Interviewed by CNN in 2005, after his three years as Secretary of State Powell’s chief of staff, Wilkerson described his key role in preparing that speech as “the lowest point in my life.” Last week, in our debate, he called the U.N. presentation “the lowest point in my professional and personal life.”

As for Colin Powell, guess what? That U.N. speech was “a low point in my otherwise remarkable career,” he told AARP’s magazine in 2006. Yet the U.N. speech gave powerful propaganda support for the invasion that began the Iraq war -- a war that was also part of Powell’s “otherwise remarkable career.”

Norman Solomon

I've always thought the most remarkable thing about Powell's Iraq lies to the Security Council was the "I'm going to hell for this" expression on his face the whole way through. As we move back into "the express lane in the Möbius loop of history", this time with illegal-sanctions-battered Iran as the imminent existential threat, we should be demanding a higher standard of accountability than "I know you're lying, you know you're lying, but I can't prove you know you're lying, so carry on".

If, say, a Prime Minister makes a decision with predictably serious consequences based on false information, they should not be able to absolve themselves of all responsibility for those consequences by saying "I trusted the people who gave me this dossier of information. Yes, I paid them to give me the information, and it turned out to be pretty much exactly the kind of information I wanted to receive, but why should anybody find that suspicious? By the way, isn't 'dossier' a great word? Ooh! I should have said 'intelligence' instead of 'information'! Can you change that to read 'intelligence'? That sounds so much cooler."

I suppose this time round the highly sophisticated mobile chemical weapons factories will be highly sophisticated mobile nuclear weapons factories, and again the most ludicrous claims will be greeted with earnest concern rather than laughter, despite the fact that the grainy CIA photographs presented will be of a rickety wooden cart, with several chickens and a goat clearly visible inside.

Update: Oh! Oh! Juan Cole reminds us of the terrifying aluminium tubes!