“THE DEVIL'S SECRETARY”

Despite the impunity with which Collin Powell was able to escape prosecution for lying about Iraq's chemical weapons, he was unable to escape death

By Dany Smith

Eleven years had passed since the war, and the ruthless embargo imposed by a timorous United Nations under the influential auspices of the George H. Bush administration had wreaked havoc on the Iraqi population. Hundreds of thousands of children had died from starvation and lack of basic medicines and another hundreds of thousands would be born dead or with horrible deformations as a result of chemical weapons (poor Uranium; Napalm; White Phosphorus and others) that the US forces under the command of the General Collin Powel and his British allies had used it unscrupulously during the 1991 "Desert Storm" campaigns.

Neither George H. Bush nor any of his officials in Washington, much less Collin Powel himself, were held accountable for these crimes against humanity. The weight of the obsequiousness was imposed with the illusion that the world would forget about these genocides accompanied by massive robbery. Undoubtedly, an outstanding debt and a brutal and shameful precedent of what was the massive and indiscriminate violation of human rights with universal scope. It was undoubtedly the demonstration of impunity caused by the obsequiousness of international organizations, in particular the United Nations, by the mere political and military weight of a power that would not stop with the development of other plans.

It was around the beginning of 2002 when (and under the protection of 9/11) the final blow to this dying Arab state began to be outlined and one of his brains to make it happen was undoubtedly the then Secretary of State Collin Powell. Awarded by George W. Bush (h) in 2001, he took the post of Secretary of State and was, together with the neocons and Zionists who supported the republican administration, one of the protagonists of the instigation to commit another of the great crimes against humanity of the beginning of the century as were the invasions and subsequent occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Despite the fact that it is usually spoken of a subject with a pragmatic and moderate position, his activities in the management to justify the military interventions abroad were lightly criticized by the proven exaggerations and falsehoods in the presentation of his arguments even before the United Nations forum. One of his most epic performances before the forum would be the one he carried out in February 2003 brandishing a bottle with a white powder that according to Powell was “Anthrax” that - according to he emphatically affirmed - Iraq was making. Coincidentally and in a contemporary way, there was a paranoia for alleged attacks with "Anthrax" against various journalists and government officials that conveniently blamed "Al Qaeda" and Muslims in general. Some time later, it was discovered that those envelopes with that infectious material were being sent by agents of the same system. Later, and without any regrets, Collin Powell himself would admit that this argument had been invented to force international support and justify military intervention against Iraq.

This action constituted the commission of a false testimony that served to argue politically before the International Community the decision of the White House that by means of false intelligence reports from the CIA and the British MI-6 they sought to align the forum in this company. Despite the attempt, their position did not catch on as they expected in Washington, although this did not stop the invasion that the US would carry out a month later.

This meant the death sentences of more than 1.5 million Iraqis and the injury of hundreds of thousands more as a result of an occupation that would last until 2011.

For neoconservatives and certain Republican sectors in the US, Powell was a hero and one of the mainstays of the "fight against terrorism" launched in 2001 by the Bush / Cheney administration. In the same sense, the pro-Americans and the Argentine Anglophilia have it (who have Churchill in their language) that regardless of where they stand or what the consequences of US policies have been for the intervened countries and regions, they support without rhyme or reason. they are the wars of Washington.

On October 18 at 84 years of age, despite having been vaccinated with the best vaccines, Powell died of Sars-Cov2. Certainly an irony. This character in the dark contemporary American history who, like his colleagues Bush and Rumsfeld, managed to escape the reproach of international justice, could not avoid the lethality of a virus. It may not be a consolation for the thousands of Iraqis and Afghans who have lost their families, although it is becoming increasingly clear that beyond the obstacles that Washington and its allies put to the initiatives of international bodies such as the ICC and the instances  dependent on the United Nations so that its officials involved in war crimes and against humanity are investigated about events such as those mentioned here, it will be history that will end up doing that justice denied to the millions of human beings who were harmed with impunity.

Paraphrasing the late President Hugo César Chávez, the Secretary of the "devil" has left and without a doubt, that today he will be in the waiting room of purgatory with his old colleagues who are waiting for his final interview with the rector and mentor of his sinister proceedings.