In Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations on February 5, 2003, he said: ” ‘Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.’ …The danger was not merely Saddam’s arsenal, Powell said, but the ‘sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network.’ ” Powell recounted the comments of captured al-Qaeda commander Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who said “bin Laden had been unable to develop chemical or biological agents at al-Qaeda labs in Afghanistan and had turned elsewhere for help. …And Saddam’s regime had provided ‘help in acquiring poisons and gases.’ …Powell was basing a key part of his argument for war on a source the CIA had, only days earlier, discounted.”
– Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris, Pages 185-188