US POLITICIANS’ tributes poured in for former secretary of state Colin Powell — a key mover in the 2003 invasion of Iraq — following his death on Monday, but civil rights and peace activists said his legacy was nothing to celebrate.

The Republican politician died aged 84 from Covid-19 complications.

Under George W Bush’s presidency Mr Powell delivered a now infamous address to the UN security council in which he relayed false information about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction and brandished a small vial he said could contain anthrax.

US claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction were bogus and it later emerged that Mr Powell had secretly confided to then British foreign secretary Jack Straw that he worried the claims would “explode in their faces,” though both men stuck to the script in public.

The war led to the deaths of over a million Iraqis and led to a dramatic rise in the power and influence of terrorist groups such as al-Qaida and later Isis.

Reactions to his death in Iraq were bitter. Mosul resident Khaled Jamal said: “He was the main liar who gave unreliable reasons for America to attack” and that “America destroyed the entire country.”

Another, Suha Mutlak, told the Guardian: “He was the reason my cousins were killed.”

Though some called him a black role model, rights activist Kevin Powell said he was “largely invisible” when it came to rising anger over high-profile police killings including “Trayvon Martin, [Michael Brown in] Ferguson, George Floyd.”

Code Pink campaigner Medea Benjamin said for all his supposed second thoughts on Iraq, he “could have changed his legacy by doing what his chief of staff Larry Wilkerson has so beautifully done — dedicate his life to diplomacy, peace and truth. He didn’t.”