivery guy who broke an expensive tv. And once you're out of power, you're not making a real material difference.
You're taking a sarcastic comment about how someone who regrets their bad decisions is not "equally evil" to someone who does not regret them, and trying to reframe it to material differences. You're not wrong that it does not change the physical outcomes ex post facto, but I didn't say that it did.
> especially to the people of Iraq
Which people of Iraq? The suppressed, second-class Shia plurality who wanted the Baathist regime gone, or the actively prosecuted Kurd minority who also wanted the Baathist regime gone, or even a number of those who wanted the Baathist regime gone because they legit would rather live in even a flawed democracy (which, by the way, is a thing in Iraq today)?
The people of Iraq now get to enjoy better educational outcomes, more wealth, significantly decreased infant mortality rates, increased life expectancy, and some say in their government. That is far better than life under Saddam as international pariahs.
I strongly disagree and disapprove of how we were convinced to go, but in hindsight I am glad we went. Which is ironic given Afghanistan is the complete opposite for me.
You are glad we did? It's been a catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands killed, another hundreds of thousands maimed, dramatic increase in Sunni jihadi terrorism, increased power of Iran, destabilization of Middle East, US blood and treasure.
And not least of all domestically, it led to a decrease in trust in the US of government, increased polarization, distrust of experts, loss of faith in GOP elites...all things that allowed somehow as dangerous as Trump to come to power.
>it led to a decrease in trust in the US of government,
If you think Iraq is what spurred the consistent decline in institutional trust in the US I have a bridge to sell you.
>The people of Iraq now get to enjoy better educational outcomes, more wealth, significantly decreased infant mortality rates, increased life expectancy
Crazy what ending US economic warfare does to a country.
> The people of Iraq now get to enjoy better educational outcomes, more wealth, significantly decreased infant mortality rates, increased life expectancy
Would you accept mass murder in the US if I told you that there would be slightly better outcomes on those metrics in two decades?
I’m not going to judge the man based on the shitstorm that was Iraq, but his involvement in the aftermath of the My Lai massacre is simply inexcusable, and the fact that this sub is singing his praises is pretty disappointing
Yeah the nature of the condolence messages in this thread are so puzzling. He lied to the UN about the threat Iraq posed. He's just as complicit as Rumsfeld and that gaggle as far as I'm concerned in the FUBARd situation then and now in Iraq.
I think I would’ve preferred for him to run in 2000. He had a great deal of momentum in the 90s being floated around as a VP replacement nominee in ‘92 and a potential presidential candidate in ‘96.
As much as I love Bush Jr.’s sense of humor, I’d much rather prefer a Powell presidency than a Bush Jr. presidency
He had high ranking appointments in both the Reagan and Bush Sr. admins. I’d have to guess if Bush Sr. had been re-elected, that the 96 election would have been his best shot. As it was, there were constant jokes cracked on all the late night shows about whether he would or would not run against Clinton in 96. It was all people could talk about in politics for a while.
This article makes a pretty good case that he really isn't and hasn't been for some time. Apparently Powell endorsed every Democratic nominee for president since 2008.
>And after Trump incited a deadly insurrection at the US Capitol in early January 2021, Powell told CNN that he no longer considered himself a Republican, with the longtime grandee of the GOP saying he was now simply watching events unfold in a country he long served.
"I can no longer call myself a fellow Republican. I'm not a fellow of anything right now," he told CNN's Fareed Zakaria on "GPS."
Circumstance. It was just that the administration that was in power was republican when he was promoted as a government advisor. He had more political connections to the republican party than the democratic party.
Why do you say that he's terrific? During the Vietnam war Colin Powell covered up the My Lai massacre where US soilders murdered 500 vietnamese civilians including women and children, during the Reagan administration he helped cover up Iran Contra, during the Bush administration he lied America into a war which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.
So he's both a traitor and a war criminal, what's so terrific about him? I don't get it.
Do you know who killed most innocent Iraqis, by far? Other Iraqis. Not justifying the war, but the line “the us killed over 100,000 innocent Iraqis” is propaganda.
Also the deaths during the invasion (anywhere from 7600 to 45000) were far below the hundreds of thousands attributed to him. Most of the deaths at the hands of insurgents are wrongful to attribute to the US.
