After February 5, 2003: Powell’s Chief of Staff: UN Presentation a ‘Hoax on the American People, the International Community, and the UN Security Council’

Some time after Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN making the case for war with Iraq (see February 5, 2003), Powell’s chief of staff Larry Wilkerson, who headed the team that prepared the presentation (see January 29, 2003 and January 30-February 4, 2003), will criticize it in blunt terms: “My participation in that presentation at the UN constituted the lowest point in my professional life. I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community, and the UN Security Council.” Greg Thielmann, who left the State Department’s intelligence bureau, the INR, in September 2002, will also observe: “Powell wanted to sell a rotten fish. He had decided there was no way to avoid war. His job was to go to war with as much legitimacy as we could scrape up.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 287-288]