“As chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he [Colin Powell] had gone to then-President [George H.W.] Bush not to advise him on whether to send Americans into combat [in Iraq] but to make sure the president would make an informed decision. ‘My responsibility that day,’ Powell later wrote of his visit to the White House on September 24, 1990, ‘was to lay out all the options for the nation’s civilian leadership. However, in our democracy it is the president, not the generals, who make decisions about going to war.’ By spelling it all out, ‘I had done my duty.’ ”
– Karen DeYoung, Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell, Page 402