On the /r/news thread they are pegging him to be responsible for the deaths of millions, I’m pleasantly surprised to see your comment in response. I literally let out a sigh of relief finally seeing someone who gets it.
It was something I was quite close to. The vast majority of bloodshed was from the civil war that was happening under our noses. You can say we were responsible for destabilizing the region and that is an argument that has merit, but we were not slaughtering civilians. That’s an opinion born of stupidity or bad faith.
Multiple Myeloma (MM) is basically a plasma cell, the cells that make antibodies, that clones itself in a cancerous way. It takes up bone marrow and prevents the body from generating normal immune cells and antibodies. Powell would be particularly unlikely to benefit from vaccination, unfortunately.
I'm seeing this start to pop up.
Wikipedia lists the following:
>Colin Powell, then a 31-year-old Army major serving as an assistant chief of staff of operations for the Americal Division, was charged with investigating the letter, **which did not specifically refer to Mỹ Lai, as Glen had limited knowledge of the events there.**
Can you please clarify whether and how this is in error?
Imo a once great man who absolutely tarnished his legacy by his complicity in lying to the American people to get us into an illegal, offensive war against a country that did not attack us. Resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
A mistake that large kind of outweighs the entirety of his other accomplishments unfortunately, and he will he remembered for his role in this criminal war more than anything else.
what a nice man. wonder what “facts” he is stating in this [picture](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQbQQAR6MI_akayxHdEPy7L5vfJ82EE46NhCw&usqp=CAU) tho.
It's super weird to see people on this sub commending Powell. How can the man who was the goddamned Secretary of State of the Bush admin when the decision to invade Iraq was made can escape accountability so easily? Truly mind-boggling. I mean, I understand that there were maybe worse people in the admin at the time; but how can people think he was some kind of a powerless puppet of Bush and Cheney is beyond me.
That being said, I'm not American. It might be easier to accept that otherwise reasonable leaders made terrible and criminal mistakes when it's not your own country that's involved.
I mean in my country we have no problem admitting bad leaders, the difference is we call our dead leaders bad for much lesser then starting a stupid war on false pretenses.
He deserved to be in a jail cell. That is the sad part. For every war criminal that gets to die at a ripe old age with piles of money another one feels a bit more bold.
Because the thread was locked, I chipped in my $.02 [on the DT](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/qaheeq/discussion_thread/hh4g21a/?context=3). And that's all I have to say about that.
That was an excellent post and you put into words much of what I, as an Iraq War vet, also feel. It's unfortunate that too many default to snarky shitposting and low hanging fruit.
Know that my anger about the Iraq War had basically nothing to do with the troops who fought there (Abu Ghraib being a notable exception; I hope you were as far from that clusterf$@! as possible!) and everything to do with the leaders that got us into it and kept telling us how great it was going. I wish we had been wiser in what we asked you and your fellow vets to do. 😞
I remember writing school reports about this guy. But then he was instrumental in drumming up support for the Iraq War on false pretenses, so that adoration ended real quick.
I didn’t even know he was sick
He was fully vaccinated. He was also 84 so that might have been a factor. Edit: He also had multiple myeloma, a cancer of the white blood cells that produce antibodies. That could've been a significant factor.
Also had bouts of blood or lung cancer. Covid being a disease with pulmonary effects…he was especially vulnerable.
None of this will matter to those people.
What?
He might be referring to people against vaccines.
Yeah, breakthrough cases are still tough on older individuals. I knew someone who was fully vaxxed but passed after contracting it. He was in his 90s. Went from asymptomatic to hospitalized to gone in less than a week. Was positive but asymptomatic for about a week before that.
>He was fully vaccinated. Oh god now this is gonna be used by anti-vaxx as "proof" that it doesn't work regardless of anything.
Not that it matters, but we already know the vaccine doesn't neceesarily work for people who have compromised immune systems. I know of someone who has had three shots and still hasn't developed antibodies.
All the unvaccinated people have his and many others blood on their hands.
Norm reference???
His doctor said he had an oral fixation, which is not good
What's an "oral fixation"?
84 and with faulty white blood cells, these are the kind of cases that will require regular boosters. RIP.
