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What Next: How Should We Remember Colin Powell?

Slate News

Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.66K Ratings

🗓️ 19 October 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Colin Powell, known as a “trailblazer” and “pathbreaker” in his military career, leaves behind a complicated legacy. The four-star general became a household name during the first Gulf War as the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and later the first Black secretary of state. Thirty years after his rise to national prominence, Powell’s death has prompted reflections on the Iraq War and his role in using false intelligence to justify the U.S. invasion. Guest: Fred Kaplan, Slate’s War Stories columnist. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Colin Powell knew how you were going to remember him.

0:07.9

Thank you, Mr. President.

0:09.4

Frozen in time at the United Nations on February 5, 2003.

0:14.9

I cannot tell you everything that we know, but what I can share with you when combined

0:19.7

with what all of us have learned over the years is deeply troubling.

0:23.8

What you will see.

0:26.8

This is when he laid out the case for the Iraq War.

0:30.2

The case that Saddam Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction.

0:35.1

My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources.

0:41.6

He spoke for over an hour that day.

0:44.0

He's an out of assertions.

0:45.8

What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.

0:51.3

And many of the things he said were wrong.

1:02.3

Here is another way to remember him.

1:05.4

You met him in person alone.

1:08.4

I mean, he just seemed kind of like a hip guy.

1:14.4

Slates Fred Kaplan covered the general when he was National Security Advisor under Reagan,

1:20.2

and when he became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a few years after that.

1:24.4

And again, when he was appointed Secretary of State, that's when Powell gave that

1:29.1

fateful testimony at the UN.

1:31.8

I've met a lot of four-star generals in my time, and he was probably the most informal

1:38.3

of them.

...

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