Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, known by the Defense Intelligence Agency cryptonym "Curveball", is a German citizen who defected from Iraq in 1999, claiming that he had worked as a chemical engineer at a plant that manufactured mobile biological weapon laboratories as part of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program. Alwan's allegations were subsequently shown to be false by the Iraq Survey Group's final report published in 2004.
Computer-generated image of alleged mobile biological weapons laboratory, presented by Colin Powell at the UN Security Council.
February 5, 2003 - United States Secretary of State Colin Powell holding a model vial of anthrax while giving the presentation to the United Nations Security Council.
Iraq and weapons of mass destruction
Iraq actively researched and later employed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from 1962 to 1991, when it destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile and halted its biological and nuclear weapon programs as required by the United Nations Security Council. The fifth president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was internationally condemned for his use of chemical weapons against Iranian and Kurdish civilians during the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s. Saddam pursued an extensive biological weapons program and a nuclear weapons program, though no nuclear bomb was built. After the Gulf War, the United Nations located and destroyed large quantities of Iraqi chemical weapons and related equipment and materials; Iraq ceased its chemical, biological and nuclear programs.
Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility – 10 March 1991. The Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, Baghdad, Post-strike.
February 5, 2003 – United States Secretary of State Colin Powell holding a model vial of anthrax while giving the presentation to the United Nations Security Council.
President George W. Bush addresses the nation from the Oval Office, March 19, 2003, to announce the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. "The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder." The Senate committee found that many of the administration's pre-war statements about Iraqi WMD were not supported by the underlying intelligence.
Presentation slide used by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell at the UN Security Council in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq