POWELL AND LANGLEY: HIRED KILLERS

Colin Powell was a ‘hired killer.’

That was Kwame Ture’s (1941-1998) assessment of the first Black US Secretary of State, who famously helped manufacture consent for the US war in Iraq with a vial of powdered anthrax, later revealed to be fake.

Ture would have turned 84 today. Born on 29 June 1941 in Trinidad and Tobago, Ture moved to the US as an 11-year-old and later settled in the African country of Guinea.

In this 1991 clip, filmed during the first Gulf War (2 August 1990-28 February 1991), Ture argued that Powell (1937-2021) was an enemy of and traitor to Black people for accepting a high position in the US military, a key instrument of imperialism.

Powell oversaw the destruction of Iraq twice: In 1991, as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and in 2003, as Secretary of State when he used the vial of anthrax to claim Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

In much the same vein, a Black US military commander, General Michael Langley, has painted a target for US imperialism on an anti-imperialist African leader: Burkina Faso President Ibrahim Traoré. Langley, whom US President Donald Trump is seeking to replace by nominating Air Force Lieutenant General Dagvin R.M. Anderson, alleged that Traoré is using Burkina Faso's gold reserves to protect a ‘junta regime’ at the people's expense. His comments sparked worldwide rallies in solidarity with Traoré and Burkina Faso’s revolutionary process, proving that our people are aware of the imperialists' nefarious plans for our motherland.

Just as revolutionary Malcolm X (1925-65) put it, 'They will pay one of us to kill one of us, just to say it was one of us'.

Video credit: Howard University TV (1991)