Colin Powell, the son of Jamaican immigrants who rose to become the first black US secretary of state and top military officer but whose reputation was tainted in 2003 when he touted spurious intelligence to the United Nations to make the case for war with Iraq despite deep misgivings, died on Monday at the age of 84.
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Despite being fully vaccinated against COVID-19, his family said, he died due to complications from the disease.
Powell was one of America's foremost black figures for decades. He was named to senior posts by three Republican presidents and reached the top of the US military as it was regaining its vigor after the trauma of the Vietnam War.
Powell, who was wounded in Vietnam, served as US national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan from 1987 to 1989. As a four-star Army general, he was chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George HW Bush during the 1991 Gulf War in which US-led forces expelled Iraqi troops from neighboring Kuwait.
Powell, a moderate Republican and a pragmatist, considered a bid to become the first black president in 1996 but his wife Alma's worries about his safety helped him decide otherwise. In 2008, he broke with his party to endorse Democrat Barack Obama, who became the first black person elected to the White House.
Powell will forever be associated with his controversial presentation on Feb. 5, 2003, to the UN Security Council, making President George W Bush's case that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein constituted an imminent danger to the world because of its stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
He admitted later that the presentation was rife with inaccuracies and twisted intelligence provided by others in the Bush administration and represented "a blot" that will "always be a part of my record."
Bush had picked Powell, the top US military officer during his father's presidency, as secretary of state in 2001.
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