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We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn't come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn't resurging. It didn't work out.

Colin Powell

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Colin Powell
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: April 5
Diplomat
Former United States Secretary Of State
Politician
Soldier
New York City
New York
Colin Luther Powell
Country
Sure
Work
President
Make
Didn
Would
Place
Afghan
Government
Hoped
Back
Als
Able
Wasn
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Control

More quotes by Colin Powell

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Let's not forget that Congress bears a lot of responsibility for many of the problems we have now
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We have to be on guard that we don't spend so much time worrying about terrorism and guarding ourselves that we start to lose the essence of who we are as an open, freedom-loving people, welcoming to the rest of the world.
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There is no such thing as an unimportant person in an organization.
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Politics is not bean bags. It's serious, tough stuff.
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It is not our place to decide who should lead the Iraqi people. If Saddam [Hussein] leaves or has to be forced out of power and a new regime brought in, a new leadership brought in, I am confident it will be some combination of people inside the country and outside the country.
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I would not presume from this distance, nor would America presume to say who should be the leader of the Iraqi nation.
Colin Powell
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Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they're being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I'm black. I tell them, 'Don't stop now. If I shot somebody you'd mention it.'
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War is never a happy solution, but it may be the only solution. We must exhaustively explore other possible solutions before we make the choice for war. Every political and diplomatic effort should be made to avoid war while achieving your objective.
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The burden is on Saddam Hussein. And our policy, our national policy - not the UN policy but our national policy - is that the regime should be changed until such time as he demonstrates that it is not necessary to change the regime because the regime has changed itself.
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The claims made about Iraq's WMD capabilities before the invasion were inaccurate, wrong, and in some cases, deliberately misleading.
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We knew that al-Qaida was a threat to our country. We knew that the Clinton administration understood this and was working against al-Qaida We did not ignore al-Qaida. We spent a lot of our time thinking about terrorism, what should we do about it.
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I'll tell you what they're all going to face, whichever one of them becomes president on January 21st of 2009. They will face a military force - a United States military force that cannot sustain - continually sustain 140,000 people deployed in Iraq and the 20-odd or 25,000 people we have deployed in Afghanistan and our other deployments.
Colin Powell
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Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.
Colin Powell
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If everybody trusts one another, then the person who didn't prevail will faithfully execute the decision as if it was their idea.
Colin Powell
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The most effective means of ensuring the government's accountability to the people is an aggressive, free, challenging, untrusting press.
Colin Powell
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When we have dealt with bin Laden and his network we will then broaden the campaign to go after other terrorists all around the world.
Colin Powell
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One thing the military does far better than business is train its own leaders. I can't go to IBM and hire a battalion commander. They don't have any.
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With respect to where we are now, we have a voluntary army. And if we ever go back to conscription I hope that at time it will be the kind of conscription that was put in at the end of the Vietnam War. And that is, everybody is equally liable to be called to serve the nation in time of conflict.
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Leaders honor their core values, but they are flexible in how they execute them.
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We would like to see new leaders come forward who would be accountable and responsible, who would succeed in ending the terror and the violence. And it is up to the Palestinian people to judge who those new leaders should be.
Colin Powell