- Forged as a War Criminal in U.S. Genocidal Mass Murder in Vietnam
- Covered Up U.S. Genocide in Vietnam
- 1989-1990–Invasion of Panama
- 1991 Gulf War–Destruction of Iraq
- Lying about WMDs to Justify 2003 War on Iraq
- Kidnapping President of Haiti to Orchestrate a Pro-U.S. Coup
Forged as a War Criminal in U.S. Genocidal Mass Murder in Vietnam
From Powell’s book My American Journey—writing about being a U.S. soldier in Vietnam:
On February 18, we came upon a deserted Montagnard [a minority nationality in Vietnam] village. The people had fled at our approach, except for an old woman too feeble to move. We burned down the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo cigarette lighters. The ARVN [pro-U.S. Vietnamese] troops slashed away with their bayonets at fields of corn, onions, and manioc, a Montagnard starch staple. Part of the crop we kept for ourselves. On latter occasions, the destruction became more sophisticated. Helicopters delivered fifty-five -gallon drums of a chemical herbicide to us, a forerunner of Agent Orange. From the drums, we filled two-and-a-half-gallon hand-pumped Hudson sprayers, which looked like fire extinguishers. Within minutes after we sprayed, the plants began to turn brown and wither.
Why were we torching houses and destroying crops? Ho Chi Minh had said the people were like the sea in which the guerrillas swam. Our problem was to distinguish friendly or at least neutral fish from the VC [short for Viet-Cong, the name the U.S. gave to Vietnamese freedom fighters] swimming alongside. We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable. In the hard logic of war, what difference did it make if you shot your enemy or starved him to death?
However chilling this destruction of homes and crops reads in cold print today, as a young officer, I had been conditioned to believe in the wisdom of my superiors, and to obey. I had no qualms about what we were doing. This was counterinsurgency at the cutting edge. Hack down the peasants’ crops thus denying food to the Viet Cong, who were supported by the North Vietnamese, who, in turn were backed by Moscow and Beijing, who were our mortal enemies, in the global struggle between freedom and communism. It all made sense in those days.
(Source: My American Journey by Colin L. Powell, Joseph E. Persico, 2010, pages 86-87)
Covered Up U.S. Genocide in Vietnam
On Saturday morning, March 16, 1968, 100 soldiers from Charlie Company, U.S. Army Americal Division, entered and took over My Lai, a small hamlet in Vietnam’s countryside. “We met no resistance and I only saw three captured weapons... It was just like any other Vietnamese village—old papa-sans, women and kids,” a soldier said.
“The order we were given was to kill and destroy everything that was in the village,” another soldier later testified. “It was clearly explained that there were to be no prisoners.” An order was given to push all the Vietnamese who had been forced into the area into a ditch. “I began shooting them all. I guess I shot maybe 25 or 20 people in the ditch,” one G.I. later recounted, “men, women, and children. And babies.” A baby crawling away from the ditch was grabbed and thrown back into the ditch and shot.
“Over four hours, members of Charlie Company methodically slaughtered more than five hundred unarmed victims, killing some in ones and twos, others in small groups, and collecting many more in a drainage ditch that would become an infamous killing ground,” Nick Turse, author of Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, writes. “They faced no opposition. They even took a quiet break to eat lunch in the midst of the carnage. Along the way, they also raped women and young girls, mutilated the dead, systematically burned homes, and fouled the area’s drinking water.”
During Powell’s second tour of duty in Vietnam, he played a key role in covering up massacres like this by U.S. soldiers. Powell was assigned to investigate charges contained in a letter by a young specialist fourth class named Tom Glen, which exposed My Lai–like atrocities. Glen's letter said that he had seen Vietnamese civilians shot in the back by U.S. soldiers who “for mere pleasure, fire indiscriminately into Vietnamese homes and without provocation or justification shoot at the people themselves.” Glen’s letter also exposed torture as part of soldiers interrogating “suspects.”
Powell’s response was a complete cover-up. He never questioned Glen or assigned anyone else to talk with him. Powell claimed that Glen’s charges couldn’t be true because U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were taught to treat Vietnamese courteously and respectfully and that the soldiers had gone through an hour-long course on how to treat prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Powell concluded saying that, “relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent.”
