The real-life movers and shakers in "Stuff"

Who are some of the many political in-players, European and American, who populate David Hare's Iraq war drama, "Stuff Happens"? Here are a few, and their roles in events leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq:

David Manning: Senior foreign-affairs adviser to Tony Blair, who expressed fears in leaked memos that the U.S. would "bungle" an Iraq invasion.

Colin Powell: As U.S. secretary of state, he reportedly voiced concerns to President George W. Bush about the Iraq invasion but made the case for military action with a speech to the U.N. Security Council that pointed to evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — evidence that was later widely disputed.

George Tenet: As director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he resigned in 2004 after getting public blame for personally endorsing intelligence reports that asserted the Saddam Hussein regime harbored weapons of mass destruction (which have never been found).

Paul Wolfowitz: As U.S. deputy secretary of defense, was one of the chief architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Hans Blix: A Swedish diplomat sent by the United Nations to Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction but whose 2003 statement that he had found none contradicted the Bush administration's assertions that the weapons existed.

Condoleezza Rice: As national-security adviser to President Bush, she supported his Iraq policy. After the invasion, she was named head of the administration's Iraq Stabilization Group, charged to "speed reconstruction" and "quell violence" in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in Bush's second term became secretary of state.