The Iraq war was not General Colin Powell's fault

So it's farewell General Colin Powell. Some Iraqis, perhaps all Iraqis, have been brutal in their criticism of Powell for his role in laying before the United Nations the supposed intelligence of Saddam Hussein's collection of weapons of mass destruction which not long after led to the massive US-commanded invasion of Iraq on March 20 2003 and the total disaster that followed over the next dozen years or so. Disaster because although Saddam was found and jailed and executed, the anarchy in Iraq led to a vicious and murderous insurgency that killed tens of thousands of Iraqi people. The criticism of Powell, then US secretary of state and former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, is understandable. But unfair. Powell, like every other person involved politically and militarily in the decision to invade Iraq read and believed the intelligence that was provided by high-ranking but fraudulent Iraqi sources in Baghdad to American, Brtish and other coalition secret agencies. Powell was caught out like everyone else. When he read the "evidence" that Saddam agents had visited Niger to buy uranium yellowcake for the dictator's nuclear weapons programme he had no reason to believe that it was false. It WAS false but with all the other intelligence material claiming Saddam had a clandestine weapons of mass destruction programe this was just another snippet to seal Saddam's coffin. But sadly for Powell, he was viewed as such a man of integrity that his statement to the UN convinced many people around the world that it just HAD to be true. Powell later admitted his anguish at making a statement that turned out to be false. But it wasn't his fault that the US and others went to war with Iraq. It was the fault of everyone in the West who believed what they wanted to believe. Rest in peace General Powell.