Colin Powell’s Fateful Moment, Dexter Filkins, on Colin Powell

“It’s a terrible paradox in the life of Colin Powell, who died Monday, that the most important moment of his celebrated career came not when he led troops under fire in Vietnam, or when he orchestrated the successful expulsion of Iraqi invaders from Kuwait in 1991, or when he became the nation’s first African American national-security adviser and Secretary of State.It came, instead, on the dais of the United Nations Security Council, in 2003, when Powell, who was then Secretary of State, made the case for the invasion of Iraq, based on the conclusion that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and thus had to be removed by force. The enduring image from that moment is Powell holding up a tiny vial of white powder, which stood for what was supposed to be Saddam’s anthrax, and, mortgaging his esteemed reputation and all the credibility of the U.S. government, telling the world that the U.S. had no choice but to go to war.”

“Powell was used. Bush, Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, who was then the Secretary of Defense, cynically enlisted him and his enormous credibility to make the flimsy, and ultimately faulty, case for war. As Powell recounted to one of his aides, according to Robert Draper, the author of “To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq,’’ Cheney had said to him, “You’re the most popular man in America. Do something with that popularity.” And so Powell did. Draper makes clear that Powell harbored doubts about the invasion of Iraq from the get-go. Powell might have resigned before the March 2003 invasion; if he had done that, he would have almost certainly have delayed the invasion, or scuttled it entirely. But, in the most fateful decision of his career, Powell chose to remain what he always aspired to be: the good soldier.”