Is Colin Powell for Obama?

"I'm looking at all three candidates," Powell told Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America" on Thursday. "I know them all very, very well. I consider myself a friend of each and every one of them. And I have not decided who I will vote for yet."

The former general had good things to say about the way Sen. Barack Obama dealt with the controversy over his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who Powell said is "somebody who has made enormous contributions in his community and has turned a lot of lives around."

Although Powell rejected Wright's "very offensive comments," he did approve of Obama's handling of the situation. "I think that Sen. Obama handled the issue well," said Powell. "He didn't look the other way. He didn't wait for the...storm to go over. He went on television, and I thought, gave a very, very thoughtful, direct speech. And he didn't abandon the minister who brought him closer to his faith," said Powell.

Powell, who has long been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate himself, praised Obama for giving a "good" speech and said he "admired" the Illinois senator and "agreed with much of what he said."

Before he was Secretary of State in the George W. Bush Administration, Powell served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the first Bush Administration of George H.W. Bush, becoming the highest-ranking African American in the U.S. military. But Powell does not seem to buy into some elements of the current strategy in Iraq.

"The United States Armed Forces are very, very stretched," said Powell. "It appears that after the surge is over, we're going to go down to 140,000 troops in Iraq. That's 10,000 more than we had before the surge," he said.

Powell said the troop levels would be "far more than the 100,000 that Secretary [of Defense Robert] Gates was hoping for," which he said posed "an extremely difficult burden" for the military to maintain.

In one of his most critical public statements to date of the Administration he once served, Powell seemed to challenge the wisdom of fighting in Iraq while the U.S. still needed to be engaged in what he called a "more difficult" challenge in Afghanistan. 

Without endorsing a candidate, the general said the next president would face a U.S. military commitment that cannot be sustained. But he also warned that a withdrawal of U.S. troops would not be easily accomplished.

In the wide-ranging interview for "Good Morning America," Powell also touched on the controversy surrounding the Olympics in China and rejected Democratic calls for the president to boycott the opening ceremony in Beijing.