Colin Powell has admitted to reporters flying with him that, well… there may not have been weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the U.S. invasion.
And just like that, Powell’s grand pre-war Security Council presentation—packed with “proof” and “irrefutable evidence”—comes crashing down faster than a house of cards in a wind tunnel.
One can only imagine the hours spent meticulously crafting that PowerPoint masterpiece, not to mention the tireless efforts of the “creative” intelligence team tasked with drawing connections between Iraq, WMDs, and Al-Qaeda—all of which resulted in a presentation fit for Hollywood. Specifically, the kind of Imminent-Threat-Coming-So-Hero-Briefs-The-Council-But-Council-Won’t-Listen scene we’ve seen a thousand times before.
We all remember those chilling moments when Powell, in his most serious “trust me, I’m a credible statesman” tone, presented “intercepted” Iraqi radio transmissions featuring faceless, evil Eye-Rack-EE commanders ordering their soldiers to hide weapons before the arrival of UN inspectors.
We were also shown grainy satellite images of what we were told were missiles, factories and makeshift WMD labs, lovingly annotated by intelligence analysts in a game of color-by-numbers for warmongers.
And now?
Turns out, all of it was built on lies, half-truths, and creative storytelling.
Adding insult to injury, David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group (the team tasked with actually finding these so-called WMDs), resigned—which, if we were in a movie, would be the part where the scientist dramatically removes his government badge and walks out.
As his parting shot, Kay flatly stated that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Amazingly, just days before, President Bush had quoted Kay’s report, cherry-picking and recontextualizing his words into the vague claim that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction program activities.”
(What does that even mean? No one knows. But hey, it’s in the State of the Union address, so it must be true!).
And so, the infamous WMD “smoking gun” may turn out to be as real as a mirage in the Iraqi desert—except this one cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives.