As a storm raged over US and British intelligence claims, Powell launched an impassioned personal defense of his role in the run-up to the conflict earlier this year.
He forcefully denied that President George W Bush had deceived the American people, branding a drama over flawed intelligence on Iraq's alleged efforts to procure uranium from Africa as "overwrought, overblown and overdrawn".
Powell said a decision was made at the time of the president's State of the Union address in January that the data, relating to Saddam Hussein's alleged nuclear programme, was accurate.
"At the time of the president's State of the Union, a judgment was made that was an appropriate statement for the president to make," Powell told reporters covering Bush's African tour.
"There was no attempt on the part of the president or anyone else in the administration to mislead or to deceive the American people," he said.
"To think that somehow we went out of our way to insert this single sentence into the State of the Union Address for the purpose of deceiving and misleading the American people is an overdrawn, overblown, overwrought conclusion".
Powell said he dropped the allegations about Iraq's alleged attempt to procure uranium from Africa when he made his presentation on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the UN Security Council at the beginning of February.
He said, by that time, just over a week after Bush's speech, it had become clear that the information was not totally clean, arguing that refining intelligence data was a constant exercise, like a "moving train".
The White House this week acknowledged that the remark made by Bush in the address overstated Saddam Hussein's alleged efforts to obtain uranium for nuclear arms.
Powell said the administration stood by the presentation he made before the United Nations, which he said was the product of hours of late nights poring over intelligence at Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Virginia.
Top officials now felt vindicated, he said, especially by what the US has said is the discovery of a mobile biological weapons lab and a centrifuge used in nuclear weapons manufacture dug up in an Iraqi scientist's garden.
"I think that's a pretty good indication that we were not cooking the books". - Sapa-AFP.
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