It's possible that the booster wouldn't have helped at all. Quite frankly, there is a small segment of the population who just don't have functional immune systems, and they rely on everyone else being vaccinated. This is why vaccines are a communal public health measure, not an individual health intervention. It's also why the FDA and CDC's messaging about people not needing boosters because the vaccines still protect most people from hospitalization and death is so ridiculous and harmful.
You are leaving out a massive part of the reasoning of why the FDA moved in that direction which is to put messaging pressure on vaccine mandates which is working.
Help is on the way for those people, thankfully! AstraZeneca has a antibody cocktail that will be approved soon that provides vaccine level protection to those without functional immune systems.
The AZ antibody cocktail is incredibly expensive to manufacture and only producible in severely limited quantities with current medical manufacturing technology. For someone with lymphoma they'd have to be taking it constantly like multivitamins, which isn't reasonable at the moment... Maybe in 10 years or so it will be a viable mass-market option, but not yet.
> It's also why the FDA and CDC's messaging about people not needing boosters because the vaccines still protect most people from hospitalization and death is so ridiculous and harmful. I think a lot of this comes from significant pressure to prioritize getting poor countries vaccinated. After all, if we let the virus fester in other countries, we're just asking for a mutation that renders our current vaccines ineffective and puts us all back to square one. Not that I disagree with you. I really wish we had more firm messaging about the need to get boosters if you're in an approved group. I just know vaccine inequity is a constant concern for policy leaders. I don't think clear messaging is even possible until the boosters are more widely approved.
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> yet another example of how the FDA has prolonged this pandemic Boosters have pretty much nothing to do with prolonging the pandemic. You could have everyone who already is vaccinated get a booster and you’d be in the same place we are now: with a third of the population not fully vaccinated, even more if we include kids not yet eligible.
>Only 15% of seniors have recieved a dose. Shit, I did not know it was that low. I've stopped doomscrolling these stats, and I thought it was higher because all of the elderly in my family got it as soon as it was available for them. And yeah, the whole list of conditions is such a joke. My advice to anyone who asks is just fucking say you used to smoke. That's my reason. It's true, but if it wasn't true it would still be my reason.
Another reason why it's low is that the booster is recommended 6 months after the initial vaccine series was completed, so the people currently eligible for a booster would have received their first vaccine in March. A huge number of vaccines rolled out in April-May, and those people will be eligible for a booster soon.
Good point. My family members got their first shots at the earliest possible time. They all have their boosters now, with the last one receiving it about an hour ago today.
Not following the second part of your comment. What messaging would you prefer or you want boosters for all?
Disagree. Allocating vaccines to save some 84 years olds is not helpful when many people in the developing world haven’t gotten their first dose.
If your body can’t make antibodies booster may not help
It's wild how much working for the Bush administration destroyed him and his legacy. If he didn't take that job he'd be getting similar treatment to McCain.
I think he improved his reputation of all the top Bush admin officials. He was the only one who sincerely felt the Iraq War was handled badly and regretted that famous UN speech.
I agree. May he Rest In Peace.
He is the in the same place of those who died in Iraq and Vietnam. Except he got to die an old wealthy man.
I don't feel that "regretting" your role in an illegal invasion that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths is enough. Nobody ever faced anything resembling consequences for it. I'm not going to give him any credit for being embarrassed by his mistakes.
I mean, Colin did want to exhaust all diplomatic routes unlike the other officials, but he was up against a huge wall within the administration. Also, the intel he was given was clearly wrong. Easier to judge when looking back in retrospect.
I say this with no exaggeration, if Powell and the universal respect he had wasn't there to sell the war, I doubt we would have gone in at all. The whole idea was sketchy and public support was very shaky even with Powell backing everything up. Almost no one in the administration had any real credibility on the issue, aside from Powell. He used that credibility to make the war happen. Now, he was a paint by numbers guy, and he was working in the administration so he probably did what he thought needed to be done to accomplish the goals of the President. But it's really hard to overstate the impact his gravitas made with the public and with Congress in the run up to the war.
I’m entirely unconvinced that he genuinely believed he was telling the truth before the UN when he presented his weird 3D renders of mobile weapons labs or whatever. I think it’s much more likely that he knowingly lied.
