Colin Powell, first Black US secretary of state, passes away due to Covid
Washington, Oct 18: Colin Powell, who served Democratic and Republican presidents in war and peace but whose sterling reputation was forever stained when he went before the UN and made faulty claims to justify the US war in Iraq, has passed away of COVID-19 complications. He was 84.
A veteran of the Vietnam War, Powell rose to the rank of four-star general and in 1989 became the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In that role he oversaw the US invasion of Panama and later the US invasion of Kuwait to oust the Iraqi army in 1991.
But his legacy was marred when, in 2003, he went before the UN Security Council as secretary of state and made the case for US war against Iraq at a moment of great international skepticism.
He cited faulty information claiming Saddam Hussein had secretly stashed away weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq's claims that it had no such weapons represented a web of lies, he told the world body.
In announcing his death on social media, Powell's family said he had been fully vaccinated.
We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father and grandfather and a great American, the family said. Powell had been treated at Walter Reed National Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
Powell was the first American official to publicly lay the blame for the 9/11 terrorist attacks on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and made a lightning trip to Pakistan in October, 2001 to demand that then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf cooperate with the United States in going after the Afghanistan-based group, which also had a presence in Pakistan, where bin Laden was later killed.
As President George W. Bush's first secretary of state, Powell led a State Department that was dubious of the military and intelligence communities' conviction that Saddam Hussein possessed or was developing weapons of mass destruction.
And yet, despite his reservations, he presented the administration's case that Saddam indeed posed a major regional and global threat in a speech to the UN Security Council in the run-up to the war.
That speech, replete with his display of a vial of what he said could have been a biological weapon, was later derided as a low-point in Powell's career, although he had removed some elements that he deemed to have been based on poor intelligence assessments.
Bush said Monday that he and former first lady Laura Bush were deeply saddened by Powell's death.
He was a great public servant and widely respected at home and abroad, Bush said.
And most important, Colin was a family man and a friend. Laura and I send Alma and their children our sincere condolences as they remember the life of a great man.
Powell rose to national prominence under Republican presidents and considered a presidential bid of his own, but ultimately moved away from the party.
He endorsed Democrats in the last four presidential elections, starting with former President Barack Obama. He emerged as a vocal Donald Trump critic in recent years, describing Trump as a national disgrace who should have been removed from office through impeachment.
Following the January 6 storming of the US Capitol, Powell said he no longer considers himself a Republican.
Powell rose from a childhood in a fraying New York neighbourhood to become the nation's chief diplomat. Mine is the story of a black kid of no early promise from an immigrant family of limited means who was raised in the South Bronx, he wrote in his 1995 autobiography My American Journey.
At City College, Powell discovered the ROTC. When he put on his first uniform, I liked what I saw, he wrote.
He joined the Army and in 1962 he was one of more than 16,000 military advisers sent to South Vietnam by President John F. Kennedy.
A series of promotions led to the Pentagon and assignment as a military assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who became his unofficial sponsor. He later became commander of the Army's 5th Corps in Germany and later was national security assistant to President Ronald Reagan.
During his term as Joint Chiefs chairman, his approach to war became known as the Powell Doctrine, which held that the United States should only commit forces in a conflict if it has clear and achievable objectives with public support, sufficient firepower and a strategy for ending the war.
Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, a retired Army general, said the news of Powell's death left a hole in my heart.
The world lost one of the greatest leaders that we have ever witnessed, Austin said while traveling in Europe.
Alma lost a great husband and the family lost a tremendous father and I lost a tremendous personal friend and mentor. He has been my mentor for a number of years. He always made time for me and I can always go to him with tough issues, he always had great counsel.
Powell's appearances at the United Nations as secretary of state, including his Iraq speech, were often accompanied by fond reminiscing of his childhood in the city, where he grew up the child of Jamaican immigrants who got one of his first jobs at the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant directly across the East River from the UN headquarters.
A fan of calypso music, Powell was the subject of criticism from, among others, singing legend Harry Belafonte, who likened Powell to a house slave for going along with the decision to invade Iraq. Powell declined to get into a public spat with Belafonte, but made it known that he was not a fan and much preferred the Trinidadian calypso star the Mighty Sparrow.
Powell maintained, in a 2012 interview with The Associated Press, that on balance, US succeeded in Iraq.
I think we had a lot of successes, Powell said.
Iraq's terrible dictator is gone."
Saddam was captured by US forces while hiding out in northern Iraq in December 2003 and later executed by the Iraqi government.
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Four arrested, minor detained for killing teenager in UP's Gorakhpur
Gorakhpur (UP)(PTI) Police on Tuesday arrested four persons and detained a boy in connection with the killing of a teenager at a school here, officials said.
The arrested accused have been identified as Dayanand alias Chhotu, Hrithik Roshan alias Roshan, Uday alias Kishan Kumar and Deepak, all residents of Pipraich police station area here and aged 19-20, the police officials said.
The detained minor will be produced before the Juvenile Justice Board, they said.
Police recovered a country-made pistol and a motorcycle allegedly used by the accused in the commission of the crime, they added.
Superintendent of Police (North) Gyanendra Nath Prasad said the arrests were made following sustained investigation and technical surveillance, and further legal proceedings were underway.
According to police, Sudhir Bharti (17), a class 11 student, was shot dead by the accused on December 26 over old enmity and a dispute triggered by social media posts in the playground of a school in the Pipraich area here.
Based on the complaint filed by Bharti's family, a case was registered under sections 103(1) (punishment for murder) and 61(2) (party to a criminal conspiracy) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and relevant provisions of the Arms Act.
According to eyewitnesses, Bharti was in the playground when he had an argument with a person from the same neighbourhood.
The argument escalated and the accused shot him with a country-made pistol, killing him on the spot, they said.
