Just over eight years ago, on February 5, 2003, Colin Powell presented the U.S. case for invading Iraq to the UN. The Guardian remembers:

"We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels," Powell said. "The source was an eyewitness an Iraqi chemical engineer who supervised one of these facilities. He was present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an accident occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians died."The effect at the UN was dramatic. Here was a detailed first-hand account from an insider of the sinister and deceptive inner workings of Saddam's regime. It was tangible evidence; far more compelling than the other two elements of Powell's case for war, which seemed scant in detail and unlikely to persuade the invasion's naysayers.

Powell's presentation has already been picked apart in depth (here's a good example). But what about that "eyewitness"? He was called "Curveball," and he has just admitted to the Guardian that he made the whole thing up. In a related article, the former head of the CIA in Europe, Tyler Drumheller, says he warned the United States not to use "Curveball"'s testimony. (He's not the first to suggest the vetting process for the information about WMDs was less than responsible -- recall the letters exchanged in the New York Review of Books that I posted about here back in August. The section I quoted refers specifically to Curveball as "a solitary source of obviously questionable credentials.")This reminds me: if you haven't yet read Ronald Osborn's article "Still Counting," on tallying deaths in Iraq since the U.S. invasion, you should.

Mollie Wilson O’​Reilly is editor-at-large and columnist at Commonweal.

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