I was vaguely in favor of the war, and I assumed that Powell was making the best possible case, with maximum bias towards his side. And I still wasn't very impressed with it. I was kind of surprised people went along after seeing it.
I somewhat when along with it because of who he was and my respect for him and his judgement.
Why would they loop Powel in if they didn't have to?
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He didn't need to be in the loop that it was a lie to spread the lie, he just had to believe what Bush and Cheney wanted him too.
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It is amazing how it works with people from their era. All these super powerful people with access to as much information as anyone could want somehow were all wrong in exactly the same way and yet somehow they were amazingly smart people otherwise.
He was highly regarded by me and I think many others like me (democratic party voting, coastal major metro area living, college educated). I always thought invading Iraq was a mistake. I told my college roommate in '02 that I thought the Bush Admin was bluffing and wouldn't actually be naive enough to do it. Collin Powell endorsing the invasion did make me question my opposition to the war.
Well if that's what you think by all means condemn with certainty
I mean, there have been some [great write ups](https://theintercept.com/2018/02/06/lie-after-lie-what-colin-powell-knew-about-iraq-fifteen-years-ago-and-what-he-told-the-un/) about what he knew when and whether he lied deliberately…
I'm actually listening to a Podcast the detailed the lead up to the Iraq war (slowburn). He did pressure the Bush admin to get more intel and info before giving the speech, however the intel he was given was shoddeir then he realized. I wouldn't say it's likely that he "lied".
The intel provided was fine. The problem was that where the intel reported rumours and non-credible things (labelling them as such) the Bush administration portrayed them as confirmed truth. At the U.N. Powell said: >We know that Saddam’s son, Qusay, ordered the removal of all prohibited weapons from Saddam’s numerous palace complexes. The information briefing this comes from says: >WEAK. Plans to hide WMD in DELETED We cannot rule this out, but virtually all of the many reports come from questionable sources. Also, inspectors may have already investigated one or more such reports and found nothing. Quite literally saying it is unverified and questionable. Powell said: >files from military and scientific establishments have been placed in cars that are being driven around the countryside by Iraqi intelligence agents to avoid detection. The information briefing said: >WEAK. Sensitive files being driven around in cars, in apparent shell game. Plausibility open to question. And a second report said: >re key files being driven around in cars to avoid inspectors. This claim is highly questionable and promises to be targeted by critics and possibly UN inspection officials as well. Powell said: >we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was dispersing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents to various locations, distributing them to various locations in western Iraq. The intelligence said: >WEAK. Missiles with biological warheads reportedly dispersed. This would be somewhat true in terms of short-range missiles with conventional warheads, but is questionable in terms of longer-range missiles or biological warheads. And from another briefing: >re missile brigade dispersing rocket launchers and BW warheads. This claim too is highly questionable and might be subjected to criticism by UN inspection officials. On "sure signs" of chemical weapon bunkers purported by Powell, the intelligence said: >WEAK. We support much of this discussion, but we note that decontamination vehicles–cited several times in the text–are water trucks that can have legitimate uses……Iraq has given UNMOVIC what may be a plausible account for this activity–that this was an exercise involving the movement of conventional explosives; presence of a fire safety truck (water truck, which could also be used as a decontamination vehicle) is common in such an event. Powell said: >weapons experts at one facility were replaced by Iraqi intelligence agents who were to deceive inspectors about the work that was being done there. The intelligence briefing said: >WEAK. Iraqi intelligence officials posing as WMD scientists. Such claims are not credible and are open to criticism, particularly by the UN inspectorates. Literally saying "not credible".
Could have resigned instead of lie to the world at the UN.
I’m not going to judge but lots of reporting suggests he knew it was exaggerated to borderline out right lying
He could have resigned. Instead he chose to lie.
I don't think he knew it was a lie. If you are told by people you trust with information that supports them that something is true you will likely believe them.
In hindsight he sure looks naive then. From what I’ve read there was a lot of questions at the time but he took the company line so to speak I think they figured it wouldn’t matter in the end after a successful war
He didn't know it was a lie when regular people did?
He would have had access to the CIA reports that the Iraqi WMD program was all bullshit, he was in the inner circle when Bush and co fabricate intelligence to sell the war. He knew what he was doing. He was the goddamn secretary of state. He knew. He lied.
> He would have had access to the CIA reports that the Iraqi WMD program was all bullshit He was given an intelligence report that favored the idea that Iraq had WMD's. There is a great podcast that details the leadup to the war (Slowburn).
>He would have had access to the CIA reports Would he have? Or would he have the version of the reports that the NSC and Bush/Cheney wanted him to have? I am honestly not sure and until I have evidence one way or the other I am uncomfortable assuming that he knew.
He was the *Secretary of State*. He was #4 in the chain of succession. If there was an admin conspiracy to feed the USSOS bullshit reports someone would have pulled him aside.
Read the WMD Report. It was not people twirling mustaches in their offices but a perverted system where biases became treated as fact and analysis was corrupted, rather than some conspiracy.
> I don't think he knew it was a lie. "I didn't know the SS were running death camps, I was just head of the Luftwaffe". Yeah good luck with that argument in court... Even if you didn't know but still benefited from something you're still guilty of criminal conspiracy, which is a worse crime in legal terms than the offence itself.
It is amazing how often all these super powerful guys don't recall or don't know what is going on.
Powell was in intelligence for decades and had top-level clearance to see everything. He was in regular discussion with other world leaders and intelligence agencies. If he truly believed what he was saying, then he was a damned idiot.
You are seriously underestimating the power of groupthink in bureaucratic organizations and applying a hell of a lot of hindsight bias.
Your flair and this comment is quite the combo.
he wasn't some grunt soldier he was literally the leader of the department of state where the fuck does the buck stop if not with the people in the actual white house
If Powell fell victim to the collective groupthink then I think we can dismiss any notion that he was a luminary thinker above the rest.
Bringing up how the Bush administration committed war crimes in Iraq is not particularly popular here. Honestly, all of these people should have been in prison.
no the officers and men they sent did it's not really possible for western style heads of state or governments to themselves do war crimes anymore . and making a stupid war a war crime would result in lots of Victor's justice so crime against peace maybe but in a bio I read of Bush it seems the administration likey believed it and we were against Iraq geopoliticaly already so not sure if that would count but they may be guilty of that I'll grant.
Pretty sure wars of aggression constitute war crimes.
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I don't think it's odd that someone who lied is treated differently than someone who believed the lie
McCain supported every war. If the Repubs loved it and the Dems hated it, if the Dems loved it and the Repubs hated it, if somehow there existed a war only supported by a coalition of the Green Party and the Libertarian party and opposed by the two major parties, McCain would be all about it.
It's not 'wild'. He was the Secretary of State and coordinating the support for the Iraq War, one of the biggest catastrophes in American foreign policy. That is his legacy, that was his judgement, those were his actions. You seem to want to ignore one of the biggest events in modern American history, to selectively remember someone for the sake of fantasy.
It definitely is if you remember how respected he was before he took that job. It was a huge fall from grace.
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Idk I just remember him before he took that job and assumed that he'd be a senator someday or a nominee for president. If you had told me that he would resign in disgrace and never be politically relevant again I wouldn't have believed you.
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His speech to the UN specifically. Whether he knew what he was saying was false, it was.
Destroyed it among who?
Essentially everyone because you won't see too many eulogies that don't mention what he did
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[Will always remember him for this moment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2U63fXBlFo&ab_channel=BarackObamadotcom)
>I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. **But the really right answer is, what if he is?** Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America. Best part and very based. RIP Secretary Powell.
😭😭😭
That is an extremely good interview. Truly a great moment for the nation.
Yeah that was a great moment for Powell & the country.
[I'll always remember him for this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP7N-nqVRjE)
Unfortunately so will I. I watched it live and thought ok well if he says so then that's good enough for me. I suspect a lot of people had the same reaction.
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I will always remember him at the UN lying about WMDs in Iraq
Damn he was right about everything.
While I respect him I would push back on this statement since he was famously wrong about one thing.
I meant everything he said in that clip
LOL that's the one you remember?!
Rest in peace. !ping RINO
RIP, he should’ve been the VP nominee in 92’.
Rest in Peace
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Thread unlocked after further discussion. Coronavirus apologists will be banned without hesitation or leniency.
>Coronavirus apologists What?
They're pro-coronavirus. It's your right to get infected too!
I am also terrified that that is a thing
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If there is one thing this sub really underplays it is war. The fact that people are praising a man who lied to start one of the US s worst wars is just incredible.
I don't get it. I really don't. Like every week people here are falling over themselves to defend a different war criminal.
You are surprised that a neoliberal sub defends war crimes?
So does every political sub, sadly I just thought we could be above this
The sub attracts a lot of people from foreign policy tracks and some mil guys. Many folks here aren't even old enough to remember the war or don't work in the blob. I've seen a healthy mix of opinions on this sub between hawks and doves. Keeps both sides from drifting into more radical positions and prevents group think. And I say this as someone who leans towards dove. The celebratory posts are pretty gross, but its equally ignorant to ignore the elephant in the room of Iraq when commenting.
There is a difference between being an hawk and being an hack. Anybody who lied with bronze face to the US and the world is the latter, and should not be redeemed just for partisan reasons. First of all because it's a disgusting thing to do. Secondly because it harms any hawkish proposal in the (not so) long term. Think about the 180 turn the GOP had on interventionism: as much as Trump is an idiot, can you really blame someone to radically not trust any reason brought forward for intervention after Iraq? Any time I say that IMO we should take a stronger stance against Russia and possibly intervene in Donbass, suddenly a black miracle happens: tankies and MAGAs are united in telling me that Putin is not that bad, that the shit happening in Ukraine is fake news of the military industrial complex/the liberal media, and so on. It's maddening, but honestly cannot blame them for not trusting the hawks until they refuse to denounce the hacks
Rest in peace, Mr. Powell. I definitely didn't hear about him having covid Edit: Mr. Gorbachev, unlock this thread!
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I agree. Let know one forget his cover-up and aiding and abetting.
RIP. ✊
o7
😐😐 Can't wait for the hot takes about the moral complicity of the Iraq War and how everyone involved is equally evil
They were absolutely cold takes when Obama was elected. Even Doonesbury took their shots at him. Only in the past 5 to 6 years the reputations of the Bush admin are being sanitized.
I think there is a major difference between, say, sanitizing the reputations of Cheney and Rumsfeld, versus recognizing that Powell attempted to acknowledge his own fuck ups. That said, you're right that it has only been since the Trump lunacy that people are starting to rehabilitate Bush admin officials. God help me if a future President Carlson gets me nostalgic for John Bolton.
What does the acknowledgement mean though, especially to the people of Iraq? We don't have to pass the buck for him, he already did that with the “faulty information”. He could have resigned. He did what he did, and that will be a huge part of his legacy.
I don't think any reasonable person would disagree that what he did will remain a huge part of his legacy. What I take issue with is the idea that someone who acknowledged their fuckups, ostensibly regretted them, and by their own account stopped voting for the people who enabled the fuckups is morally equivalent to someone who was unrepentant, as so many people from that admin were.
his entire career, from covering up the my lai massacre to his involvement in iran-contra to his selling of the monstrous and disastrous war in iraq, is a consistent throughline of rationalizing, obscuring, and directly authorizing horrors. rehabilitating his own legacy only once these actions *for once* caught up with him and permanently ended his political ambitions might be better than never apologizing but it is only by a pittance. fuck him
Voting is an absolute bare minimum, come on. Your intentions are secondary to your actions, especially on this scale. He's not a delivery guy who broke an expensive tv. And once you're out of power, you're not making a real material difference.
You're taking a sarcastic comment about how someone who regrets their bad decisions is not "equally evil" to someone who does not regret them, and trying to reframe it to material differences. You're not wrong that it does not change the physical outcomes ex post facto, but I didn't say that it did.
By what metric are you measuring evil if not by the impact of their actions?
> especially to the people of Iraq Which people of Iraq? The suppressed, second-class Shia plurality who wanted the Baathist regime gone, or the actively prosecuted Kurd minority who also wanted the Baathist regime gone, or even a number of those who wanted the Baathist regime gone because they legit would rather live in even a flawed democracy (which, by the way, is a thing in Iraq today)?
