In My Time (63 page)

Underlying the debate over the speech and UN resolutions was the issue of military force itself. The president had not yet made a decision, but in neither this meeting nor any other I attended did any of the president’s advisors argue against using military force to remove Saddam
from power. Nor did anyone argue that leaving Saddam in power, with all the risks and costs associated with that course, was a viable option.

When we finished our NSC meeting, the president hosted Tony Blair in his office in Laurel Lodge. I joined the two of them, and we talked through the need for United Nations involvement. Blair was tough. He understood the stakes and the importance of acting against Saddam, and he was clear that he would be with us no matter what—and that was likely to include strong opposition from within his own party.

Blair argued that a UN resolution was necessary to achieve maximum international cooperation. He was very persuasive, and I understood that the president wanted to support his friend. There was no legal obligation for us to pursue a resolution, but there were some in the United States and many more in Europe who felt it would legitimize military action, and a resolution would also speak to their concerns. The president told the prime minister he would go forward with a resolution.

I knew the president was no more interested than I was in an endless round of inspections and deception in Iraq, and in the days that followed, I recommended inserting into the resolution a requirement for Saddam to submit within thirty days a declaration disclosing his WMD capacity and holdings. This would lay down a marker, set a deadline for assessing one final time whether action against Saddam was required.

AS WORK WENT FORWARD at the United Nations, we also sought congressional authorization for the use of force. Several members of Congress requested that the intelligence community produce a National Intelligence Estimate, a document that reflects the consensus view of U.S. intelligence agencies. The judgments contained in the 2002 NIE were of a piece with the briefings the president and I had been receiving. “Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions,” the report said. “Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles
with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.” Most agencies assessed that “Baghdad started reconstituting its nuclear program about the time that UNSCOM inspectors departed—December 1998,” and that “if Baghdad acquires sufficient fissile material from abroad it could make a nuclear weapon within
several months to a year
.”

The judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program was based in part on aluminum tubes the Iraqis had ordered. Most of the intelligence community believed they were intended for centrifuges to be used in uranium enrichment. There was a minority view in the NIE, which Director Tenet later emphasized, that the tubes were for another purpose, possibly the production of artillery rockets. But that was not the CIA’s position at the time, and in 2002 Tenet conducted briefings using one of the tubes. He would reach down on the floor, pick up an aluminum tube that was at least three feet long, and place it on the table. With this very impressive prop in place, he would explain with great confidence why the tubes were compelling evidence that Iraq was reconstituting a program to enrich uranium.

In the lead-up to the vote in Congress, various members explained their positions. Senator John Kerry said, “When I vote to give the president of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security.” Senator Hillary Clinton gave a speech on the floor of the Senate, parts of which I could have given myself. Among the reasons she would vote to give the president the authority to go to war, she declared, was that “Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own people” and “used chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds and Iranians, killing over 20,000 people.” Senator Clinton noted that since inspectors left Iraq in 1998, “Intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program.” She cited his connection to terrorism, noting that he “has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members.” She
argued that if Saddam Hussein were left unchecked, he would “continue to increase his capability to wage biological and chemical warfare” and “keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”

One of the most eloquent statements of the necessity of removing Saddam came from Senator Jay Rockefeller, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He acknowledged the “unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years.” He noted that “Saddam’s government has contact with many international terrorist organizations that likely have cells here in the United States,” and he talked about the lesson our country had learned in September 2001:

September 11 changed our world forever. We may not like it, but it is the world in which we live. When there is a grave threat to Americans’ lives, we have a responsibility to take action to prevent it.

A few months later in an appearance on CNN, Senator Rockefeller expanded on Saddam’s connection to terrorism: “The fact that Zarqawi certainly is related to the death of the USAID officer [Laurence Foley] and that he is very close to bin Laden puts to rest, in fairly dramatic terms, that there is at least a substantial connection between Saddam and al Qaeda.”

