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Remember that his career is defined by militarily winning the Kuwait war. And being a piece of the coverup attempt of the My Lai massacre.
They went to him in 2000 and told him: Here's your chance, Colin, to secure your place as a victorious American commander on the level of Eisenhower- we need to continue that old war and topple Hussein. If you don't go along and we can't overcome the resistance to doing it, Hussein will have beaten you.
Powell stuck around until Baghdad got taken and then began to fade out of the top tier in the White House in a hurry. In part because they elbowed and pushed him out, because they didn't need him anymore, in part because he figured he had done enough lying for what he considered a good end and was sick of the whole slime the Administration really is/was.
It's not moral heroism or great dignity or integrity. I think he sincerely believed that toppling Hussein would justify the warfare. The foolish miscalculation was trusting the rest of the Administration to not botch absolutely everything they touched in Iraq.
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