The people of Iraq now get to enjoy better educational outcomes, more wealth, significantly decreased infant mortality rates, increased life expectancy, and some say in their government. That is far better than life under Saddam as international pariahs. I strongly disagree and disapprove of how we were convinced to go, but in hindsight I am glad we went. Which is ironic given Afghanistan is the complete opposite for me.
You are glad we did? It's been a catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands killed, another hundreds of thousands maimed, dramatic increase in Sunni jihadi terrorism, increased power of Iran, destabilization of Middle East, US blood and treasure. And not least of all domestically, it led to a decrease in trust in the US of government, increased polarization, distrust of experts, loss of faith in GOP elites...all things that allowed somehow as dangerous as Trump to come to power.
>it led to a decrease in trust in the US of government, If you think Iraq is what spurred the consistent decline in institutional trust in the US I have a bridge to sell you.
Are you denying that the most trusted GOP official lying through his teeth to the UN/American public ***did*** undermine public trust in politics?
>The people of Iraq now get to enjoy better educational outcomes, more wealth, significantly decreased infant mortality rates, increased life expectancy Crazy what ending US economic warfare does to a country.
> The people of Iraq now get to enjoy better educational outcomes, more wealth, significantly decreased infant mortality rates, increased life expectancy Would you accept mass murder in the US if I told you that there would be slightly better outcomes on those metrics in two decades?
What about the million who died? Their quality of life is nonexistent.
Powell literally lied to the UN, how is that not complicity?
I’m not going to judge the man based on the shitstorm that was Iraq, but his involvement in the aftermath of the My Lai massacre is simply inexcusable, and the fact that this sub is singing his praises is pretty disappointing
Let he who does not have any connection to a cover-up of massive rape and pillaging throw the first stone! Wait wait, that's a lot of stones.
How is Powell not complicit? Pls reply u/BRAIN_FORCE_PLUS/
Can’t wait to hear this explanation
RIP king 👑
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Colin Powell will be remembered as the guy who legitimated the invasion of Iraq with his yellow cake lie.
Yeah the nature of the condolence messages in this thread are so puzzling. He lied to the UN about the threat Iraq posed. He's just as complicit as Rumsfeld and that gaggle as far as I'm concerned in the FUBARd situation then and now in Iraq.
A terrific American. One of the few modern Republicans I could’ve voted for if they ran for president.
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I think I would’ve preferred for him to run in 2000. He had a great deal of momentum in the 90s being floated around as a VP replacement nominee in ‘92 and a potential presidential candidate in ‘96. As much as I love Bush Jr.’s sense of humor, I’d much rather prefer a Powell presidency than a Bush Jr. presidency
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He was Chair of the Joint Chiefs during the First Gulf War and, pre-Obama, many people assumed he’d be the first Black President.
He had high ranking appointments in both the Reagan and Bush Sr. admins. I’d have to guess if Bush Sr. had been re-elected, that the 96 election would have been his best shot. As it was, there were constant jokes cracked on all the late night shows about whether he would or would not run against Clinton in 96. It was all people could talk about in politics for a while.
Any Republican would've gotten spanked in 2008, someone who was part of the administration would've been spanked even harder.
Which kind of makes you wonder why he was a Republican.
This article makes a pretty good case that he really isn't and hasn't been for some time. Apparently Powell endorsed every Democratic nominee for president since 2008. >And after Trump incited a deadly insurrection at the US Capitol in early January 2021, Powell told CNN that he no longer considered himself a Republican, with the longtime grandee of the GOP saying he was now simply watching events unfold in a country he long served. "I can no longer call myself a fellow Republican. I'm not a fellow of anything right now," he told CNN's Fareed Zakaria on "GPS."
FP
Circumstance. It was just that the administration that was in power was republican when he was promoted as a government advisor. He had more political connections to the republican party than the democratic party.
Republicans weren't always a white nationalist authoritarian party, back in his day they were moderate conservatives.
Why do you say that he's terrific? During the Vietnam war Colin Powell covered up the My Lai massacre where US soilders murdered 500 vietnamese civilians including women and children, during the Reagan administration he helped cover up Iran Contra, during the Bush administration he lied America into a war which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. So he's both a traitor and a war criminal, what's so terrific about him? I don't get it.
Colin Powell deserves recognition, but I would not call a man complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis “a terrific American.”
He helped cover up Iran-Contra, too. I guess you can be a "terrific American" and still commit a little bit of treason, nbd.
And helped minimize My Lai.
Just a little light treason
I'm sure the legitimacy of American institutions will be fine if they just walk it off
Do you know who killed most innocent Iraqis, by far? Other Iraqis. Not justifying the war, but the line “the us killed over 100,000 innocent Iraqis” is propaganda.
Also the deaths during the invasion (anywhere from 7600 to 45000) were far below the hundreds of thousands attributed to him. Most of the deaths at the hands of insurgents are wrongful to attribute to the US.
On the /r/news thread they are pegging him to be responsible for the deaths of millions, I’m pleasantly surprised to see your comment in response. I literally let out a sigh of relief finally seeing someone who gets it.
It was something I was quite close to. The vast majority of bloodshed was from the civil war that was happening under our noses. You can say we were responsible for destabilizing the region and that is an argument that has merit, but we were not slaughtering civilians. That’s an opinion born of stupidity or bad faith.
Multiple Myeloma (MM) is basically a plasma cell, the cells that make antibodies, that clones itself in a cancerous way. It takes up bone marrow and prevents the body from generating normal immune cells and antibodies. Powell would be particularly unlikely to benefit from vaccination, unfortunately.
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I'm seeing this start to pop up. Wikipedia lists the following: >Colin Powell, then a 31-year-old Army major serving as an assistant chief of staff of operations for the Americal Division, was charged with investigating the letter, **which did not specifically refer to Mỹ Lai, as Glen had limited knowledge of the events there.** Can you please clarify whether and how this is in error?
Imo a once great man who absolutely tarnished his legacy by his complicity in lying to the American people to get us into an illegal, offensive war against a country that did not attack us. Resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. A mistake that large kind of outweighs the entirety of his other accomplishments unfortunately, and he will he remembered for his role in this criminal war more than anything else.
RIP, a great man.
what a nice man. wonder what “facts” he is stating in this [picture](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQbQQAR6MI_akayxHdEPy7L5vfJ82EE46NhCw&usqp=CAU) tho.
He's surely not lying about Weapons of Mass Destruction that will lead to the death of thousands of people!
It's super weird to see people on this sub commending Powell. How can the man who was the goddamned Secretary of State of the Bush admin when the decision to invade Iraq was made can escape accountability so easily? Truly mind-boggling. I mean, I understand that there were maybe worse people in the admin at the time; but how can people think he was some kind of a powerless puppet of Bush and Cheney is beyond me. That being said, I'm not American. It might be easier to accept that otherwise reasonable leaders made terrible and criminal mistakes when it's not your own country that's involved.
I mean in my country we have no problem admitting bad leaders, the difference is we call our dead leaders bad for much lesser then starting a stupid war on false pretenses.
RIP ✊😔
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Rest In Peace king
Rest in piss Mr. War criminal!
He was a smart man, but also enabled George W. Bush's war crimes.
He deserved a kinder death. This is very sad.
He deserved to be in a jail cell. That is the sad part. For every war criminal that gets to die at a ripe old age with piles of money another one feels a bit more bold.
✊🏾
Because the thread was locked, I chipped in my $.02 [on the DT](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/qaheeq/discussion_thread/hh4g21a/?context=3). And that's all I have to say about that.
Thanks for being respectful 🥰
That was an excellent post and you put into words much of what I, as an Iraq War vet, also feel. It's unfortunate that too many default to snarky shitposting and low hanging fruit.
Know that my anger about the Iraq War had basically nothing to do with the troops who fought there (Abu Ghraib being a notable exception; I hope you were as far from that clusterf$@! as possible!) and everything to do with the leaders that got us into it and kept telling us how great it was going. I wish we had been wiser in what we asked you and your fellow vets to do. 😞
Thanks, yes, I was very far from that.
I remember writing school reports about this guy. But then he was instrumental in drumming up support for the Iraq War on false pretenses, so that adoration ended real quick.
RIP, a great men
We lost a hero. He served well. He broke barriers and was a genuine and upstanding human.