(Source: History.net, Colin Powell, the Vietnam Years)
1989-1990—In Charge of Massive Destruction in U.S. Invasion of Panama
On December 20, 1989, the U.S. military invaded Panama with 27,500 troops and 300 aircraft, killing thousands of civilians and removing Manuel Noriega. Powell, as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, played a key role in planning and leading the invasion. Photo: AP
Powell, as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, played a key role in planning and leading the U.S. invasion of Panama to overthrow the rule of Manuel Noriega. Noriega was perceived to be an obstacle to U.S. interests, including control of the economically and strategically critical Panama Canal.
The invasion was characterized by mass destruction and murder in impoverished neighborhoods where many supporters of Noriega lived. The Central American Human Rights Commission (CODEHUCA) reported, “The most devastated civilian neighborhoods—such as Chorrillos and San Miguelito—were extremely poor, densely populated areas. Half of the neighborhood of Chorrillos—which had a pre-invasion population of approximately 25,000—was literally destroyed by US troops and civilian residents were victims of direct attacks.”
(Source: revcom.us, American Crime Case #43: The U.S. Invasion of Panama, 1989-1990.)
1991 Gulf War—The Destruction of Iraq
Powell committed towering war crimes and crimes against humanity in his role as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first war against Iraq, in 1991, which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis and the destruction of much of Iraq’s civilian infrastructure—which in turn led to many more deaths.
Powell insisted that it was justified for the U.S. to attack civilian targets like the Amiriyah air raid shelter in Baghdad, killing hundreds of civilians including many children. Powell repeatedly insisted that this air raid shelter was a legitimate target—claiming that it was a “military bunker”—in the face of the undeniable fact that it was inhabited by civilians who were mercilessly slaughtered by this U.S. attack.
Lying about WMDs to Justify 2003 War on Iraq
The George W. Bush regime, facing massive opposition to an invasion of Iraq at home and abroad, deployed Powell—at this point Secretary of State—to lie to the world, through a speech to the United Nations that there was “solid intelligence” that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and that the regime there had ties to al-Qaeda.
(Source: The Intercept, LIE AFTER LIE: WHAT COLIN POWELL KNEW ABOUT IRAQ 15 YEARS AGO AND WHAT HE TOLD THE U.N.)
Iraq Body Count documented between 168,239 and 187,378 civilian deaths from violence, and total violent deaths including combatants at 251,000 from the beginning of the invasion in 2003 through September 2016. Other studies of the direct and indirect toll of the war (due, for example, to the destruction and disruption to water and power systems, health care and food production): 655,000 according to a 2006 Lancet study; 1 million according to a 2008 Opinion Research Business study; and other current estimates reaching 1.2 to 1.4 million. More than 4.2 million Iraqis were injured and at least 4.5 million driven from their homes. Women suffered terribly, directly from the war and from the new, U.S.-backed government’s imposition of reactionary Sharia law with separate, unequal laws for women.
(Source: revcom.us, American Crime Case #70: “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” 2003.)
Kidnapping President of Haiti to Orchestrate a Pro-U.S. Coup
U.S. Marine walks past residents while on patrol in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, March 22, 2004. Photo: AP
In March 2004, Secretary of State Powell orchestrated the kidnapping of elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide who was sent to the Central African Republic as part of a U.S.-backed coup. Powell’s “denial” of the U.S. role included claiming Aristide was “a man who was democratically elected, but he did not democratically govern or govern well.” And, “Now we [the U.S. military] are there to give the Haitian people another chance.”
(Source: CNN, Aristide says U.S. deposed him in 'coup d'etat')
After the coup, hundreds of U.S. Marines controlled the capital, and waves of attacks, often by U.S. soldiers, were unleashed on the people. In June, they were replaced by a force of 7,000 UN troops (mainly Brazilian) who have been cited by Human Rights groups as widely practicing summary executions.
(Source: revcom.us, The U.S. in Haiti: A Century of Domination and Misery)