Perhaps because I am ex-military (a veteran of another ill-conceived and failed war) I have always wanted to believe that Powell was convinced that Iraq did, in fact, have nuclear weapons. We will never know—he played the good soldier to the end. The Bush administration was a disaster in almost every respect—from losing the popular vote but still going to battle for Florida, through the Iraq debacle and nation building in Afghanistan, and finally presiding over the Great Recession.

He truly owes Donald Trump a great debt: for by comparison, W. looks like a genuine statesman.

Still, let’s not lose sight of the fact that the puppet masters who made Gingrich, the younger Bush and even Trump possible—and who are ultimately responsible for the subsequent bloodshed—are the 500+ billionaires who belong to the Trump network . Since the 1970s they have funded political campaigns, university chairs and publications that have slowly eaten away the public’s trust in science, government—and each other. Their goal is to “dismantle the statist paradigm” (Charles Koch) and ensure the survival of the fossil fuels industry—even if it means massive destruction to the planet and the death of millions of people. We can heap criticism on Bush, Powell, Cheney, etc. but if you want to see genuine evil, look toward Wichita, Kansas.