However, Powell maintained in a 2012 interview with The Associated Press that on balance, the US was successful in Iraq.
“I think we had a lot of success,” he said. “Iraq’s terrible dictator is gone.”
Saddam was captured by US forces while hiding in northern Iraq in December 2003 and later executed by the Iraqi government. But the war continued.
President Barack Obama pulled US troops out of Iraq in 2011, but he sent advisers back in 2014 after the Islamic State group swept the country from Syria and seized large swathes of territory.
