“It’s painful now.”More than 4,000 Americans and potentially hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died in the insurgent conflict the Iraq invasion unleashed. It was an earlier U.S. war against Iraq that first brought Powell a full measure of admiration and fame. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — the youngest in history and the first Black general to hold the job — it was Powell who advised President George H.W. To the dismay of some war hawks, it ended within weeks, when Hussein’s forces were sent scampering back to Baghdad. As then-Vice President Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, Bush’s defense secretary, began to shift attention to Iraq, Powell tried to caution the president.
