Colin Powell, top diplomat who argued for US invasion of Iraq, dies at 84
Powell would later call his now-infamous UN Security Council speech, which sought to build international consensus for the Iraq war in February 2003, a "blot" on his record.
Colin Powell, the retired four-star Army general who oversaw US operations during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and whose United Nations speech in 2003 helped sell the American-led invasion of Iraq, died on Monday from COVID-19, his family said. The 84-year-old was fully vaccinated.
“We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American,” the Powell family said in a Facebook statement Monday morning.
His family thanked the staff at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where Powell had been receiving treatment. A spokesperson for Powell told ABC News that the former general suffered from multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells that compromises the immune system.
During his decades-long career in public service, Powell held high-ranking positions under three Republican presidents, including as national security adviser during the Reagan administration.
