The United States has intelligence indicating Iran is trying to fit missiles to carry nuclear weapons, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says.
November 18, 2004 . CNN.

******************************

The pity is not that Colin Powell has resigned as secretary of state. The pity is that he did not do so quickly.
Had he resigned during the buildup to the war in Iraq, which he privately opposed, history might award him an asterisk and note that his tenure as secretary of state,
while notable for nothing notable, ended over an important disagreement. Had that happened, Powell could then join just two secretaries of state -- William Jennings
Bryan and Cyrus Vance -- who resigned because they differed with their presidents, Bryan with Woodrow Wilson, Vance with Jimmy Carter. The best that can be
said about Powell is that he disagreed. The worst is that he did nothing significant about it.
The decision to go to war was the single most important foreign policy act of George Bush's first term. Powell not only couldn't stop it, he never saw it coming. When the possibility of war first arose, he dismissed it to aides and, by the time he grasped what was happening, it was too late. Powell the soldier saluted and went to war. First, though, he stopped at the United Nations, where he delivered a speech whose facts -- many of them anyway -- were later
found to be wrong. That must have pained him -- but not, maybe, shocked him. Before giving the speech, he had gone over to the CIA to personally check the intelligence. That had to mean he was smelling a rat.
Richard Cohen, November 16, 2004. The Washington Post Company.