Colin Powell delivered his presentation making the case for war with Iraq at the United Nations 15 years ago, on February 5, 2003.

As much criticism as Powell received for this — he’s called it “painful” and something that will “always be a part of my record” — it hasn’t been close to what’s justified. Powell, who was secretary of state under President George W. Bush, was much more than just horribly mistaken: He fabricated “evidence” and ignored repeated warnings that what he was saying was false.

Unfortunately, Congress never investigated Powell’s use of the intelligence he was given, so we don’t know many of the specifics. Even so, what did reach the public record in other ways is extremely damning. While the corporate media has never taken a close look at this record, we can go through Powell’s presentation line by line to demonstrate the chasm between what he knew and what he told the world. As you’ll see, there’s quite a lot to say about it.

Powell’s speech can be found on the State Department website here. All other sources are linked below.

Public Certainty, Private Doubt

On that February 5 in front of the U.N. Security Council, was Colin Powell certain what he was saying was accurate? He certainly was:

POWELL: My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.

Later, regarding whether Iraq had reconstituted a nuclear weapons program, he said:

POWELL: There is no doubt in my mind …

That’s in public. What about in private? According to Larry Wilkerson, Powell’s chief of staff, here’s what Powell was thinking at the time:

WILKERSON: [Powell] had walked into my office musing and he said words to the effect of, ‘I wonder how we’ll all feel if we put half a million troops in Iraq and march from one end of the country to the other and find nothing.’

Unambiguous Lies

This is some of what Powell said about the infamous aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq, supposedly meant for their covert nuclear weapons program:

POWELL: It strikes me as quite odd that these [aluminum] tubes are manufactured to a tolerance that far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable rockets. Maybe Iraqis just manufacture their conventional weapons to a higher standard than we do, but I don’t think so.

Powell’s own intelligence staff, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, prepared two memos commenting on drafts of the presentation. They were later quietly released as appendices to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on WMD intelligence.

The second INR memo, written on February 3, 2003, told Powell this:

Our key remaining concern is the claim that the tubes are manufactured to a tolerance that “far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable rockets.” In fact, the most comparable U.S. system is a tactical rocket — the U.S. Mark 66 air-launched 70mm rocket — that uses the same, high-grade (7075-T6) aluminum, and that has specifications with similar tolerances. Note that the Mk 66 specifications are unclassified, and the Department is planning to share them with the [International Atomic Energy Agency].

Fabricated Evidence

Powell played an intercept of a conversation between Iraqi army officers about the U.N. inspections. However, when he translated what they were saying, he knowingly embellished it, turning it from evidence Iraq was complying with U.N. resolutions to evidence Iraq was violating them. This appears in Bob Woodward’s book “Plan of Attack”:

Powell had decided to add his personal interpretation of the intercepts to the rehearsed script, taking them substantially further and casting them in the most negative light. … Concerning the intercept about inspecting for the possibility of “forbidden ammo,” Powell took the interpretation further: “Clean out all of the areas. … Make sure there is nothing there.” None of this was in the intercept.

Here’s the conversation as Powell presented it at the U.N. As Woodward reported, the bold sentences were simply added by Powell:

POWELL: “They’re inspecting the ammunition you have, yes.” “Yes.” “For the possibility there are forbidden ammo.” “For the possibility there is by chance forbidden ammo?” “Yes.” “And we sent you a message yesterday to clean out all of the areas yesterday to clean out all of the areas , the scrap areas, the abandoned areas. Make sure there is nothing there.”

Powell then explained:

This is all part of a system of hiding things and moving things out of the way and making sure they have left nothing behind.

According to the official State Department translation (and confirmed for me by Imad Khadduri), the Iraqi soldier merely said:

“And we sent you a message to inspect the scrap areas and the abandoned areas.”

And it’s no surprise the Iraqi said this. Here’s what the CIA’s report on Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction found out about what was going on within the Iraqi government just before the January 30 intercepted conversation:

The NMD director met with Republican Guard military leaders on 25 January 2003 and advised them they were to sign documents saying that there was no WMD in their units, according to a former Iraqi senior officer. Husam Amin told them that the government would hold them responsible if UNMOVIC found any WMD in their units or areas, or if there was anything that cast doubt on Iraq’s cooperation with UNMOVIC. Commanders established committees to ensure their units retained no evidence of old WMD.

Again: Powell took evidence of the Iraqis doing what they were supposed to do — i.e., searching their gigantic ammunition dumps to make sure they weren’t accidentally holding onto banned chemical weapons — and doctored it to make it look as if Iraq were hiding banned weapons.

Since the State Department was questioned about this by journalist Gilbert Cranberg, the translation at variance with Powell’s version has disappeared from its site. It’s now available only via archive.org.

Deception by Omission

Powell’s presentation left out extremely important information, as here:

POWELL: Iraq’s record on chemical weapons is replete with lies. It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced 4 tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons. The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein’s late son-in-law.

As far as this went, this was accurate. However, Kamal, the head of Iraq’s WMD programs, defected in 1995. Iraq had produced this VX before the Gulf War, in 1991 — and according to Kamel, Iraq had secretly destroyed it soon after the war. Then they lied about ever producing it (until his defection). But according to Kamel, they weren’t lying when they said they no longer had it.

Indeed, in the U.N.’s notes from Kamel’s debriefing, he says Iraq had no remaining WMD of any kind:

KAMEL: All chemical weapons were destroyed. I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons — biological, chemical, missiles, nuclear — were destroyed.

And if that weren’t enough, Kamel also said this in an interview on CNN with correspondent Brent Sadler:

SADLER: Can you state here and now — does Iraq still to this day hold weapons of mass destruction? KAMEL: No. Iraq does not possess any weapons of mass destruction. I am being completely honest about this.

But in 1996, Kamel returned to Iraq, where he was killed by Saddam’s regime. Thus the U.S. could safely take a witness who truthfully had said Iraq had no remaining banned weapons and pretend his testimony indicated the exact opposite.

Did Powell know what he was doing at the time? It’s unclear. Here’s a transcript of an exchange between Powell and Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy in Washington in December 2006, with video below:

HUSSEINI: You cited Hussein Kamel in your U.N. testimony. Did you know he said there were no WMDs? POWELL: I only knew what the intelligence community told me. HUSSEINI: But did you know that fact? POWELL: Of course not! HUSSEINI: You didn’t know that, even though it was reported? POWELL: I’ve answered your question!

As you can see in the video, Powell was not happy to explore this line of questioning. (He’s also never shown any inclination to find out who purportedly steered him wrong; when asked by Barbara Walters who was responsible for the mistakes in the overall presentation, Powell stated, “I don’t have the names.”)