Iraq ‘Smoking Gun’ Evidence Goes Up in Smoke

The Takeaway

We all remember the now infamous speech that former Secretary of State Colin Powell gave to the UN on February 5, 2003. He made the case that the U.S. had enough intelligence to conclude that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that he was a threat to countries in the region and to the U.S. Powell was making the case for going to war with Iraq. And part of his argument rested on the word of an Iraqi defector named Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi. Now al-Janabi has told The Guardian newspaper in London that he was lying and that he would do it again. Martin Chulov was one of the reporters on the story. He says it’s fair to say that the incident was the greatest misuse of intelligence in modern history.

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