Colin Powell RIP

[s&wchad]

General Powell served our country his entire adult life.

I deleted several replies. We’re paying our respects here. If you’re not offering condolences or have something good to say, don’t post. Fair warning…

 

[hsguy]

Rest in Peace Colin Powell, It would be a high honor to leave a legacy even a fraction of yours.

 

[Absalom]

General Powell was a great man, a leader, and a patriot.

Like all of us, he made some mistakes. Unlike for most of us, his record of distinguished service to the country makes nitpicking those mistakes just petty.

He was also wise. He acknowledged his mistake much more openly than other bearing greater responsibility. And later, he was smart enough to decline the poison chalice of a presidential candidacy. He learned the lesson, to be re-learned by other generals more recently, that being a great soldier does not necessarily make you a good politician.

 

[LVSteve]

Rest in peace a true man of honor, a rarity in these times.

Rest in peace.

There is a distinction between lying and telling people something that is incorrect. An honest man can only tell you what he believes to be true.

He learned later that the information he used to tell the world that Saddam had WMD, and that we thus had justification to go to war, was incomplete, or in some other way compromised. He did not know it at the time.

I believe this true of Bush, too.

It is also true of all of us that the desire to believe true what we want to believe true is often overpowering. It doesn't mean we are all evil. It means we are all human.

Colin Powell and just about everybody else at the top of the tree got the intel somebody thought they wanted rather than the intel that was actually there, IMHO. The UK media coined the phrase "sexed up" in this regard. It led to a whole mess of other events. See here. September Dossier - Wikipedia David Kelly (weapons expert - Wikipedia)

My father was a retired British civil servant, and his unbiased opinions on the UK administration's behavior in that period are not repeatable here.

 

[ArchAngelCD]

Yes, rest in peace Sir. The General showed us what honor is and lived it every day. We need more like him but I don't see that happening anytime soon. He was a true American and loved this country, I'm sad to see him go.

 

[Old 44 Guy]

arjay is correct. Any thing today is blamed on Covid.

 

[RobertJ.]

He truly deserved respect.

May he rest in peace.

 

[Fishinfool]

I never served in the military. To me, Gen. Powell was just another talking head on TV, though his running of the 1st Gulf War seemed pretty tight and right, at least from my perspective.

A good friend of mine was a Marine Sgt. during the Gulf War, and is about as tough as they come, not a man to mince words, or suffer fools and idiots. He told me he cried when he heard of Gen. Powell's passing.

That told me all I needed to know about the man.

RIP General.

Larry

 

[ladder13]

^^^^^Likewise, my brother served 20 years, his last year during the Gulf War with the 3rd ID.
He was besides himself yesterday.