the intelligence that sent this country to war in iraq. >> the chemical weapons presence, the nuclear program and the biological program was wrong. that's the summation of it. it was wrong. >> colin powell for the hour. this is "piers morgan tonight." >> for many americans colin powell is still the face of the modern military, retired four-star general, the first and only african-american to serve on the join chiefs of staff and to secretary of state to george w. bush. he's here to talk about a cause close to his heart, the state of america's military veterans. general colin powell joins me now. general, welcome. >> thank you very much, piers. >> thank you for welcoming me to this extraordinary building. we're in the national war college. you were here 35 years ago. >> i graduated 35 years ago. that's hard to believe. we just had our 35th anniversary. this place has a great deal of meaning for all of us who have been students over the years. >> when you were here as a young, fresh-faced colin powell, what was the big dream for you? >> i was a lieutenant colonel, and i was doing fairly well in the army. but i had no idea what the army had in store for me. i was here with a group of army officers, navy officers, marine officers, state department employees as well as air force officers. surprisingly all of us had a great time. we had a lot of fun, and we learned a lot. then some 15 years later a number of us came back together to fight the first gulf war. about five of my classmates were now three and four-star generals, and i knew them. i'd known them for 16 years. so we were able to put a team together that was able to fight that war rather well. >> that's extraordinary. >> yeah, yeah. and i learned a lot here. it was a point in my career where i had been a successful battalion commander in korea, and now the military was trying to expand our horizons, learn more about politics, learn more about economics, about international relations, about your allies, so that we can use you at a higher level within the organization. quite a few of my classmates made general or admiral. >> the world has changed dramatically even since you were here and it's changing super fast even this year. it's remarkable what's going on. i'll come to some of that later. you as we sit here on veterans day in particular, what do you feel about the view of the modern american military? >> it's a great military. it's an all-volunteer force. it represents a relatively small percentage of our population, of course. but i'm so proud of them. tom brokaw and i talk all the time about military service, and tom wrote that great book, "the greatest generation," talking about the world war ii generation. but he and i have chatted about this and america has been blessed to have that kind of greatness in every generation. there is no generation that is any greater than the current generation of gis we have serving in iraq and afghanistan and so many other places around the world, willing to give their lives in the cause of freedom, in the cause of giving people a better opportunity for a better life for their selves, their country and their children. and we should be so proud of them. that's why we celebrate veterans day. i think you know the origin of veterans day, 11-11-11. it comes from world war i. it used to be called armistice day. >> we still have armistice day in britain. >> i know you do. this place means a lot to me. we talk about the fact that everybody says we have all these difficulties now, all these troubled times. when i came here as a student in 1975 to graduate in the bicentennial class, our 200th anniversary in 1976, think what the world was like then. there was still a soviet union. china was emerging from the culture revolution. america passed through a difficult time. the vice president resigned in disgrace. and we had a post-vietnam period and we had the counterculture going on. martin luther king had been killed just a few years earlier. bobby kennedy had been killed just a few years earlier. people thought america was down and out. then we recaptured our spirit and the values that made this country great. i'd like to give credit to president gerald ford who came in and sort of stabilized us again, reminded us of who we were. a few years later the soviet union was gone. we were still here. >> do you see parallels between that period and what's happening now with america? do you feel you need another gerald ford intervention? >> somebody will show up. i mean, america has always gone through these periods of difficulty and introspection when our economy is not doing well and we're in a recession and we're a little unsure of who we are and what we are. what i'm absolutely convinced of because of my reading of history and my living through this kind of history is that we will find our way. we've always had problems. most of my time period is spent out in the countryside giving speeches and talking to people. and the kind of sort of black thinking and talking that you see on television or you hear here in washington in our congress, the american people understand we have these challenges. but i see such continuing confidence and optimism out with the public. they just want to see the political system in washington start to reflect their concerns and start to fix itself. and as i say to my audiences, don't wait for superman. if you don't like the way they're doing things here, go and vote them out. >> there's a fascinating charge over there, colin powell's rules. which of these -- i read a few earlier to myself. get mad. then get over it. share credit. remain calm. be kind. have a vision. be demanding. very positive. very realistic, i felt. it wasn't saccharin at all. it was acknowledging there would be difficult times, but encouraging people to, i think, think in a positive way to get out of it rather than dwell on negative. very much for the time we're in now. if you were president and many wish you had run for the highest office, what needs to be done now? what advice -- let's not be too patronizing of barack obama. what advice would you give him to get america back on its feet right now in the modern world? >> well, you know, you can't put it all on one individual. i think our system needs to take a deep breath and start correcting itself. one of the things that troubles me the most and i've been in the town on and off for the last 30-odd years. what troubles me the most is i've never seen such polarization in our political process. i've never seen a situation where you have people on the far left, on the far right, who focus on their own extreme positions and hold these as theological positions that can't be moved away from and changed and everybody has measured against these extremes. you know, our founding fathers also had strong beliefs and believed in extremes. and they were able in philadelphia in writing our constitution to make some great compromises. they had to compromise on slavery. i don't like the compromise they made at the time because we kept slavery. but they said, we're here to form a nation. we can't solve that right now. >> why has it not moved forward? >> it's not happening now because it's been made too difficult. the extremes have been able to capture a lot of the politicians who might be more toward the middle by signing agreements that i won't raise taxes that pledge themselves to positions that don't ledge themselves to compromise. i have to say, piers, under the current media environment that didn't exist 35 years ago or 40 years ago, it is constant, nonstop commentary all day long, all evening long. now, you are no exception to this, i might add. >> don't blame me. >> i'm not blaming you. i'm just saying it's changed the environment. if you say anything that seems to drift off the orthodoxy of your party's position, you hear about it immediately either on a cable talk show or on the bloggers or on the internet. and you're going to have to deal with it. the two sides, the two parties, don't have the same opportunity to work quietly with each other. >> you're a military man, one of the finest generals this country has ever produced. you've been in many a war stone. if i said this is going to be relentless, the bombardment. they're going to keep coming at you. everything you do is blown up. exactly the argument you used to me about the media. you would just dust yourself down, call your men together and say they want a war, let's go to war, boys. and you would work out a way to win. the argument people have with barack obama who you supported is that he hasn't done enough of that. he hasn't fought back against the modern weapon, which is multimedia, the internet, all these things. he hasn't beaten his chest and behaved like you would in a battlefield. >> i think that's a fair criticism of the president. he is somebody who was used to getting people to compromise and seeing if we could not quietly find a way in almost a lawyerly manner. but he still has that spark. he still has that enthusiasm about the country and about his job that got him elected in the first place. i think in recent weeks we have seen him to start showing that kind of spark more publicly. and i've had conversations with the president over time. sometimes with congress you simply have to let them have it between the eyes and drag them in your direction and not think you can talk them into your direction. >> i wouldn't have him on a golf course with john boehner after what he did. i'd have him in a boxing ring. come on, then, mr. speaker, you want to fight about this, you're going to be this way, your people are just not going to do anything to get any bill passed here at all, let's have it out properly. >> well, that's an approach that can be taken. >> would you take that approach? >> i don't play golf, so i wouldn't have got on the golf course. at some point you have to say, okay, look, we've talked enough about this. this is very military. it's now time to go out and as we say in all of our mafia movies "godfather," go to the mattresses. we will fight on this line and we will fight all summer long. >> i love that. go to the mattresses. >> you never heard that before? >> can you clarify that? it means hide in your bunker so people can't get to you, and then come out and fight in the streets. essentially, go to the mattresses. you put mattresses on a floor and sleep in a protected area and come out and fight it out. >> fantastic. let's take a short break. when we come back i want to know more about this mattress attack that you have now orchestrated and mapped out for the president. 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[ female announcer ] the travelocity guarantee. from the price to the room to the trip you'll never roam alone. i think he's a transformational figure. he's a new generation coming on to the world stage, on to the american stage. for that reason i'll be voting for senator barack obama. >> back with my special guest, general colin powell. general, we left it with the go to your mattresses and prepare for war, which i loved. and you endorsed as we just heard there president obama in october 2008. it was a controversial decision. it wasn't expected at all. you're a republican, and you come out for obama. remind me of your thinking in that moment. >> yeah. before i do that, let me say that with going to the mattresses, that's with both parties. do it with your own party. do your party to do what you think they should do, and then you can take on the other party and have your forces in alignment. in 2008 i looked very carefully at the situation that the country was in, on the verge of an economic collapse, frankly, which pretty much occurred later that year. i looked at what i thought the country needed, and after listening carefully to both senator mccain who i've known for close to 30 years and also president obama, then senator obama, i came to the conclusion that he was better able to deal with the challenges they were facing economically and with respect to rejuvenating the spirit of the country and with respect to making a generational change. >> obviously, it carried a lot of weight and barack obama got elected. many think your intervention with several other very prominent people was very, i think, helpful to him at the very least. when you look at him now, what do you think has happened to barack obama after three years of presidency? what do you think you should be advising him as someone that supported him about how to go back into the election fray? >> well, the advice i give to the president, which i still do on occasion. i keep private. i don't share a lot of my conversations with him or his conversations with me. i think he is still the same person that we saw in 2008. he is a deliberate