--- title: May 2012 - 10 Questions for Colin Powell | TIME description: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell talks about the Iraq war, why longer terms in Congress aren't better, and the time he almost ran for president canonical: https://time.com/video/lhTwCBTd/ og:title: May 2012 - 10 Questions for Colin Powell og:description: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell talks about the Iraq war, why longer terms in Congress aren't better, and the time he almost ran for president og:url: https://time.com/video/lhTwCBTd/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/lhTwCBTd/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: May 2012 - 10 Questions for Colin Powell twitter:description: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell talks about the Iraq war, why longer terms in Congress aren't better, and the time he almost ran for president twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/lhTwCBTd/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # May 2012 - 10 Questions for Colin Powell > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: May 2012 - 10 Questions for Colin Powell [Watch (HLS stream): May 2012 - 10 Questions for Colin Powell](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/lhTwCBTd.m3u8) (6:12)  _Published 2012-05-22. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell talks about the Iraq war, why longer terms in Congress aren't better, and the time he almost ran for president_ --- Jul 28, 2023 4:12 AM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Colin Powell Calls Trump A 'National Disgrace' in Leaked Email](/video/Zk7q4Pcy/) ### Colin Powell Calls Trump A 'National Disgrace' in Leaked Email [Hillary Clinton Blames Colin Powell For Email Scandal](/video/HPLjzZs5/) ### Hillary Clinton Blames Colin Powell For Email Scandal [Colin Powell: We Can Fix Education, But Congress Is Failing Us](/video/56QVUzIO/) ### Colin Powell: We Can Fix Education, But Congress Is Failing Us --- ## Transcript I'm Belinda Laska I'm an editor at large at Time Magazine. I'm sitting here with a four star general who is also a former National Security advisor, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Former secretary of state, former teamster. The author of several books, including a new one on leadership called It Worked for Me. And one of the biggest fans in the world of the movie, The Hustler. General Powell, thanks for being here. Thank you very much, Belinda. Now, you say in this book on leadership that the two months that you spent mulling around for the, arguably the chief leadership position in the world, leader of the so- called free world. Was the most difficult two months of your life. Yeah. Why is that. It was the most difficult because, one, I never had had any political aspirations, I'm a career soldier. I never really belonged to a political party. I had views about things, but I never spoke about them. But then I leave the army, and suddenly my book comes out. And there's this enormous interest in my running for office. And so I had to think about it. And it was something of a guilt trip that I felt on top of me. People said, you have to do this. And I felt obliged. A soldier always wants to do what he's supposed to do. But then it became very clear because it was not a single morning that I woke up. Or I put my feet on the floor and said this is right for me, this is what I wanna do. I didn't want to do it. Then you went on to, in that, during that campaign to endorse President Obama. Do you think you might endorse him again this time? I don't know, we'll see. What I've always tried to do is look at the candidate of both parties. But also to see what those candidates represent. Cuz you're not only electing a person, you're electing a movement, you're electing a platform, you're electing a Vice President. And so, I always like to take my time and examine all parts of the political equation, and that's what I'll do this year. One of things you talk about in your book is how you think members of Congress stay on a little longer than they should. Well you know we need congressional experience. We need people who know how the system runs but it seems to me that it really is not necessary to stay there for an entire career. This really wasn't what the founding fathers had in mind. For you to stay there for your entire life and I think it's like we do in the army. Move on and let some new people come in and they come up and make the way clear. Anybody you'd like to extend a personal invitation to leave? From Congress, I'm saying. I don't have all of my stationary with me so I don't [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] A lot of the leadership lessons you draw obviously are from the military. I wonder what you think about the sort of spate of military scandals we've had in the last couple of months. The sex scandal in Columbia. Recently, there were soldiers posing with remains. Is this a failure of leadership, or is there something else going on? You have to remember that the armed forces are very large. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of young men and women. But most of them are very disciplined, very well behaved. And if there was a leader in the situation who saw this happening and tolerated it. That is a failure of leadership and senior leadership should do something about it. But all of those things are being investigated. We don't, we don't look past them. There's a chapter in your book, chapter 35 where you say that the date February the 5th, 2003 is burned on your brain as much as your birthday. So, do you feel, even though it is not your personal responsibility. Do you feel, guilt, over the, over the war, over the lives that were lost in this fruitless search for weapons for weapons of mass destruction? I feel bad about any loss of life on either side of a conflict. But it was a case where, the intelligence information we're getting, made it quite clear at the time, we thought. And the CIA stuck with that assessment long after we didn't find anything. They still believe that their judgments at the time were correct. And since we based our case on those judgments, And what we were hearing from others. Then the President made the decision, and I think at the time it was a justified decision based on what we knew. How the war was fought and whether it was fought correctly is another issue entirely. You say that you were in Peru on 9 / 11. And you were in Asia when some of the key decisions were made... Mm hm. About CIA black sites. Do you think you would have, things would have been different had you been in, Amer, America on 9 / 11. Or when some of those... It wouldn't have been any different on 9 / 11. I just wish that, you know? [ INAUDIBLE ] it didn't take me eight hours to... Get back? More than eight hours, about 12 hours, when you figured [ INAUDIBLE ] getting the plane ready. What about [ INAUDIBLE ]? There were some things that took place with respect to interrogation policies and, and detention policies that didn't get full discussion. And maybe would have had that full discussion had I been here and could have Pushed it or participated in it. In chapter 16 you talk a lot about how you revolutionized the State Department in regard to the Internet. Mm- hm. Looking back now on the Internet Age with Wikileaks, Anonymous, and the speed. Just the speed at which you have to make decisions now. Is it a net positive to have the internet at your disposal? In terms of There's no choice. It sometimes is very, very positive and sometimes very, very negative. But if you're going to live in the twenty- first century world, it's gonna keep up with our kids. And you're gonna keep up with the way the world is moving What I told my state department friends. We have to move to a transactional world. We've gotta have all the information available to us. We don't make widgets. We don't have an assembly line. What we work on here in the state department is information. And our information system, I kept emphasizing, we should try to make it as good as Google or Wiki. And finally, do you ever use Sir Colin? Only in the United Kingdom. Get yourself a table at. It wouldn't be considered appropriate here, and my British friends would not consider it appropriate for me to use it here. It's honorific. Sir Colin, thank you so much for being here. Thank you my dear. 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