The Good Life of Colin Powell

But his reputation was hurt forever after he warned in a speech to the United Nations that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that he might use against us.

As everyone later found out, Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction didn’t exist and the claim that he was hiding them was based on faulty intelligence, which is the kind that our intel community has become really good at producing.

One of this week’s meanest criticisms of Colin Powell, not surprisingly, came from a fellow Republican, Donald Trump.

The former president – whom Powell called “a national disgrace and an international pariah” in 2016 and whom he did not support in 2020 – wrote this typically Trumpian “eulogy”:

"Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO (Republican In Name Only), if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!”

Trump simply can’t help being Trump. He can’t think beyond right now – or think beyond himself.

Instead of issuing a respectful presidential statement about the death of a great American, or just shutting up, he had to get his digs in and try to make himself the top story of the day.

Trump’s boorish statement was particularly upsetting to me because I knew what a nice man Colin Powell was.

I’ll never forget the last time I spoke to him, which was at my father’s funeral in Washington at the Capitol Rotunda.

When the ceremony was over and as my family was walking out, Powell made a point to come over to see us.

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