-- spidermoon cobweblog --
blog of the futurepast
2004-04-25
U.S. Aimed for Hussein as War Began
By Bob Woodward
This is the last of five articles adapted from "Plan of Attack," a book by Bob Woodward that is a behind-the-scenes account of how and why President Bush decided to go to war against Iraq. Simon & Schuster. © 2004.
On the day President Bush led the United States to war in Iraq, he met with the National Security Council in the White House Situation Room, linked by secure video with Gen. Tommy R. Franks and nine of his senior commanders. It was the morning of Wednesday, March 19, 2003.
Franks, who was at Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia, explained that each commander would brief the president.
"Do you have everything you need?" Bush asked Lt. Gen. T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley, the Air Force commander who was running the air operations out of Saudi Arabia. "Can you win?"
"My command and control is all up," Moseley said. "I've received and distributed the rules of engagement. I have no issues. I am in place and ready." He was careful not to promise outright victory. "I have everything we need to win."
"I'm ready," said Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, the Army ground commander. "We are moving into forward attack positions. Our logistics are in place. We have everything we need to win."
"Green across the board," said Vice Admiral Timothy J. Keating.
Bush repeated his questions to each of the other commanders. The answers were all affirmative, and got shorter each time.
"The rules of engagement and command and control are in place," Franks said. "The force is ready to go, Mr. President."
"For the peace of the world and the benefit and freedom of the Iraqi people," Bush said, "I hereby give the order to execute Operation Iraqi Freedom. May God bless the troops."
"May God bless America," Franks replied.
"We're ready to go," the president said. "Let's win it." He raised his hand in a salute to his commanders, and then abruptly stood and turned before the others could jump up. Tears welled up in his eyes, and in the eyes of some of the others as Bush left the room. When he reached the Oval Office, he went outside for a walk.
"It was emotional for me," Bush recalled in an interview last December. "I prayed as I walked around the circle. I prayed that our troops be safe, be protected by the Almighty, that there be minimal loss of life." He prayed for all who were to go into harm's way for the country.
"Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. . . . I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible. And then, of course, I pray for personal strength and for forgiveness."
After his walk, the president made a series of secure phone calls to leaders of coalition countries saying, in essence, "We're launching!"
At this point, the war plan called for 48 hours of stealth operations, with the first Special Operations teams crossing the border from Jordan into western Iraq to stop any Scud missiles at 9 a.m. Eastern Time, 5 p.m. in Iraq. At the end of that period, at 1 p.m. Washington time on Friday, March 21, nine hours of "shock and awe" bombing and missile strikes would begin, with the major ground incursion scheduled for that night. The president would address the nation sometime Friday to announce that military action had begun.
But there had been a new development that threw some of those plans into doubt -- the opportunity, apparently, to kill Saddam Hussein before the war really even started.
Bush had learned about it the day before, when CIA Director George J. Tenet had come to the White House. He had been keeping Bush updated on the ROCKSTARS, the network of informants inside Iraq that the CIA had developed and cultivated since the previous fall, and how they were getting the CIA closer to locating Hussein. Now, he said, several ROCKSTARS were reporting with increasing detail and granularity the possibility that Hussein or his family was -- or soon would be -- at Dora Farm, a complex southeast of Baghdad on the bank of the Tigris River.
At Bush's intelligence briefing that morning, Tenet said that he might have something really good later on, but that he wasn't going to say anything more. He didn't want to raise expectations on the day the president was going to order the war to begin. It was unusual for Tenet to be so vague, and White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. noticed that Tenet was excited, almost effervescent. Tenet was never undermotivated but this was unusual, Card thought. Very unusual. 10:15 a.m. (6: 15 p.m. in Iraq)
In the mountainous Kurdish-controlled region of northern Iraq, a man named Tim, the head of a CIA paramilitary team, had set up a communications center about 10,000 feet up -- three 1970s trailers and some old Quonset huts wrapped in plastic and tied with ropes. They christened it Jonestown. Tim had 87 ROCKSTARS out there, reporting on the Thuraya satellite phones he had given them, a high-tech 7-by-7-foot screen displaying the exact location of each call coming from inside Iraq. Their calls were taken by two Kurdish brothers recruited by Tim, members of a repressed religious group who had wanted to help the CIA and the United States.