On October 10, the House passed the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq by a vote of 296–133, forty-six more votes in favor than had been the case for Desert Storm in 1991. Shortly after midnight the Senate approved the resolution 77–23, a much larger margin than for the Gulf War.

ON NOVEMBER 8, 2002, the Security Council unanimously approved Resolution 1441. It gave Iraq “a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations,” demanded immediate and unrestricted access for UN inspectors, and required that Iraq provide a “complete declaration of all aspects” of its weapons of mass destruction
programs and delivery systems. On December 7 Iraq submitted a twelve-thousand-page declaration, which, a few weeks later, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called “
an obvious falsehood
.” Hans Blix of Sweden, the head of the UN inspection effort, reinforced that idea when he reported to the Security Council in January. He said that the Iraqi declaration was mostly “a reprint of earlier documents” and that among the items it failed to account for were 6,500 chemical bombs, containing some one thousand tons of chemical agent. He noted that inspectors had indications that Iraq had weaponized VX, a deadly nerve gas, which conflicted with the account Iraq had given. He observed that “there are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared” and no convincing evidence that any of it had been destroyed. Missiles declared by Iraq had been “tested to a range in excess of the permitted range of 150 kilometers,” Blix said, and he noted that inspectors had discovered unarmed chemical warheads that Iraq had failed to declare. They were in a bunker that was relatively new and had probably been placed there
within the past few years
.

EVEN WHEN WAR AND peace are on the table, other matters have to be dealt with, and at the end of 2002, it was the Treasury Department. The president had decided he wanted to make a change. Paul O’Neill wasn’t working out. I felt somewhat responsible since I had recommended him for the job. I had gotten to know O’Neill during the Ford administration when he was the senior civil servant at OMB. He had been a superb budget analyst, a real star of the Ford administration, and after that, he had entered the business world, where he eventually became the well-regarded CEO of Alcoa. My friend Alan Greenspan was also a great fan of O’Neill and had thought he’d be a superb Treasury secretary.

In retrospect the problems were evident early on. When we were trying to reform tax policy and get the economy moving again, O’Neill often seemed more concerned with the accident record at Treasury. He also dedicated himself to the problem of bringing clean water to Africa—an important goal to be sure—but one better suited for the
portfolio of the director of the Agency for International Development than for that of the Treasury secretary.

And there were some structural problems. Economic policy was being run out of the White House, and meetings to make big decisions often did not include the Treasury secretary. O’Neill should have demanded—as Hank Paulson would later demand—to be included in any White House meeting about economic policy. On the other hand, either the president or I could have said, “Where’s O’Neill? We should not be having this meeting without the Treasury secretary.”

On December 6 I called O’Neill. “Paul, the president has decided to make a change in his economic team,” I said, “and he wants you to come over so he can talk to you in person.” After initially agreeing to come to the White House, Paul called me back and canceled. He had someone drop off his resignation letter and left town.

ON DECEMBER 21, WITH the White House decorated for Christmas, a group including George Tenet, Condi Rice, Scooter Libby, Andy Card, and me met in the Oval Office with the president to review a briefing prepared by the CIA on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the threat posed by Saddam. Although we had already secured congressional authorization and a UN resolution, we knew we would have to explain the threat Saddam posed to the American public. George Tenet’s deputy, John McLaughlin, had put together the briefing, and as he presented it in a dry, academic fashion, none of us was very impressed. When he had finished, the president, seated in one of the chairs in front of the fireplace, turned to George, who was on the sofa to his right. “Just how good is our case on Iraq WMD?” he asked. “It’s a slam dunk, Mr. President,” Tenet said. “It’s a slam dunk.”

The president wanted a better presentation. What he envisioned, he said, was a case against Saddam that was like a closing argument in a trial. Thinking that lawyers might be best suited for the job, he directed Libby and Hadley to take the CIA material we had on Saddam and turn it into a brief that strongly presented the evidence against him.

