Powell is dead, this American politician who is well known as a tube of "washing powder", but in the past two days, he has received a lot of whitewashing, saying that in the washing powder incident that year, Powell was actually quite innocent, and he was also a "victim" who was deceived.
Is this true or not? Yes and no.
We don't know exactly how Colin Powell was, but before the events of that year, he did enjoy a very high reputation in American politics, at least at that time, the Americans really believed that he was a good person.
Powell was born in 1937 in New York, USA, to Jamaican immigrant parents, the son of a porter on the dock, and the mother of a seamstress.
In 1958, Powell joined the U.S. Army, was sent to West Berlin, Germany, and later rotated to the Vietnam battlefield, known for his bravery and wounded in battle. From 1968 to 1969, he traveled to Vietnam for the second time to investigate the My Lai massacre.
The investigation earned Powell the public trust. His investigative report blamed the U.S. military for killing hundreds of unarmed civilians, which was not easy for the United States at the time. Because in the eyes of some military personnel, the US military is not responsible for this incident.
Upon returning to Washington, he rose quickly to the top, becoming Reagan's national security adviser before serving as George W. Bush's national security adviser from 1989 to 1993. H· Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (supreme military attaché of the United States) of the W. Bush (i.e., Bush Sr.) and clinton administrations.
For many Americans, Powell was the image of America during the 1991 Gulf War. His popularity once made him hope to become the first African-American presidential candidate, and many Americans still believe that if Powell ran that year, "it would be easy to become president", but he finally gave up the election.
In 2000, Powell again renounced his candidacy for president and instead supported George W. Bush. W. Bush (i.e., George W. Bush) was elected; he served as Secretary of State during George W. Bush's term.
This also refreshes the history of African Americans. Speaking at the secretary's inauguration, he said, "I hope my appointment will be a source of inspiration for young African Americans."
During his tenure, Powell was also widely regarded by Americans as a "dovish" in the government, and before the United States formally decided to start the Iraq War, he was considered to be the representative of the federal government against the war.
However, everything came with a big flip with the test tube containing the white powder.
On February 5, 2003, at the UnCom Nuclear Council's Meeting of Foreign Ministers for the Disarmament of Iraq, then U.S. Secretary of State Powell delivered a lengthy speech on Iraq's possession of chemical and biological weapons, presented "evidence emanating from within Iraq," pictures and audio recordings, and accused Saddam Hussein's government of obstructing the UN investigation into Iraq.
At the climax, Powell took out a bottle of white powder and said that such a little anthrax could shut down the U.S. Senate, isolate hundreds of staff, and kill two postmen, and how dangerous it was that Saddam not only had 8,500 liters of anthrax (evidence from inside Iraq), but could quickly produce five times the number of new viruses.
As we all know, the United States has studied the "rules" in depth, and before it is really oily and waterless and "abandons the contract", it will definitely dig out all the favorable components in the rules for its own use, and it is especially good at playing word games to find a great name for itself. Therefore, most countries and the United States tend to fall behind in terms of rules.
On the United Nations stage, the United States has had a brilliant record. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the Kennedy administration first manipulated the Inter-American Council to unanimously pass a resolution on the blockade of Cuba, and then let the Representative to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, make a generous statement at the Security Council meeting, refuting the silence of Soviet Ambassador Zorin, and showing on the spot the photos taken by the US U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, proving the existence of medium-range missiles in Cuba, which made the Soviet Union extremely embarrassed in the United Nations. This move immediately reversed international public opinion and allowed the United States to occupy the moral high ground.
However, in 2003, the US government wanted to replicate this victory, but it completely overturned...
Powell's passionate speech and the powder he wielded did not increase the persuasiveness, and even had the opposite effect, after all, everyone understood that he was using this small bottle as an analogy, if Powell really took the anthrax into the United Nations headquarters, then I am afraid that he is a terrorist...
Not to mention the entire international community, even the allies of the United States were not persuaded by Powell, especially France, where French Foreign Minister De Villepin was a poet who directly angered the United States at the United Nations venue:
"Our moral and political obligation is, first and foremost, to devote all our energies to the peaceful disarmament of Iraq and to abide by the rules of law. France is convinced that, as long as we remain united, we will succeed on this difficult road. This is the choice of collective responsibility. ”
In this diplomatic attempt, the prop was a bottle of white powder, and the evidence was provided by witnesses from Iraq.
The diplomatic attempt was unsuccessful, and the United States had to bypass the United Nations and launch its own war of aggression against Iraq.
And later facts proved that not only was the white powder not really anthrax, but the evidence was all fake!
