[pjw] NEWS: Many Iraqis still blame Colin Powell for role in Iraq war | (Times of Israel 10/18)

[Peace and Justice Works]

Iraq Affinity Group supporters

It's been said not to speak ill of the dead, so I will refrain from 
commenting directly on the death of Colin Powell. Instead, I will let the 
voices of Iraqis carry the day, in an article by the Times of Israel, 
below. I'll just add that there's only scant mention of the 1991 Gulf War, 
which destroyed Iraq's infrastructure (including its ability to have 
clean water) and ended with a ground invasion that included bulldozers 
pushing live soldiers under the ground. See, I said nothing about Gen. 
Powell's responsibility for that even though he was chair of the joint 
chiefs of staff at the time.

By the way I also found articles on NBC, Media Matters and in the Guardian 
with similar themes.

NBC:
Iraqis remember Powell as both liberator and 'engineer' of endless war
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/iraqis-remember-powell-both-liberator-engineer-endless-war-rcna3225

Media Matters:
Following Colin Powell's death, mainstream media outlets downplay his role 
-- and their own -- in Iraq War
https://www.mediamatters.org/war-iraq/following-colin-powells-death-mainstream-media-outlets-downplay-his-role-and-their-own

Guardian:
"The court of God will be waiting for him": Iraqis react to Colin 
Powell's death
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/18/colin-powell-iraq-reaction-death

--dan handelman
peace and justice works iraq affinity group

https://www.timesofisrael.com/he-lied-many-iraqis-still-blame-colin-powell-for-role-in-iraq-war/
`He lied': Many Iraqis still blame Colin Powell for role in Iraq war
Former US secretary of state remembered for speech to UN justifying 2003
invasion: `A whole country was destroyed, and we continue to pay the price'
    By [46]Qassim Abdul-Zahra and [47]Zeina Karam 18 October 2021, 11:50 pm

    BAGHDAD (AP) -- For many Iraqis, the name Colin Powell conjures up one
    image: the man who, as US secretary of state, went before the UN
    Security Council in 2003 to make the case for war against their
    country.

    Word of his death Monday at age 84 dredged up feelings of anger in Iraq
    toward the former general and diplomat, one of several Bush
    administration officials whom they hold responsible for a disastrous
    US-led invasion that led to decades of death, chaos, and violence in
    Iraq.

    His UN testimony was a key part of events that they say had a heavy
    cost for Iraqis and others in the Middle East.

    "He lied, lied, and lied," said Maryam, a 51-year-old Iraqi writer and
    mother of two in northern Iraq who spoke on condition her last name not
    be used because one of her children is studying in the United States.

    "He lied, and we are the ones who got stuck with never-ending wars,"
    she added.

    As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell oversaw the Persian
    Gulf war to oust the Iraqi army in 1991, after Iraqi leader Saddam
    Hussein invaded Kuwait.

    But Iraqis remember Powell primarily for his UN presentation justifying
    the invasion of their country more than a decade later, casting Saddam
    as a major global threat who possessed weapons of mass destruction,
    even displaying a vial of what he said could have been a biological
    weapon. Powell had called Iraq's claims that it had no such weapons "a
    web of lies." No WMD were ever found, however, and the speech was later
    derided as a low point in his career.

    "I am saddened by the death of Colin Powell without being tried for his
    crimes in Iraq.... But I am sure that the court of God will be waiting
    for him," tweeted Muntadher al-Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist who vented
    his outrage at the US by throwing his shoes at then-president George W.
    Bush during a 2008 news conference in Baghdad.

    In 2011, Powell told Al Jazeera that he regretted providing misleading
    intelligence that led the US invasion, calling it a " blot on my
    record." He said a lot of sources cited by the intelligence community
    were wrong.

    But in a 2012 interview with The Associated Press, Powell maintained
    that on balance, the US "had a lot of successes" because "Iraq's
    terrible dictator is gone."

    Saddam was captured by US forces while hiding in northern Iraq in
    December 2003 and later executed by the Iraqi government.
    Cpl. Edward Chin of the US 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines Regiment, covers
    the face of a statue of Saddam Hussein with an American flag before
    toppling the statue in downtown Baghdad, Iraq, April 9, 2003. (Jerome
    Delay/AP)

    But the insurgency that emerged from the US occupation grew into deadly
    sectarian violence that killed countless Iraqi civilians, and the war
    dragged on far longer than had been predicted by the Bush
    administration, eventually helping give rise to the Islamic State
    group. President Barack Obama pulled US troops out of Iraq in 2011, but
    sent advisers back three years later, after the Islamic State group
    swept in from Syria and captured large swaths of both countries.

    Powell's UN testimony "resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of
    Iraqis. This blood is on his hands," said Muayad al-Jashami, a 37-year
    old Iraqi who works with nongovernmental organizations.

    While he did not suffer direct losses, al-Jashami said he continues to
    struggle with stress and panic attacks as a result of growing up with
    war, displacement, and years of terrorist bombings in the country.
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    Aqeel al-Rubai, 42, who owns a clothes and cosmetics shop in Baghdad,
    said he does not care if Powell regretted the faulty information he
    gave on WMD.

    Al-Rubai, who lost his cousin in the war, also blames the US for the
    death of his father, who had a close call during the sectarian
    blood-letting that followed the US invasion, and later had a fatal
    heart attack.

    "What does that remorse do for us? A whole country was destroyed, and
    we continue to pay the price," he said. "But I say, may God have mercy
    on him.'

    Elsewhere, Powell was remembered as "a towering figure in American
    military and political leadership over many years, someone of immense
    capability and integrity," by former British prime minister Tony Blair,
    who backed the US campaign and invasion.

    German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas tweeted that Powell was a
    "straight-talking foreign policy official" and a "trans-Atlantic
    bridge-builder."

    The Israeli embassy in Washington praised Powell for his "commitment to
    Israel and his deep personal connection to the Jewish community."

    Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, said Powell was "a
    wonderful, moral man who was misled terribly in the context of the Iraq
    war before the Security Council." Robinson heads The Elders, a group of
    retired world leaders.

    But Maryam, the writer from northern Iraq, refuses to accept the idea
    that Powell may have been misled on Iraq.

    "I don't believe that," she added. "And anyway, when lives are at
    stake, you do not have that luxury."