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Who really said it

Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it

Spoken by Colin Powell 1937–2021 · U.S. Army general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1989–1993
Verified Free to reuse

Powell said it at a Pentagon news briefing on 23 January 1991, standing beside Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, and United Press International quoted him that same day ↗; C-SPAN still holds the tape of the briefing ↗. The attribution is solid — but the renderings of the wording differ: the reporter in the room filed it as “Our strategy to go after this army is very, very simple,” contractions and all, while the form the quote sites carry reads “in going after … very simple.” Powell’s own recollection years later lands between the two.

Last verified 18 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it” Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a Pentagon news briefing, 23 January 1991. As transcribed by UPI that day: "Our strategy to go after this army is very, very simple. First, we're going to cut it off, and then we're going to kill it." Via Quotle.info

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In context

Evoking the world of Colin Powell — Four-star general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff & 65th U.S. Secretary of State. Theme: "Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The briefing, 23 January 1991

Occasion
Pentagon news briefing with Defense Secretary Dick Cheney
Date
23 January 1991
Speaker
Gen. Colin L. Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Same-day wire report
Powell: ‘We’re going to cut it off … kill it’ (UPI)

Our strategy to go after this army is very, very simple. First, we’re going to cut it off, and then we’re going to kill it. To cut it off, that began last week when we started to go after the nerve center, the brains of the operation, the command and control of the operation, and the lines of communication that come out of Baghdad and other places in the country. Pentagon briefing room · 23 January 1991

This is the passage as United Press International transcribed it on the day, a week into the coalition campaign against Iraq. The famous sentence is the second one; the third is Powell explaining what “cut it off” actually meant, and it is almost never quoted.

Video of the briefing
Watch the 23 January 1991 Defense Department news briefing on C-SPAN
UPI's dispatch from the briefing, 23 January 1991

How we verified this

Public domain

Powell spoke these words as a serving officer of the United States Government at an official Defense Department briefing, and 17 U.S.C. § 105 ↗ provides that “copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government.” The remarks themselves are therefore free to reuse in the U.S. — but the news reports that transcribed them and C-SPAN’s recording of the briefing are separately owned works, so quote Powell rather than copying a wire story.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Right man, drifting words

Nobody else is seriously in the frame for this one — the divergence here is not in who said it but in how it gets written down. Three small things separate the renderings.

Quotation sites and reference entries renderings differ

The circulating text reads “in going after … very simple” and “we are going to.” The reporter who was in the room filed it as “Our strategy to go after this army is very, very simple. First, we’re going to cut it off, and then we’re going to kill it” (UPI, 23 January 1991 ↗) — doubled “very,” contractions and all. Which came first we do not claim: the tape (C-SPAN 151355) would settle it, and we have not transcribed it.

Colin Powell, recalling it later also “very, very”

Interviewed for the 25th anniversary of Desert Storm, Powell said: “I used a line I had rehearsed. I said our strategy in going after the Iraqi army was very, very simple. ‘First we’re going to cut it off, and then we’re going to kill it’” (MOAA ↗). His memory splits the difference: the doubled “very” and the contractions match the wire, while the opening — “in going after” — matches the form the quote sites carry.

Goodreads, AZQuotes and similar aggregators unsourced

They reproduce the smoothed sentence with no citation attached at all — the Goodreads entry ↗ carries only the standard notice that quotes are member-contributed and not verified. That is how a real quote ends up looking as flimsy as a fabricated one.

The attribution itself is not in doubt: Powell said it at the Pentagon on 23 January 1991 with Dick Cheney beside him, and C-SPAN still holds the video of the briefing ↗. What varies between renderings is the opening clause, a doubled “very” and two apostrophes.

Context

Why this line landed

Days of air war in, the press had turned. Powell later said the early euphoria over cruise missiles lasted about a week before reporters were on him with “Aha, you’re not getting it done” — so he told Cheney the two of them had to go down and calm it. The sentence that did the calming was not improvised: Powell had rehearsed it, and a Duke Law tribute recounts him saying it was crafted in advance to send a clear message ↗ to Americans, allies and the Iraqi army alike.

It worked exactly as designed. “That became the headline,” Powell recalled — and it did, almost literally: UPI ran the phrase in its headline that day ↗. It is a rare case of a soundbite whose author will tell you plainly that he built it to be one.

That became the headline. That became the dominating theme for the next several weeks.

Powell’s “five audiences” rule

Asked about handling the press during Desert Storm, Powell explained his standing method: “When I was talking to the press, I always knew I had five audiences. The least important was the reporter asking the question.” The other four were the American people, the enemy, coalition partners with sons and daughters under U.S. command, and the troops themselves watching on the Armed Forces Network. That framing explains the shape of the line — short, concrete, and impossible to soften in translation.

Powell told the same interviewer that he knew the troops “listened just as hard as Saddam Hussein might listen.”

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Leadership Power Simplicity

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

UPI Archives: "Powell: 'We're going to cut it off ... kill it'"upi.com

Eliot Brenner's same-day wire dispatch from the briefing, quoting Powell's sentence in full along with the passage that follows it.
Defense Department News Briefing, January 23, 1991c-span.org

C-SPAN's video record of the actual briefing by Cheney and Powell — the primary artifact behind every transcription of the line.
Colin Powell Remembers Desert Storm 25 Years Latermoaa.org

Powell's own account of the press conference and the rehearsed line, in his own words, including exactly how he worded it.
Colin Powell — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Carries the widely circulated form of the quote with the Pentagon press briefing (23 January 1991) citation.
Gulf War — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Carries the same full two-sentence quote under the Gulf War topic page, with the identical citation line Wikiquote’s Colin Powell entry uses — Powell at the 23 January 1991 Pentagon press briefing.
Saluting General Powell (Lawfire, Duke Law)sites.duke.edu

Charlie Dunlap's 2021 tribute, which quotes the New York Times rendering of the line and recounts asking Powell how he arrived at the wording.

The man at the podium

Who was Colin Powell?

Colin Powell

1937–2021 · Four-star general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff & 65th U.S. Secretary of State

Colin Luther Powell was born in Harlem on 5 April 1937 and rose through the U.S. Army to four-star rank, serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1 October 1989 to 30 September 1993 — the job he held when the Gulf War began. He later became the 65th Secretary of State, serving from January 2001 to January 2005, and died on 18 October 2021 in Bethesda, Maryland. He was an unusually deliberate communicator: he told an interviewer that whenever he faced the press he was speaking to five audiences at once, the reporter asking the question being the least important of them.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Colin L. Powell, remarks at a Defense Department news briefing, the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., January 23, 1991; as transcribed in Eliot Brenner, “Powell: ‘We’re going to cut it off … kill it’,” United Press International, January 23, 1991. Video of the briefing is held by C-SPAN (Program ID 151355).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it’?” Last verified 18 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/our-strategy-in-going-after-this-army-is-very-simple-first/

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