The diplomat in Powell lost lustre in Iraq-II

A veteran of Washington’s bureaucratic warfare with a silken touch with foreign leaders, US lawmakers and the media, Powell found himself on the losing side of a number of Bush administration battles—notably the decision to go to war with Iraq without the UN Security Council’s blessing.

Powell’s most memorable public moment may have been his dramatic February 5, 2003, Security Council presentation of the administration’s case that Iraq constituted a threat because it possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

At one point Powell held up a vial of simulated biological agent—an image broadcast around the world, but after US investigators failed to find such weapons, 19 months later, he said: ‘‘I think it’s unlikely that we will find any stockpiles.’’

Often seen as a dove in an administration that became evermore hawkish after the September 11 attacks, Powell’s efforts to find a diplomatic solution to avert war with Iraq collapsed with the US led invasion in March, 2003.

According to Washington Post editor Bob Woodward’s insider account, Powell bluntly told Bush before the war, that if he sent US troops to Iraq, ‘‘You’re going to be owning this place’’ and he and his deputy, Richard Armitage, borrowed a store policy slogan as a warning about Iraq: ‘‘You break it, you own it.’’

The prediction rang true, as nations who opposed the war failed to commit troops to cope with an insurgency in which dozens of foreigners have been kidnapped and sometimes decapitated and the US military’s death toll has risen to about 1,200.

Powell’s advocates argue he won many victories, pushing Bush to take Iraq to the United Nations in September 2002, and leading diplomatic efforts to persuade North Korea and Iran to abandon their suspected nuclear weapons programs. But, among other policy defeats, his State Department was marginalised in the initial planning for post-war Iraq and his early desire to engage with North Korea was rejected by Bush.

His four-year stint as Secretary of State capped a career that included widespread speculation in 1995, after his retirement from the Army, that he was the only Republican capable of beating Democrat US President Bill Clinton.

—Reuters