Gen colin powell biography books

At the time of invasion, before it was known that Iraq no longer possessed WMD, Powell’s performance in the preparation and delivery of the U.N. speech appeared a model of excellent followership in service to his president and country. Bush had assigned Powell an important and challenging mission, one that tested his abilities and leveraged his enormous prestige. The secretary responded with considerable competency, composure, and dedication. Moreover, he demonstrated characteristic initiative and resourcefulness, and exercised his capacity for independent critical judgment. Above all perhaps, Powell had acted honorably; he believed what he said. In building the U.N. briefing, he rejected information that he considered spurious and included only intelligence that he or the CIA leadership appraised as credible and reliable. That President Bush and so many Americans thought so highly of Powell’s conduct was completely understandable.

The thesis of this book is that Powell’s decades-long development as an exemplary subordinate was crucial to his extraordinary rise from a working-class immigrant neighborhood in the South Bronx to the highest echelons of American military and political power. Although once an aimless teenager, Powell joined the U.S. Army in with un

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