I'm a dirty stinking liberal but Colin Powell is
[h1]Colin Powell Biography[/h1]
Former Secretary of State, United States of America
Colin Powell Date of birth: April 5, 1937
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Colin Luther Powell was born in Harlem in 1937. His parents wereJamaican immigrants who stressed the importance of education andpersonal achievement. Powell grew up in the South Bronx, where hegraduated from high school without having formed any definite ambitionor direction in life. He entered the City College of New York to studygeology and it was there, by his own account, that he found his callingwhen he joined the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC). He becamecommander of his unit's precision drill team and graduated in 1958 atthe top of his ROTC class, with the rank of cadet colonel, the highestrank in the corps.
Powell was commissioned a second lieutenant in theUnited States Army, and was one of the 16,000 military advisorsdispatched to South Vietnam by President Kennedy in 1962. In 1963,Lieutenant Powell was wounded by a punji-stick booby trap whilepatrolling the Vietnamese border with Laos. He was awarded the PurpleHeart, and later that year, the Bronze Star. Powell served a secondtour of duty in Vietnam in 1968-69. During this second tour he wasinjured in a helicopter crash. Despite his own injuries, he managed torescue his comrades from the burning helicopter and was awarded theSoldier's Medal. In all, he has received 11 military decorations,including the Legion of Merit.
Powell earned an MBA at George WashingtonUniversity in Washington, DC, and after being promoted to major, won aWhite House fellowship. Powell was assigned to the Office of Managementand Budget during the administration of President Nixon, and here hemade a lasting impression on the Director and Deputy Director of theOffice: Casper Weinberger and Frank Carlucci. Both of these men were tocall on Powell when they served as Secretary of Defense and NationalSecurity Advisor, respectively, under President
Ronald Reagan.
Powell, now a Colonel, followed his term as White House Fellow withservice as a battalion commander in Korea and with a staff job at thePentagon. After study at the Army War College, he was promoted toBrigadier General and commanded a Brigade of the 101st AirborneDivision. In the administration of President
Jimmy Carter,Powell was an assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and to theSecretary of Energy. He was promoted to Major General. He againassisted Frank Carlucci at the Defense Department during the transitionfrom the administration of President Carter to that of President
Ronald Reagan.
Powell served as assistant commander and deputy commander of infantrydivisions in Colorado and Kansas before returning to Washington tobecome senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense CasperWeinberger, whom he assisted during the invasion of Grenada and the airstrikes against Libya. Powell was called upon to testify beforeCongress in private session about the covert shipment of American armsto Iran; he was one of only five persons in the Pentagon who knew aboutthe operation. Powell was not implicated in any wrongdoing in thematter.
In 1986, Powell left Washington to serve as commanderof the Fifth Corps in Frankfurt, Germany, but was recalled toWashington to serve as deputy to Frank Carlucci, now the NationalSecurity Advisor. A year later, Carlucci was appointed Secretary ofDefense and Powell, now a Lieutenant General, assumed Carlucci's formerpost. As National Security Advisor, he coordinated technical and policystaff during President Reagan's summit meetings with Soviet PresidentGorbachev. He was the first African American to serve in this position,as he has been in every office he has held since.
In 1991, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under
President George H.W. Bush,Powell became a national figure during the successful Desert Shield andDesert Storm operations which expelled the Iraqi army from Kuwait.General Powell continued as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs during thefirst months of the Clinton administration, publicly disagreeing with
President Clintonover the President's plan to permit gay men and women to serve in themilitary, although he eventually accepted a compromise on the issue.Powell retired from the military shortly thereafter and returned toprivate life. In 1994, Powell joined former
President Carterand Senator Sam Nunn on a last-minute peace-making expedition to Haiti,which resulted in the end of military rule and the peaceful return topower of the elected government of that country.
In his years of military service, General Powell neverdisclosed his political sympathies; he was registered to vote as anindependent. Although he was known to have supported the 1964 campaignof President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, he had served in bothRepublican and Democratic administrations. In the 1990s, the General'sgreat popularity led many people to urge him to run for President. In1995 he announced that he had registered as a Republican, and hereceived a thunderous ovation when he spoke at the Republicanconvention the following year. Although he did not forswear futurepolitical involvement, he has declined to seek elective office. In1997, he returned to his alma mater, the City College of New York, toopen the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies, offeringhigh-achieving CCNY students the opportunity to prepare for careers inpolicy and public service. For the rest of the decade, he continued hiswork with young people as Chairman of America's Promise: the Alliancefor Youth.
In 2001, newly elected President George W. Bush appointed Colin Powellto be Secretary of State. At the time, it was the highest rank everheld by an African American in the United States government. In hisfirst months in office, Powell won praise for his efficientadministration of the State Department, and cordial relations withother governments. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11,2001, Secretary Powell took a leading role in rallying America's alliesfor military action in Afghanistan.
It was reported that Powell had serious misgivings about PresidentBush's subsequent plan to invade Iraq and topple the regime of SaddamHussein. Nevertheless, Powell appeared before the Security Council ofthe United Nations, where he presented evidence purporting to provethat Iraq had concealed concealing an ongoing weapons developmentprogram, in violation of UN resolutions. Powell's testimony wasinstrumental in persuading many members of the U.S. Congress to supportmilitary action against Iraq. Some of this evidence was laterdiscredited, and when American forces found no evidence of a weaponsprogram in Iraq, Secretary Powell was subjected to harsh criticism.Shortly after President Bush's re-election in 2004, Powell stepped downas Secretary of State.
Although he maintained a low public profile after his resignation,Powell at times offered nuanced criticism of the conduct of the war inIraq. He declined to endorse any Republican candidate for President in2008. In October, just weeks before the election, he announced hissupport for the Democratic nominee, Senator
Barack Obama.
