All I can say is that I thought about Desert Storm when I wrote my original comment. I may have been 7 or whatever, but I did grow up in the period after Desert Storm and I remember clearly how infallible American military might was through to be in popular opinion.

> That's probably what Colin Powell was counting on.

God knows. Why would you distance Powell from the other "generals would never tell the truth"? I'm not sure I would.

In any meritocratic society, the political careers of the people responsible would have been over.

Instead, the only person of import whose career was truly destroyed was Collin Powell.

Someone else could have been the messenger, and Powell could have also resigned in protest and become a whistleblower.

Instead he lied, deceived the public, and unequivocally supported the wars.

That's a fair question. My first reason was that Powell was in the State Department under W, and the State Department has a more skeptical attitude towards our military capabilities than the military itself does. My second reason, which may be wrong-headed, was that I assumed that the military tendency to misrepresent situations in an optimistic way comes from their desire to do the job. I.e., they say fighting will succeed because it's their job and they want to do it, and then when it isn't going well, they say it's going great because they want to prove that they can do it. Just like a developer downplays the complexity of a challenging project because they're excited about tackling it, and when they get in over their head, they won't admit it because they don't want the project cancelled before they can complete it, no matter how long it takes. (Like that, except with killing.) Since Colin Powell wouldn't be responsible for directing the invasions as a general, I didn't think he would be influenced by that aspect.

EDIT: I think in retrospect what I didn't understand about the Gulf War was that some people viscerally loathed the lessons of Vietnam, hated the idea that the U.S. military could be "defeated," and chose to interpret the Gulf War not as a vindication of applying the lessons of Vietnam, but as proof that the lessons of Vietnam no longer applied. Your comment about the infallibility of American military might reminded me of that.

I was disappointed precisely because I do believe he is a good man and wants to do what is best. I too thought he was destined to be president some day. He would have been a candidate I would want to vote for.

Many times we learn more from failure than success. I say in this instance, Powell has learned a great deal and could be a better leader because of it.

In the end, his mistake was following and not being a leader when he should have been.

Colin Powell made himself a patsy. He knew that what was about to unfold was wrong, disastrously confused complicity with resistance, and facilitated the end of an estimated 300,000 human beings. Powell, at the apex of his influence, destroyed what had been his career’s central purpose: preventing a repetition of Vietnam.

Draper, who spoke with Powell recently, outlined the likely course if Powell had resigned instead. (Draper framed it in terms of the U.N. speech, but never mind that.)

What if that same voice that publicly proclaimed the necessity of invading Iraq had instead told Bush privately that it was not merely an invitation to unintended consequences but a mistake, as he personally believed it to be? What if he had said no to Bush when he asked him to speak before the U.N.? Powell would almost certainly have been obligated to resign, and many if not all of his top staff members involved in the Iraq issue would also have quit; several had already considered doing so the previous summer.

If the State Department’s top team had emptied out their desks, what would Powell’s close friend [British Foreign Minister Jack] Straw have done? “If Powell had decided to resign in advance of the Iraq war,” Straw told me, “I would almost certainly have done so, too.” Blair’s support in the Labour Party would have cratered — and had Blair withdrawn his support for war under pressure from Parliament or simply failed to win an authorization vote, the narrative of collapsed momentum would have dominated the news coverage for weeks. Doubters in the upper ranks of the American military — there were several — would have been empowered to speak out; intelligence would have been re-examined; Democrats, now liberated from the political pressures of the midterm elections, would most likely have joined the chorus.

We can never know a counterfactual. The Iraq war was a product of multiple systemic failures and the alignment of multiple interests. We can never truly know if a refusal by Powell to be part of them would have prevented the invasion. But we do truly know that if anyone’s refusal could have prevented it, it was Powell’s, and Powell made the opposite decision.

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Links from the article that might be of interest.

On Iran Contra involvement:

https://twitter.com/GregGrandin/status/1450100327160688646

On the My Lai massacre in Vietnam:

https://www.historynet.com/colin-powell-the-vietnam-war-year...

Years and years later I understood the depravity of his speech and the actions of the "the west" in starting that war. I think it is the only time in my life that I felt truly betrayed, and the realization happened while I was thinking about the topic in a grocery store aisle. My hands felt clammy.

Even more years later my job at a large software company had me extremely close to Powell. Like in the same room with him for long stretches of time and having 1-on-1 conversations. Every fibre in me wanted to say to him, calmly: You told a lie and it killed a lot of innocent people. Their lives matter too.

I didn't say it. I did my job and kept it at that. I don't know to this day if I had a moral obligation to say something, but ultimately I didn't because I knew he didn't care.

So yes, false flags. They only happen when something is inevitable. War is here.

We killed and displaced millions of people, burned trillions of dollars, and lost by any measurable objective. If you’re not even 20, that outcome might not have been obvious. But if you served two tours in Vietnam and are in your 50s, you should know better. He failed the world and the United States tremendously, and it wasn’t one little “fuck up”.

Rhetorical question?

WRT Iraq, it was public knowledge that:

a) Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, indeed Iraq and al Qaeda were idealogical opponents.

b) Iraq had no "weapons of mass destruction"; cite Hans Blix, others.

c) Iraqi leader Hussein had completely capitulated, meaning GWB had effectively won without firing a single shot.

d) Bush Admin and their sources were lying and didn't care that every one knew they were lying.

WRT Afghanistan, I don't readily recall what intelligence failures were publicly known at the time. Complicity of Pakistan's ISI. Allowing bin Laden to escape. The tar pit of dealing with Taliban, the misc war lords of the Northern Alliance.

Many objected to Bush Admin's focus on Iraq at the expense of the Afghanistan effort.

Many more objected to Bush Admin's violation of the Powell Doctrine, in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Many pointed out the advocates for invading Iraq, mostly the neo-cons (aka chickenhawks), simply wanted war, regime change, and so forth. They'd said as much for over a decade. They seized the crisis of 9/11 to enact their plans. It was all very audacious and unapologetic.

It's true what they say - success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.