New Delhi: Colin Powell, the first African-American US Secretary of State and top military official, died on Monday at the age of 84 due to COVID-induced complications.
Powell’s family announced his death in a statement on Facebook.
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“General Colin L. Powell, former US Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, passed away this morning due to complications from Covid 19. He was fully vaccinated,” the Facebook post read.
“We would like to thank the medical staff of Walter Reed National Medical Center for the kind of treatment they provide. We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American.”
General Colin Powell, with his experience in the military, was for decades one of America’s most important black men.
He was assigned the senior position by three Republican presidents and rose to the top of the US military after the painful Vietnam War.
Powell was wounded in Vietnam and served as US national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan from 1987 to 1989, the news agency Reuters noted in its report.
The four-star Army general served as chairman of the Army’s Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George HW Bush during the 1991 Gulf War, in which US-led forces expelled Iraqi troops from Kuwait.
In 1996, Powell, a moderate Republican, was touted as a potential rival to Bill Clinton to become the first black US president. However, he declined citing his lack of passion for politics.
He was also seen as a potential candidate in the 2000 US presidential election, where he decided to run again.
Later, in 2008, he broke away from the Republican Party to support Democrat Barack Obama, who would go on to become the first black President of the United States of America.
Colin Powell’s legacy, on the other hand, has been tarnished with his controversial presentation to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003.
It led President George W. Bush, whom Powell had previously endorsed at the 2000 Republican National Convention, to establish that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s alleged stockpile of nuclear and biological weapons constituted an imminent threat to the world. .
He later acknowledged that the presentation was rife with inaccuracies and distorted intelligence provided by others in the Bush administration. It represents “a blot” that will “always be a part of my record”, he was quoted by Reuters.
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