Obviously, there are differences between then and now. In 2003, the United States government wanted war. Today, it wants to undo a diplomatic agreement. In 2002, the Israeli government (as opposed to Netanyahu, who was for much of that year a private citizen) was wary of America’s confrontational policy.* Today, the Israeli government is aggressively lobbying for it. But while history is not repeating itself, it is rhyming in remarkable ways. Which raises a disturbing question: How is it possible—15 years after the launch of one the greatest catastrophes in American history—that so many of the assumptions that guided America’s march to war in Iraq still dominate American foreign policy today?

Answering that question requires remembering the history that Netanyahu, Bolton, and their political and journalistic allies would likely prefer that Americans forget. Powell’s presentation constituted a key moment in the struggle between the Bush administration and international weapons inspectors. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had taken office convinced that Saddam Hussein—who had spent most of the 1990s subjected to international sanctions and weapons inspections—was breaking free of the constraints that kept him from rebuilding his weapons programs and menacing his neighbors. The sanctions regime was fraying. Inspectors had left Iraq in 1998 after Saddam restricted their access. The answer, they concluded, was regime change.

Empowered by the belligerent public mood following 9/11, and America’s apparent success in toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Bush administration in 2002 turned to that goal. Cheney worried that sending weapons inspectors back into Iraq would complicate the path to war. “Saddam,” he warned in August, “has perfected the game of cheat and retreat, and is very skilled in the art of denial and deception. A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of his compliance with UN resolutions.” Netanyahu, no longer in government after having lost his bid for reelection as Israeli prime minister, agreed. “It is not very difficult,” he testified to Congress that September, “to deceive inspectors.” In a Wall Street Journal op-ed later that month, he warned that because Saddam had constructed “centrifuges the size of washing machines … even free and unfettered inspections will not uncover these portable manufacturing sites of mass death.”

But under pressure from British Prime Minister Tony Blair to seek United Nations support, Bush in November procured a Security Council resolution demanding that Iraq allow “immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access” to international weapons inspectors or face “serious consequences.” And late that month, two groups of inspectors—one from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which focused on Saddam’s nuclear program, and another, called UNMOVIC, which focused on his chemical and biological programs—returned to Iraq.