Obituary: Colin Powell

 Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, 84, who later was strongly critical of Republicans and supported Obama, Clinton, and Biden for the presidency, as died from complications of COVID. He died early this morning.

Powell was fully vaccinated, but he was immunocompromised having suffered from multiple myeloma, which is a cancer that is ultimately fatal in patients though they can live for years with the disease.  

From the link:

His was a classic American success story. Born in Harlem of Jamaican parents, Mr. Powell grew up in the South Bronx and graduated from City College of New York, joining the Army through ROTC. Starting as a young second lieutenant commissioned in the dawn of a newly desegregated Army, Mr. Powell served two decorated combat tours in Vietnam. He later was national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan at the end of the Cold War, helping negotiate arms treaties and an era of cooperation with the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev. 

As chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he was the architect of the invasion of Panama in 1989 and of the Persian Gulf war in 1991, which ousted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait but left him in power in Iraq. Along with then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, Mr. Powell reshaped the American Cold War military that stood ready at the Iron Curtain for half a century. In doing so, he stamped the Powell Doctrine on military operations — identifyh clear political objectives and public support, use decisive and overwhelming force to defeat enemy forces.

Gina Kolata wrote a piece about multiple myeloma and current treatments for the disease, which is not one of the more common forms of cancer.