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Who really said it

There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more

Spoken by Colin Powell 1937–2021 · U.S. Secretary of State, 2001–2005
Verified Free to reuse

Powell said this from the floor of the UN Security Council in New York City on 5 February 2003, in the address titled “Remarks to the United Nations Security Council.” The wording is exact — it matches the State Department’s own official transcript word for word. What did not survive scrutiny was the claim itself.

Last verified 18 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more” Colin Powell, "Remarks to the United Nations Security Council," New York City, 5 February 2003 — official U.S. Department of State transcript. Verified verbatim; the attribution is confirmed, but the claim itself was later refuted by the Iraq Survey Group. Via Quotle.info

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Provenance

The source

Source
Remarks to the United Nations Security Council
Speaker
Secretary Colin L. Powell
Delivered
New York City, 5 February 2003
Transcript
Official, U.S. Department of State archive

Iraq admitted to producing four spray tanks, but to this day, it has provided no credible evidence that they were destroyed, evidence that was required by the international community.

There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction.

If biological weapons seem too terrible to contemplate, chemical weapons are equally chilling. From the biological weapons section

Text as printed in the U.S. Department of State’s archived transcript. The line sits at the close of the biological-weapons portion of the address, immediately before Powell turns to chemical weapons.

Transcript with presentation slides
National Security Archive PDF of the address
U.S. Department of State archive: Remarks to the United Nations Security Council

How we verified it

Public domain

Powell spoke these words as Secretary of State in his official capacity, and the transcript quoted here is the State Department’s own. Under 17 U.S.C. § 105 ↗, copyright protection “is not available for any work of the United States Government” — defined as a work prepared by a U.S. Government officer or employee as part of their official duties — so the address is in the public domain despite its 2003 date. That exemption covers the government’s own transcript; commercial news transcriptions of the same speech may carry their own rights.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What people get wrong about it

This is the rare case where the correction runs backwards. Nobody has to rescue this quote from a fake attribution — it is Powell’s, verbatim, on the record, in a transcript his own department published. What collapsed was everything the sentence asserted, and that is where the misunderstandings actually live.

Colin Powell — correctly Confirmed

Not a paraphrase, not a press summary, not a line someone else wrote and Powell was blamed for. It appears word for word in the State Department’s official transcript ↗ of “Remarks to the United Nations Security Council,” New York City, 5 February 2003.

Refuted by the Iraq Survey Group Refuted

The Survey Group reported that Iraq appears to have destroyed its biological weapons and agent in 1991–1992, with research abandoned by 1996, and found no biological or chemical weapons stockpiles ↗ in 2003.

‘Curveball’, a fabricator Fabricated source

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, the Iraqi defector codenamed Curveball, supplied the mobile biological-laboratory claims that fed the presentation and later admitted he had lied ↗.

Powell in 2001, saying the opposite Reversal

In Cairo on 24 February 2001, alongside Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, Powell said Saddam Hussein “has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction” ↗.

He said it, exactly as quoted, and he did not hide from it: Powell told Barbara Walters of ABC News in 2005 that the speech was a blot on his record — “It was painful. It is painful now.” ↗

Context

Why it mattered

Powell was sent to the Security Council because he was the one member of the administration the world might believe. He had been a soldier for thirty-five years, he had a reputation for caution, and he was widely understood to be the reluctant one in the room. The speech was built to trade on exactly that credibility — intercepted phone calls played aloud, satellite photographs, a vial held up to the cameras — and this sentence was its hinge: not a warning about intent or capability at some future date, but a flat declaration in the present tense that the weapons existed.

The certainty was borrowed, and the loan was bad. Much of the biological-weapons material traced back to an Iraqi defector codenamed Curveball ↗, who later admitted he had made it up. When the Iraq Survey Group finished its work, it reported that Iraq had destroyed its biological weapons around 1991–1992 and that the trailers seized after the invasion — presented before the war as mobile production labs — “have absolutely nothing to do with any biological weapons” ↗.

The attribution is airtight. That is the whole problem with it.

The sentence in its place in the speech

The line closes Powell’s biological-weapons section. It follows a passage about Iraqi spray tanks and a Mirage jet test flight, and it is immediately followed by the pivot into chemical weapons: “If biological weapons seem too terrible to contemplate, chemical weapons are equally chilling.”

In February 2001, standing in Cairo beside Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, Powell had said of Saddam Hussein that “he has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction” ↗. In February 2003 he told the Security Council there could be no doubt that the weapons were there.

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Remarks to the United Nations Security Council2001-2009.state.gov

The U.S. Department of State's own archived official transcript of the 5 February 2003 address. Contains the sentence verbatim.
Address by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN Security Councilpresidency.ucsb.edu

The American Presidency Project's independent transcript, dated 5 February 2003, New York. Confirms the same wording.
Powell Addresses the U.N. Security Council (transcript with slides)nsarchive2.gwu.edu

The National Security Archive's PDF of the address with the presentation slides placed where they were shown.
Colin Powellen.wikiquote.org

Lists the line among Powell's sourced quotations, cited to the 5 February 2003 Security Council remarks.
No WMDs in Iraqfactcheck.org

Fact-check summarising the Iraq Survey Group's finding that Iraq had no biological or chemical weapons stockpiles in 2003.
Duelfer Disproves U.S. WMD Claimsarmscontrol.org

Detailed account of the Iraq Survey Group's conclusions on Iraq's biological programme and the mobile-lab trailers.

The man who made the case

About Colin Powell

Colin Powell

1937–2021 · U.S. Secretary of State and four-star general

Colin Powell (1937–2021) was a four-star U.S. Army general who served as National Security Advisor from 1987 to 1989 and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993 before becoming Secretary of State from January 2001 to January 2005. He was, by some distance, the most trusted figure in the administration he served — which is precisely why he was sent to the Security Council to make the case for war. He spent much of the rest of his life answering for the twenty minutes in which he made it, calling the speech a “blot” on his record that was “painful” then and “painful now.”

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Cite this page

Colin L. Powell, “Remarks to the United Nations Security Council,” New York City, 5 February 2003. Official transcript, U.S. Department of State archive (2001–2009.state.gov).

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more’?” Last verified 18 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/there-can-be-no-doubt-that-saddam-hussein-has-biological/

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