Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions.

These are facts corroborated by many sources.

Some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries.

The gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat that Iraq's weapons

of mass destruction pose to the world.

One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on

Iraq's biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make

biological agents.

Let me take you inside that intelligence file and share with you what we know from eyewitness

accounts.

We have first hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails.

That was then Secretary of State Colin Powell on February 5, 2003, making the case to

the United Nations Security Council that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass

destruction and ties to al-Qaeda.

It was a salesman's pitch for a US military invasion that came a little more than a month

later.

As has long been known, virtually everything Powell had to say that day was wrong, based

on faulty intelligence that had been massaged and manipulated in order to fit the Bush White

House's narrative that Saddam had to go.

Much of this became quickly clear after American troops occupied Iraq and could find none of

the WMD that Powell told the world was there in abundance.

But now veteran journalist Robert Draper has written a new book to start a war that digs

...