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I recommended to the president [George Bush] that our focus had to be on al-Qaida, the Taliban and Afghanistan. Those were the ones who attacked the United States of America on 9/11.

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
United
Recommended
President
Attacked
America
Als
States
Afghanistan
George
Bush
Ones
Focus

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What could be more important than equipping the next generation with the character and competence they need to become successful
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There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
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Some people naturally have a sense of empathy and an understanding of how to bring their followers to do things. They become great politicians.
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The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend on, is action. It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny.
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The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort.
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President Kennedy didn't negotiate out of the Cuban missile crisis simply because he and Khrushchev got along well. Khrushchev didn't have the cards.
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The best way to create a winning team is to train them, give them everything they need to get the job done and second, make sure they know what the job is and what the job will be. So you connect strategy to resources.
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Leaders honor their core values, but they are flexible in how they execute them.
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Don't bother people for help without first trying to solve the problem yourself.
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Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.
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President Reagan fueled the spirit of America. His smile, his optimism, his total belief in the ultimate triumph of democracy and freedom, and his willingness to act on that belief, helped end the Cold War and usher in a new and brighter phase of history.
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Economy's got to get moving, we've got to get the unemployment rate down. That may be the defining issue of the campaign.
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How often have we seen politicians take a principle position only to give it up three days later? That is what makes democracy so fascinating.
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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.
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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 freedom to do your best means nothing unless you are willing to do your best.
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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 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.
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Our failure was that our intelligence community thought [Saddam Hussein ] had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. That was a mistake. There is fallibility in human intelligence and in human decisions.
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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.
Colin Powell