After Christmas the president asked Colin Powell to make the public
case against Saddam at the UN. The work Scooter and Steve had done, coordinating with a CIA officer detailed to the National Security Council and drawing from intelligence community reports, was forwarded to Powell for him to use as he prepared his remarks. I called Colin, told him the package he had received had good material in it, and encouraged him to take a look. Powell and members of his staff said later that they threw Steve’s and Scooter’s documents out and spent several days and nights at the CIA, where they personally confirmed with George Tenet every piece of information that went into his speech.

A few days later, Powell sat in the United States chair in the Security Council, with George Tenet behind him, and presented the case against Iraq. “My colleagues,” he said, “every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.”

Later, when it turned out that much of what Powell said about weapons of mass destruction was wrong, I think embarrassment caused him and those around him to lash out at others. Libby seemed to be a particular target of their ire. They excoriated the material that he and the National Security Council staff had provided, while at the same time boasting that they had thrown it in the garbage. As it happened much of what they discarded focused on Saddam’s ties to terror and human rights violations, charges that would stand the test of time.

ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 2003, at the president’s request, I invited Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, to my West Wing office for a briefing about our concept for military operations in Iraq. Thirteen years earlier Colin Powell and I had conducted a similar briefing for Bandar at the round table in my Pentagon office. This time it was Joint Chiefs Chairman Dick Myers and Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld who outlined our thinking and explained why we needed Saudi help. Being able to operate out of bases in the Kingdom would be crucial to us for an operation in Iraq.

I knew that Bandar was concerned about our commitment to see this thing through, and with the president’s approval, I intended to reassure
him. I’d done that on the eve of Desert Storm, when I made two commitments to King Fahd. I had told him the United States would send sufficient forces to defend Saudi Arabia and liberate Kuwait, and I had assured him that when the job was done, we’d bring our troops home. And we’d kept our commitments.

But Saddam had survived, and he had managed simply by surviving to portray himself as the victor. None of his neighbors wanted to see that happen again. It might make him even more dangerous. If the United States was going to conduct a military operation, we needed to ensure that Saddam didn’t remain in power.

General Myers gave Bandar a good look at what we had in mind. Bandar, who had been a fighter pilot, understood the strategy and jargon, and there was no doubt he was impressed. But he wanted to know if there would be a way out for Saddam. Don assured him that Saddam would not be left in power. Bandar asked again, directly, “Is Saddam going to survive this time?” I had quietly listened through most of the briefing, but now I spoke out. “Bandar,” I said, “once we start this, Saddam is toast.”

Bandar was convinced. He wanted to be able to tell the crown prince that he had heard this directly from the president, and so when he left my office, I conveyed his message to the president. He met with Bandar the following Monday.

TONY BLAIR RETURNED TO Washington at the end of January, arguing that we needed yet another UN resolution. Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Don Rumsfeld, and I were all in agreement that this was a mistake. We’d managed one resolution, no one believed we needed a second, and it would be very hard to get. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin had already declared that “nothing today justifies envisaging military action” against Iraq. I was also concerned that going after a second resolution and failing to get it would give our critics a chance to say we were acting alone—though, in fact, we had assembled a coalition of several dozen countries. Many made small contributions, to be sure, but the historical significance was immense of having
not only long-standing allies like the United Kingdom and Australia with us, but also countries such as the Czech Republic, from the former Soviet bloc. I also thought that going to the UN again would make us look hesitant and uncertain, but Blair saw a second resolution as a political necessity for him at home. Although he had a huge margin in Parliament, he couldn’t count on his fellow Labour Party members, and he foresaw the possibility of not only losing a vote on the war, but even bringing down his government. Britain was our major ally, and when the president decided to try for a second resolution, I understood his reasons. But our efforts to gather support for the resolution were unsuccessful, and on Monday, March 17, we pulled it down. That night the president addressed the nation and gave Saddam Hussein forty-eight hours to leave Iraq.