Former US secretary of state Colin Powell dies of COVID-19 complications
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| First Black Sec of State & former chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff who served four presidents |
18 Oct 2021 08:24PM
WASHINGTON: Colin Powell, the first black United States secretary of state and top military officer, died on Monday (Oct 18) at the age of 84 from COVID-19 complications. He was fully vaccinated, his family said in a statement on Facebook.
"We want to thank the medical staff at Walter Reed National Medical Center for their caring treatment. We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American," his family said.
Powell was one of America's foremost black figures for decades. He was named to senior posts by three Republican presidents and reached the top of the US military as it was regaining its vigour after the trauma of the Vietnam War.
Powell, who was wounded in Vietnam, served as US national security adviser under president Ronald Reagan from 1987 to 1989. As a four-star Army general, he was chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff under president George HW Bush during the 1991 Gulf War in which US-led forces expelled Iraqi troops from neighbouring Kuwait.
Powell, a moderate Republican and a pragmatist, considered a bid to become the first black president in 1996, but his wife Alma's worries about his safety helped him decide otherwise. In 2008, he broke with his party to endorse Democrat Barack Obama, who became the first black person elected to the White House.
Powell will forever be associated with his controversial presentation to the United Nations Security Council on Feb 5, 2003, making president George W Bush's case that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein constituted an imminent danger to the world because of his stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
Powell admitted later that the presentation was rife with inaccuracies and twisted intelligence provided by others in the Bush administration and represented "a blot" that will "always be a part of my record".
