first gulf war. he was always accessible. he was tough, he was a fierce fighter, a brilliant military leader, indeed, he came up with the powell doctrine, how to win a war and have an exit strategy to get out. and he was always so so impressive. it just broke my heart to hear that he had passed away, and was friendly with him, his family and let me just say, may he rest in peace, may his memory be a blessing. wolf, it is a remarkable the commitment to service over so many decades in the military at foggy bottom at the state department as well. but what made him emotional in a conversation we watched was young people committed to service, who were still entering the military. just talk more about that emotional connection he had to the men and women in the u.s. military. you know, colin powell was a child of immigrants, his parents
to rebuild the army and they did so in a period of time in the 80s and early 90s, and it was shown their efforts were shown during just cause in panama, desert storm. these were the individuals that really looked at how to modernize an army, change the doctrine, change the training, change the personnel. it was just phenomenal and certainly he was a guy that experienced, i m going to go back to the racial discrimination in his book, his autobiography, he talks about reporting as a new lieutenant to ft. benning, georgia, where they couldn t get housing on post because he was an african-american. the army transpired and transformed through those years into the great organization it is today and as wolf also said, he developed the powell doctrine, which we should really relook today which says don t go into a war unless you have overwhelming force, number one, and number two, you have an exit
forces feel integrated in the sense that they were all in it for one goal, one mission and that was to accomplish that mission. back to the powell doctrine which is what he will be grately remembered about, four things, a career political and military objective, clearly the support of the american people. you want to have an overwhelming force, the right number of troops, like we did in the gulf war back in 1991 and lastly an exit strategy. we have not followed that doctrine very well since he spoke to it many years ago. an interesting tidbit when we went to the gulf before the war probing out, he met with
fields in saudi arabia would come under control of the iraqis, he always said we re going to use overwhelming force and the u.s. and its allies deployed 540,000 troops to saudi arabia, six aircraft carrier battlegroups deployed to the persian gulf and when they went in to liberate kuwait, it was, what, six weeks, four weeks of an air war, two weeks of a ground war, kuwait was liberated and the u.s. got out. he always said we have to have an exit strategy. you got to have an overwhelming force, get it done and have a plan to get out and the u.s. got out fairly quickly and it was just part of the colin doctrine that inspired all of that and a memory i ll never forget as a reporter who was covering it. something we heard from defense secretary austin that stood out to me, wolf, he mentioned the personal loss for him and talked about colin
and that is we go to war, will do everything i can to beat the crap out of somebody and win it. had that powell doctrine we all know that was so, so powerful during the first gulf war. first you re going to cut it off, then kill it. but he had an exit strategy in mind and the u.s. pulled out of the middle east very quickly after deploying half a million troops to the area. you and i remember that, right, bob? we do. and that was, i talked with him just three months ago about that war and of course, it was a war had very low casualties. 137 u.s. servicemen killed initially. and we discussed that and he said he really can t, can t get over how successful it was as a