The strange thing is that Powell, as the lead actor of this scene, later declared that he did not know that it was all fake. This made his image suddenly funny, and he had to choose between "stupid" and "bad".
In 2005, Powell, who had resigned from his position as secretary of state, said the "laundry detergent" speech was the biggest stain on his career and that he was misguided!
Powell is indeed not the sole person responsible for the incident, because the production of this "American laundry detergent" has a series of processes.
First, Powell was told that his speech was prepared by the National Security Council under Condoleezza Rice, but was actually written by Vice President Dick Cheney's staff. As we all know, Cheney was an important driver of the Iraq war, and the actions led by him will certainly point in a direction that is not good for Saddam Hussein's government.
Powell thought he had been deceived.
Regardless of who wrote the speech, Powell has experienced many battles and seen a lot, and he can't taste it himself?
The Bush administration has multiple insurances here, and no matter how carefully Powell sifts through the evidence, the CIA director, Tennett, who provided him with the source of the information, has been lying to him directly under the president's instructions.
Powell had only four days to prepare for his speech, but when he walked into the Security Council chamber, he said he was confident.
Because he thinks the evidence is "verified". He asked the CIA to sift through the text, removing "something that lacks dual and triple sources of information."
Powell's friend and confidant Lawrence Wilkerson later revealed that powell insisted on personally reviewing the evidence when he was assigned to defend the U.S. invasion at the United Nations. Before speaking in New York, Powell and Wilkerson huddled with George Tenet and his deputy, John McLaughlin, to review the massive destruction of evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons. The four men stayed in Tenet's office for a few days, eating and drinking without leaving the house.
"For every substantive item in his speech, we have three or four sources." Powell himself thinks so.
It is not false to say that more evidence is the truth, and the source of evidence is unreliable, and no matter how much it leads to the wrong conclusion.
Subsequent information proved that the so-called "three or four" independent sources of intelligence often came from the same source in many cases, namely, the Iraqi National Assembly, an Iraqi opposition organization headed by Ahmed Charabi.
In that speech, for example, Powell said, "These [Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction] are not assertions." We have facts and conclusions based on reliable intelligence. ”
To illustrate the point, Powell played a recording of a conversation between Iraqi officers about United Nations weapons inspections and showed illustrations of alleged weapons of mass destruction equipment to underscore the urgency of the threat.
But it turned out that the recording had been modified and cropped to make it sound more like proof of guilt, and the illustrations were provided by Chalab's men, whose testimony was ridiculous because the exiles knew that Bush wanted to hear them say that Saddam Hussein was guilty, so they said something that Bush wanted to hear...
On top of that, the CIA informant Rafid Ahmed Alwan Janabbi, who provided the so-called "evidence from within Iraq," was a liar. In fact, the intelligence personnel under the US Department of Defense have long known about this news, but did not tell Powell.
For example, Powell claimed in his U.N. speech that "a first-hand description of a biological weapons factory on wheels and tracks ... The source was an eyewitness who supervised one of the facilities". But it turns out that Janaby has not been involved in any work in the Iraqi military industry, and this message was completely fabricated by him.
The first Western intelligence agency to contact the Iraqi exile was the German Intelligence Agency, which after a short conversation found that the man was unreliable to run a train with his mouth full of mouths, and when the United States contacted Janaby, the German Intelligence Agency warned the Americans of this. But that hasn't stopped U.S. intelligence agencies and government agencies at all levels from writing the liar's words into the president's State of the Union address, congressional briefings, and Powell's speeches at the United Nations.
"The BND [German Intelligence Service] knew I was lying after talking to my former boss in 2000, and he told them that there were no mobile biological weapons factories in Iraq, according to Janabee. For the next 18 months, the T.C.I. forgot about me, and they left me alone because they knew I was lying, even though I never admitted it. Believe me, at the time, I thought the whole thing was over for me."
George Tenet, then director of the CIA, was one of the first senior American officials to be reminded by the Germans, but he instead regarded Janabee as the most important witness, and Powell was convinced of his trust in Tenet.
People don't look at intelligence as true or untrue, but whether it is "useful."
Powell was taken advantage of, and the choice to make him appear in the foreground was the elaborate arrangement of the United States: You see, the "doves" and "anti-warrs" are angry, should Saddam Hussein fight? ......
Bush, Cheney, and then-Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld used Powell and his good standing to present fragile, and ultimately false, justifications for war. As Powell told one of his aides, according to Robert Draper, author of "Waging War: How the Bush Administration Brought America into Iraq," Cheney once said to Powell, "You're the most popular person in America, do something that's welcome." ”
Powell later slammed then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Ambassador to Iraq Paul. Bremer was the culprit who deceived him.
Coincidentally, Rumsfeld also died this year. I don't know if you two can make this clear in other worlds...
Like most hawks, Rumsfeld was born rich, a young man, and used to command everything from above. He became a member of Congress at the age of 30 and served as CEO of two Fortune 500 companies. He was the youngest secretary of defense in U.S. history when he became secretary of defense in 1975 under The Ford administration, and he became the oldest secretary of defense during George W. Bush's tenure.
He always gave the impression of arrogance and domineering, and he advocated the use of force to deter the enemy in order to ensure that the United States lived in a safer world and survived a war monger.
But it's not fair to hold all the on him because of that. Powell dared to scold him, but he would not blame George W. Bush; after all, Bush Sr. and Cheney promoted Powell to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and George W. Bush appointed him secretary of state. As a senior official who also serves the interests of the Bush Administration, who is less responsible than the grasshopper tied to a thread?
As the chief minister in the U.S. Cabinet, the Secretary of State, in accordance with the practice of the United States Government, has the authority to direct the director of the CIA on diplomatic matters and to hear briefings alone.
Let the secretary of state completely in the dark, let the CIA director lie to the secretary of state, let the Department of Defense pretend that nothing happened after receiving warnings from allies, hide key information, fool the Council with completely unreliable testimony... It can be said that this level of deception is the embodiment of the will of the highest power in the United States.
Within the Bush Administration at that time, there was an atmosphere of war. Due to the general dislike of the Iraqi Saddam regime in the 1990s, the US Congress passed the so-called "Liberation of Iraq Act" in 1998, which made the overthrow of Saddam Hussein a national policy statement. In 2000, George W. Bush's campaign platform called for the full implementation of the "Liberation of Iraq Act" and the complete elimination of Saddam's regime.
It is said that the plan to invade Iraq was formulated on the first day of the Bush team's entry into the White House.
After the 9/11 attacks, fears of weapons of mass destruction in the United States peaked. This fear and antipathy to Saddam's regime was exploited by politicians with ulterior motives, who on the one hand portrayed Saddam Hussein as having a mass murderer and on the other hand, slandered Saddam Hussein as having an affair with a terrorist organization, which became the biggest booster to the War in Iraq.
In addition, after George W. Bush launched the War in Afghanistan, with the overwhelming offensive of the US military, the popularity of Bush Jr., who had lost the popular vote in the 2000 general election, instantly soared, and the political dividends of launching the invasion also made Bush Jr. dizzy.
Needless to say, the Bushes have deep ties to the military-industrial complex and the Texas oil industry, and Iraq's huge oil production capacity and the expansion of arms that the war will bring represent hundreds of billions of dollars in profits. Both Cheney and Rumsfeld had a lot of contacts with military and oil tycoons within the Bush administration, and Rumsfeld himself served as chairman of the RAND Corporation, a well-known military think tank, in the 1980s.
In this way, the Bush administration is basically composed of a group of war traffickers, some of whom want to win votes by starting a war, some of whom want to seek economic benefits for the military industry, oil companies, and themselves, and this group of people is very indifferent to international law, believing that the legitimacy of war is "printed on the back of the M1A2 tank", that is, the so-called "strength is morality".
As for Powell, who knew that he could elect the president but chose to fully support the Bush family, it was not so much that he was "deceived" as that he was inclined to believe these "evidences" from the Bush administration.
Powell served in the U.S. army all his life, and obedience was probably already engraved in his mind. As good as he is, it is impossible to completely uncover unreliable evidence for the existence of so-called "weapons of mass destruction". But when the U.S. Supreme Commander-in-Chief ordered him to "go to New York to give a speech defending the war," he not only went happily, but also had confidence in the evidence in his hands...
Therefore, in front of the world, a bottle of "washing powder" has become a weapon of mass destruction, and from another point of view, this bottle of "washing powder" eventually killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, which is really worthy of the name of "big killer".
What is even more tragic is that the diplomatic model of this aggression and intervention of the United States has not changed, and the degree of political interference by the military industry and oil companies has not decreased, and this kind of washing powder farce is definitely not the last time it will be staged.
In such a system that exists for the purpose of trafficking wars, where can there be any real "good people"?
Resources:
The Guardian: Colin Powell's speech at the United Nations: A Defining Moment to Undermine America's Credibility
The New Yorker: Powell's Moment of Destiny
UNITED NATIONS website: Mr. De Villepin's statement on Iraq at the UN Security Council
China Daily: Samurai vs Diplomat - Sfeld's War with Powell
Fa Guang: Diplomat Powell's lingering shadow of the Iraq War