Colin Powell, the trailblazing soldier, and diplomat whose sterling reputation of service to Republican and Democratic presidents was stained by his faulty claims to justify the 2003 U.S. war in Iraq, died Monday of COVID-19 complications. He was 84.

Powell will be remembered in the U.S. as a great American, a trailblazing African American leader, but fatefully, also as a member of an inner circle that helped propel the U.S. into a disastrous war in the Middle East.

CGTN’s Nathan King has this look back on Colin Powell’s life.

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