individual. he studies the issues before him. and then he makes decisions. and many of his decisions, i think, have been quite sound. the financial system put back in a stable basis. some are now complaining too stable. they're going back to what they were doing before that caused this trouble. i think he is following through a correct way with respect to iraq and afghanistan and essentially implementing some of the policies of president bush, former president bush. in some of the controversial things where people thought he would simply move away from some of the bush positions, he's adopted them. so he's demonstrated a degree of adaptability. but at the same time, the economy has not improved for the benefit of many americans who are on the unemployment roms. and there is a malaise within the country about when is the economy going to start creating all the jobs that we need. there is also, i think, a problem that the president has with the business community. this one is a little harder to explain, because the business community, especially at the high end, is doing rather well. but he has not succeeded in convincing them that he has all the right solutions. and as i go around, i find that the business community is still quite upset with his policies. they feel that the regulations that are coming down, whether it's on financial services or consumers or environmental protection agency or the obamacare, as it's called, they are uncertain as to what all these regulations are going to do to them and they're hesitant to make investments because they're not quite sure how to plan ahead. and so i think he has to work on that. above all, he has to work hard and do everything he can, and i think he's pursuing this very aggressively now, to create jobs for the people who don't have jobs. >> on the tick box of his score sheet, some stunning successes in terms of foreign policy many would argue. getting bin laden. for you personally, you were at the start of that mission. where were you when you heard that bin laden had been killed? >> i was in my home, and i heard the news. i was absolutely delighted. this terrible person, and it was a marvelous military operation with the possibility of something going really bad. >> very audacious. >> it's very bold. but those are the kinds of young men and women we have. these folks are good. they are really, really good. >> did you admire the president for the sheer audacity of the decision making? >> you have to. he could have decided to go about it a different way but he told the bold action. but that was fine then. a week later everyone wanted to talk about the unemployment problem again. and so we've seen a lot of these evil people sent off to the hereafter in recent weeks, and that's good. the president should get credit for it. not just because he's the commander in chief, but, you know, which is part of it, but we also have to give credit to the intelligence and military and other agencies of our government that created the conditions that allow you to go after these people. >> as somebody who was seen to be one of the more skeptic members of george bush's inner team when it came to decision-making in iraq in particular, when you see what happened in libya, when you see the backseat that america took, particularly with troops on the ground, nonexistent, when you see that there was no loss of life for american servicemen compared to the 4,500 or so that lost that i have lives in iraq, what do you feel about the overall picture, the strategy that was adopted to get rid of saddam in contrast to the strategy adopted to get rid of gadhafi? the huge difference in cost not just in human life but financially to america? >> i don't think the two can be that easily compared. we had a government in iraq that was every bit as bad as the government in libya. i remember so many western leaders and the united states were working with mr. gadhafi. and libya did not have the kind of army and military force that saddam hussein had access to, and you didn't have that kind of leadership coming from the europeans in iraq that we had in libya. but setting it aside, the president felt, president bush felt that we tried the u.n. we didn't get satisfaction with respect to mr. hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs. our intelligence had it wrong, and i more than anyone presented that intelligence to the united states people and the american people and to the world. but it was wrong. nevertheless, we went in and got rid of a person who would have gone back to developing these weapons of mass destruction in my humble judgment if he had been released from u.n. sanctions. i was hoping that the u.n. would work. i persuaded the president to go to the u.n., see if we can resolve it that way. because i thought if we could avoid this war and satisfy our problem with weapons of mass destruction, we should do that. but he had to make the decision, along with mr. blair and other western leaders. and so we went in. and we took out the regime. my big disappointment -- i fully supported that. my big disappointment was that i don't think we did it as officially as we could. we shouldn't have disbanded the iraqi army. we should have put more force in there so we could have taken control of the country at the very beginning, which is what i think the iraqi people expected us to do, and we didn't. an insurgency broke out. we didn't respond to it as quickly as we'd like. >> when you ever see footage of you selling that war with the intelligence, the famous footage, what do you feel? i mean, do you feel that you were in some way used? >> no. i had the same information, the same intelligence material that was given to the united states congress. the congress voted overwhelmingly to use military force if it came to that, and they did that three months before my presentation. everything that was in that presentation of mine was international intelligence estimate that the president used in the state of the union and earlier speeches that secretary rumsfeld was using, our generals were using. they were planning against this intelligence. and we thought it was solid. even though it was very inferential, we thought it was good intelligence. >> when you realized -- >> when i realized that a large part of it -- not all of it, but a considerable part of it was wrong and we should have known it was wron