Tim had three of his case officers and two Special Forces guys up there for security, basically living at Jonestown. They listened to the reports coming in Arabic and then relayed them on a secure radio down the mountain to Tim's base camp, where his team was set up in a building painted lime green and known as "Pistachio." They tried to turn the phoned-in reports into intelligence reports as fast as possible for transmission to CIA headquarters in Virginia. Tim always wanted more detail -- clarification, verification.
"Pistachio, Pistachio, this is Jonestown," came yet another call from up the mountain. Jonestown had just received a report from a ROCKSTAR -- a member of Hussein's security force, the SSO, who ran part of the communications links Hussein used as he moved between his palaces and other locations. The source said he had just heard from another ROCKSTAR who had gone to Dora Farm to help with communications and had noticed a significant security detail. They were stocking food and supplies. It looked like a family gathering.
Tim relayed this to Saul, head of the Iraq operations group, at CIA headquarters, who reviewed the latest overhead imagery of Baghdad. Lo and behold, under the palm trees at Dora Farm were 36 frickin' security vehicles! It was a huge number, not for one or two people. The farm was used by Hussein's wife Sajida and Saul knew that Hussein had used it.
About 10:30 a.m., Bush met with Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
"We're on the verge of war," the president said, "and since New York City is a potential top target, it's important we visit." He praised the city's efforts at preparedness, but advised the mayor to focus on the main potential targets of the terrorists. "Keep your eye on tunnels, bridges and the Jewish community."
At 11:30 a.m. Washington time, a second Special Forces commando team launched into Iraq, this one from Saudi Arabia. 1:05 p.m.
The president met with top advisers on energy matters in the Roosevelt Room. The meeting included Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Card. The questions focused on the international flow of oil. What additional disruptions could take place in the marketplace? Venezuela, which was in political turmoil, had already drastically cut back production. Should the president use the strategic petroleum reserve?
Robert McNally, an energy expert on the White House staff, reported that crude oil prices had fallen from $37 to $31 a barrel. That was good news. A rapid increase in price would raise costs for businesses and consumers across the board.
The Saudis had pledged to stabilize the crude oil market by increasing output and putting crude into tankers that were pre-positioned in the Caribbean or heading there.
When they looked at oil worldwide, McNally said, the crude oversupply was 1.5 million to 1.9 million barrels a day. That dramatic oversupply was driving down the price.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the Saudis would cover for any loss of oil from Iraq by upping production to 10.5 million barrels a day for 30 days -- an extraordinary pledge. In December, the Saudis had been supplying only 8 million barrels a day, and in February fewer than 9 million.
Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans said that about two-thirds of the Iraqi oil fields were located close together, and it was not clear from intelligence how many had been wired to explode.
The president, displaying technical knowledge gained from his earlier career in the oil business, said that if explosives were rigged on the top of the well, the fire would be relatively easy to extinguish, but if an explosion were set off deep down in the pipes it could take forever to put out those fires. "If they blow up their oil fields, it will be more than one month. If they really blow them, it will be years."
Sometime after 12:30 p.m. (8:30 p.m. in Iraq), Tim received a report that Rokan, a ROCKSTAR source who ran security at Dora Farm, had seen Hussein, who had left the farm about eight hours earlier to attend meetings but would be back to sleep at Dora along with his sons Qusay and Uday. It was 100 percent sure that Hussein "must" be returning. Tim knew that in the context the "must" meant maybe, but he had to report what he had been told.
At 1 p.m., at least 31 teams of Special Operations forces entered Iraq in the west and north.
"They're on the ground; they're in," Card said in an aside to the president.
It was almost too quiet. Bush and Card were eager to see whether al-Jazeera or CNN or any news organization had picked up some movement.
At 1:45 p.m., the president spoke with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar for 20 minutes.
"We have to kind of speak in code," Bush said on the secure line. "Things are changing. You may not see much but it's a different pace."
Just after 2 p.m., there was still no leak.
Card checked with the Situation Room.
"The Poles are in," he reported to the president. "They've got the platform." A Polish special forces team had gone in early and captured one of the key targets -- an oil platform in the south.
Bush spoke briefly with the Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski.
"The Aussies are in," Card reported. An Australian commando team had moved into the west. 3:15 p.m.
Tenet, CIA Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin, Saul and several other CIA operatives had raced over to the Pentagon with Tim's intelligence report and satellite photos to meet with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld had been following the ROCKSTAR intelligence and thought it merited the attention of the president. The odds were that the group was not being duplicitous; people were putting their lives at risk. But like most intelligence, it was imperfect. Rumsfeld talked with Franks, who thought Dora Farm was a good target, and the secretary asked that he make sure they were ready to attack it.
Rumsfeld called Card. "We've got some developments, and I want to come over and talk about them," he told Card, who passed on the request to the president.
Tenet, meanwhile, phoned Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser. "I'm coming," Tenet said cryptically, "I'm not going to say a word on the phone. I want to do it with Don in the presence of the president. Nothing before that."
Rumsfeld, McLaughlin, Tenet, Saul and two other CIA men soon arrived in the Oval Office and went into the president's dining room.
"We've got two guys close to Saddam," Tenet said. He quickly summarized about the security guy, Rokan, at Dora, and then the other ROCKSTAR who had gone down to help with communications. Tenet produced satellite photos that showed the location of the farm near Baghdad at a bend in the Tigris River. There were several houses on the farm. "Saddam and the two boys have been here, and might come back if they're still not there." The CIA was in direct communication with both sources.
Bush questioned them about the sources. Who were they? How good were they?
Saul explained that a key to the ROCKSTAR network was the Special Security Organization officer in communications who worked with the two eyes-on sources at Dora. The SSO man's contacts and recruits into the network had turned out to be very good. In terms of Iraqi sources we are running, Saul told the president, we judge him to be one of the better, more reliable sources. "This is really good," the president said. "This sounds good."
"Well," Saul said, "we'll never get 100 percent confidence but the organization has proven reliable." At this point, they had one source, Rokan, on the specifics of Hussein's being there or about to return. "Right now," Saul said, "it's about 75 percent certain."
A decapitation strike on the top regime leaders now appeared possible. They contemplated the impact of taking out Hussein and his sons. Who would make the decisions inside Iraq? Everyone was so used to directions from the highest level. The best-case scenario was that it might even break the regime, make war unnecessary. That was unlikely but possible.
What kind of weapons would you use? the president asked.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had joined the group, said Tomahawk cruise missiles, and he proposed a strike package of 15 to 17.
Bush was skeptical. He asked, Who is in which building? Where would Hussein stay? Do the sons have kids? Where is the wife? Is Hussein with his wife? Are we sure it is not just where he put all of the kids to stay? Waiting for Hussein
In northern Iraq, Tim threw a blazer over his long underwear and put on his muddy boots. It was the ritual of respectability with the Kurds. No matter how grubby, the brothers up at Jonestown would be in coat and tie. He hopped in his Cherokee and drove himself up the treacherous three miles from Pistachio to Jonestown to be on the scene where the ROCKSTAR reports were coming in. The atmosphere at Jonestown was frantic with the brothers screaming, "Don't hang up! Stay on, stay on the phone! Don't hang up!" Click. Tim decided the best thing to do was scream back at them.
"The fate of your nation hangs on you," Tim yelled, "and I'm going to pull it all away from you, and if you let me down now, you're not going to get the seat at the table in a new Iraqi government."
The principal source phoned in a report cobbled together from what his two subsources at Dora Farm were telling him: Hussein's sons were at the farm for sure, and Hussein was expected back about 2:30 a.m. or 3 a.m. Iraqi time. The sources on the scene also reported details about the houses. Additionally there was a manzul on the compound, the report said. Manzul could be translated as "place of refuge" or "bunker." Tim chose bunker. The report provided some details about the bunker -- distances from the main houses, and its thickness in so many meters of concrete under so many meters of earth. Tim frantically took this and sent back to CIA headquarters a flash message summarizing the information.
The president had more questions. "Is it going to disrupt Tommy's plan?" he asked. They had spent more than a year on that plan. What would be the impact? Would it blow the whole element of surprise? The Special Operations forces that had gone in already were supposed to be covert. Would this expose them? "Go ask Tommy," he directed Rumsfeld.
Myers eventually reached Franks.
"What do you think about taking a shot at this Dora Farm target?" Myers asked.
Franks had been watching the time-sensitive targets carefully and he had known the night before that the CIA had been getting closer to Hussein, perhaps at Dora Farm. It looked like a target for a Tomahawk cruise missile, and Franks had ordered the Navy to program some missiles on the target. But it was still during the 48-hour ultimatum period the president had given Hussein and his sons to leave. Franks felt pretty strongly, and had counseled Rumsfeld, that they not take a shot during that period. It was a kind of grace period.
Can you do it in two hours? Myers asked next.
Franks said they could. The Tomahawks were ready to go. Sometime After 4 p.m.
The latest ROCKSTAR report arrived in the Situation Room and was taken immediately to the Oval Office.
"They say they're with him right now! Both of the sons are there," Tenet said. Their wives were there. The families were there also. Hussein was expected back at 2:30 to 3 a.m. Iraq time -- in less than two hours. There was a bunker and one of the ROCKSTARS had paced off where it was, had gone inside and taken rough measurements.
Hadley asked Saul, "Can you show me where the bunker is?" Saul wasn't sure, but they took the overhead photos and Hadley tried to draw a sketch. McLaughlin was soon doing an improved amateur engineer drawing.
Powell was the only principal missing, and about 5:15 p.m. the president told Rice, "You better call Colin."
"Colin, get to the White House!" she said, reaching Powell at the State Department. She was abrupt and offered no explanation. When Powell arrived in minutes, they summarized for him. "If we've got a chance to decapitate them, it's worth it," he finally said.
Rumsfeld strongly recommended a strike, and Cheney agreed, though he seemed to be holding back.
Bush filled the time with questions, at one point asking: Were they really sure what they were looking at was what they thought they were looking at?
"It's as good as it gets," Tenet said. "I can't give you 100 percent assurance, but this is as good as it gets."
Bush was still worrying about the women and children. This could be a kind of baby milk factory, he said, recalling an incident from the 1991 Persian Gulf War when the Iraqis had claimed a suspected biological weapons plant that was bombed was really for the production of baby milk. "They would bring out dead women and children," Bush said, "and the first pictures would be of civilian casualties on a massive scale of some kind."
Could Iraq use this as a public relations exercise? he asked. It could engender sympathy for Hussein. Dead babies, children and women would be a nightmare. That sure would get things off on the wrong foot.
Rumsfeld and Myers said it probably didn't matter what they hit in the first strike, because the Iraqi propaganda machine was going to say that the United States killed a number of women and children anyway. And if necessary the Iraqis would execute women and children and say the United States did it.
That was indeed the downside. But the others -- Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, even Powell -- seemed taken with the upside, a shortcut to victory.
Myers raised a serious problem. If there were a bunker at the Dora compound as they now suspected, the cruise missiles would not penetrate. They would need the bunker-busting 2,000-pound bombs to get that deep. Myers was sent off to talk to Franks.
For a moment, the group weighed the downsides. They had promised to defend Israel, and the full defense of Israel was not ready. What were the other consequences? Suppose the Iraqis used a strike as a pretext to set the oil wells ablaze? Suppose they fired Scud missiles into Israel or Saudi Arabia? The consequences of an early attack were immense. The plan called for the air campaign to begin in two days.
Bush went around the room and asked: Would you do it?
"I would do it, Mr. President," Card said. It was too good a chance not to take. Rumsfeld, too, was strongly in favor.
Powell thought it was a hell of a lot of very specific information that seemed not bad, though it was a little curious that the CIA sources on the other end of the satellite phones could have acquired so much.
"If we've got a chance to decapitate them, it's worth it," Powell recommended again.
Rice and Hadley had some more questions about the sources, but both favored an attack.
Myers reached Franks on a secure phone. Could he load up a stealth fighter with a pair of EGBU-27 bombs, the bunker-busters, for the attack?
"Absolutely not," Franks said. "We don't have the F-117 ready to go." The F-117A Nighthawk, the stealth single-seat fighter jet, typically carried two of the bombs when fully loaded.
Franks checked further. The Air Force had been following the intelligence and the night before had readied one F-117. The Air Force squadron in Qatar had received word that day that the bombs could be dropped in pairs safely, though it had never been tried before.
Franks asked what the probability was of a single F-117 getting through and delivering its pair of bombs. Though stealthy and radar-evading, the F-117 would have to go in before the suppression of Iraqi air defense, weak as that was. The plane would be going in cold. The answer came back that the Air Force could only say there was a 50 percent chance of success.
Prepare two bombers, Franks ordered, figuring that would improve the chances.
In Qatar, the Air Force squadron was able to load a second F-117.
Franks sent word to the Oval Office that it would be possible, but that he needed a final decision to go by about 7:15 p.m. in order to get the F-117s in and out of Iraqi airspace well before dawn.
Rumsfeld, Myers and CIA men were running in and out of the Oval Office to find secure phones at West Wing locations. Card was concerned that the window of opportunity was closing. Did they really understand the intelligence? Was it necessary to change the weapons? Myers was trying to find out how long it would take the F-117s to be loaded, take off, then fly from Doha to Baghdad and back. How many tankers do they have to have to refuel the planes?
Another question arose. If it was approved, should the president go on television that night and make his speech announcing the beginning of the war -- a speech now scheduled for Friday?
"Look, this is an ongoing operation," Cheney said. "We didn't announce that the Special Forces were going in. We didn't announce the Poles were taking over the platform. We didn't announce the Australians were heading toward the dam. We don't have to announce it yet. You don't announce it until you are ready to announce it."
Rumsfeld seemed to half agree. "If someone should go, maybe it should be me," he said, but he then added, indicating Bush, "Or maybe it could be you."
Powell raised the CNN effect. The attack would be seen instantly. Reporters stationed at the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad were close enough possibly to see it or hear it. Dozens of cruise missiles and bunker-buster bombs. The media were spring-loaded to proclaim, "It started! It started!" Antiaircraft fire and tracers would be flying all around. The war was going to begin with this event.
"If lives are in jeopardy," the president said, "I've got to go announce it."
Cheney reminded him that lives were already in danger and that there had been no announcement.
Should he wait until the next morning? the president asked. That would give Franks an additional 12 hours before any announcement.
Bush called in his two main communications advisers, Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett, to the Oval Office. He told Saul to sum up the intelligence.
Then, the president said he was probably going to order the attack. "How do we do this?" he asked Hughes and Bartlett. "Do I go on television?" Should he inform the public before, during or after? Should the secretary of defense do it? Everyone turned to Hughes. They knew how much Bush relied on her.
"No, you need to do it, Mr. President," she said. "The American people shouldn't hear it from the press; they shouldn't hear it from somebody else. They should hear it from you. And you should tell them what and why." If they hit civilians or women and children, the president had to be ahead of the curve. She added her trademark observation, "We can't sort of be catching up."
Bartlett agreed with Hughes, but Cheney still had reservations. What would this mean for Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia? Do we have our defenses ready for Israel? Tommy's plan has a defense, but the plan wasn't fully implemented yet.
Powell could not understand that they would start a war and not get out front with a presidential announcement.
"I promised people I'd let them know when the war begins," Bush said. "And if lives -- the war is beginning tonight, lives will be in jeopardy, I have to tell the American people that I've committed American forces to war."
Cheney didn't seem happy.
"They have to hear it from me," Bush said. "I'm doing it." This would be starting the war, he said. "Let's not kid ourselves." 6 p.m.
Card called Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson. "Is it ready?" Card asked. There was only one speech left to give.
"In about five minutes I can have it ready," Gerson said.
"I want you to meet me outside the Oval Office at 6:30 with several copies of the speech."
Gerson went down to the Oval Office and sat in one of the two chairs outside.
Card soon emerged. "We'll be with you soon enough. Just wait," he told him. Card took the copies of the speech, leaving Gerson to cool his heels. Obviously something was up, but Gerson had no idea what. Tenet and his people were running in and out making secure calls.
Inside the Oval Office, the president went around the room again, asking if all the principals agreed, almost pushing each to the wall. They did.
Bush turned to Saul. "Well, what do you think?"
Saul's head was spinning. He had never been involved in a discussion like this, let alone been asked his opinion. He was worried about the pilots of the F-117s. His intelligence was now going to put American lives directly at risk. The planes would be going in with no electronic countermeasures, no fighter escort, no advance suppression of Iraqi air defense. "I have to apologize that we have to present you with this very tough decision," Saul said to the president. "I really feel sorry for you having to make it."
"Don't," Bush said. "That's what I do. I'll make the decision."
"Well, sir," Saul said, "then I would say launch."
The president kicked everyone out of the Oval Office but Cheney.
What do you think, Dick?
"This is the best intelligence we've had yet on where Saddam's located," Cheney replied. "If we get him, it may save a lot of lives and shorten the war. And even if we don't, we're going to rattle his cage pretty seriously, and maybe disrupt the chain of command. That's well worth the effort in and of itself." Now he was unequivocal. "I think we ought to go for it." 7:12 p.m.
The others came back in. Finally, the president said, "Let's go." It was three minutes before Franks's deadline.
Powell noted silently that things didn't really get decided until the president had met with Cheney alone.
Myers went to the secure phone to inform Franks.
Rumsfeld emerged from the Oval Office and saw Gerson. "I was just butchering your speech," he said.
The president called out, "Gerson, come on in." Hughes and Bartlett were standing there.
"We're going after them," Bush explained.
"I don't understand," Gerson said.
"The intelligence is good," Bush replied, explaining that it showed they had a shot at Hussein and his sons. "Let's hope we're right," he added, choking up.
Rumsfeld's "butchery" of the speech was simple. He wanted the president to say that this was the "early stages" of military operations, and again in the second paragraph refer to the "opening stages" of war.
"I want to see you over in the residence when you're ready," Bush said to Gerson and Hughes, directing that the changes be made.
The two went up to Gerson's second-floor office and made the changes in a few minutes. Gerson was glad they were going to restore a line that had been cut from Monday's ultimatum speech. Referring to Hussein and his alleged weapons of mass destruction, the line now read: "We meet that threat now, with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of firefighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities." Gerson thought it was the most vivid way to put it. The implication of avoiding another 9/11 would be clear.
Rumsfeld read the speech word for word to Franks over a secure phone to make sure he had no objections or suggestions. He had none.
Rice placed a quick call at 7:30 p.m. to Israeli Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu about another matter. He said he already knew about the war and wished it would be fast and "bloodless."
She woke up David Manning, the British national security adviser.
"David, there's a little change in plans. And I'm sorry to say this, but I think you better wake the prime minister and tell him." The President Prepares
Bush went to the residence. Card sat with him in the Yellow Room. Are you comfortable? the chief of staff asked. Are you ready to give the speech? He wanted to separate the two -- the decision to go after Hussein and the speech.
Yes, the president said, he was ready on both counts. Though he had asked all in the war cabinet, including Card, if they would do this, and each had said yes, he asked again. "You would do this?"
"Yes," Card said, "this is the right thing to do. Absolutely. Take this chance."
How long have the F-117s been up? the president asked. When do they get there?
The next report said they were in Iraqi airspace. There would be no more preliminary reports because they would be on radio silence over Iraq.
Hughes, Bartlett and Gerson went over to the residence. Unsure whether the president wanted to see them or just receive the speech, they asked the usher to check. If Bush was having dinner, they did not want to interrupt. The usher soon came back and escorted them up to the Treaty Room, Bush's private office. Gerson thought Bush was subdued and a little pale. For the first time he looked to Gerson a little bit burdened by all of this. The president took the speech and began to read it aloud: "My fellow citizens, at this hour . . .
"American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger."
He read through the 10 paragraphs and said it was fine. He had no changes. He walked them to the elevator.
Quietly, as if to reassure himself, Bush said again, "The intelligence is good." 'God Help Us All'
Rice called Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador. "Can I see you at 7:45?" she asked.
"Condi," Bandar said, "we have to stop meeting like this -- this hour. People will talk."
Normally any meeting after 6:30 p.m. was a kind of code word, meaning that Bandar would be seeing the president. Bandar had booked an entire small Arabian restaurant in Georgetown that night to dine with his wife, family and some friends. He told his wife to go ahead. He arrived in the West Wing lobby and noticed a photographer. Odd. When he was finally ushered in at 8:28 p.m., Rice stepped to her outer office to greet him. Flash!
Bandar jumped, saying, "I hope he works for you."
"Yes, yes, don't worry."
The photographer snapped again as they were about to sit down, and a third time after they sat.
"The president has " Rice began.
" . . . asked me to tell you," Bandar interrupted, completing her sentence, "that we are going to war."
It was obvious -- the ultimatum's expiration and the photographer. "I've been meeting you in this office for two years and I've never had a photographer in here. I'm not retiring to take goodbye photos. You're not retiring."
About 9 p.m., hell will break loose, Rice said. "And your friend, the president, insisted that you be informed immediately."
"Where is the president now?" Bandar asked.
"He is having dinner right now with the first lady and then he decided he wants to be alone."
"Tell him he will be in our prayers and hearts," Bandar said. "God help us all."
Rice's phone rang at 8:29 p.m.
"Yes, yes, Mr. President," she said. "No, I told him. . . . He's here. . . . Yes, he is with me. I told him. Well, he said you're in his prayers."
"He said thank you," Rice reported after hanging up. "Just keep praying."
Bandar excused himself and left. The walk from the West Wing to his car outside seemed 1,000 miles. Cool air hit his face and he suddenly began to sweat, then there was a little shiver.
He had arranged a code to alert Crown Prince Abdullah if he learned early -- a reference to the Roda, an oasis outside Riyadh.
"Tonight the forecast is there will be heavy rain in the Roda," Bandar said from his car phone to Saudi Arabia.
"Oh, I see," the crown prince said. "I see. Are you sure?"
"I am very sure," he replied, adding that the Americans had great capabilities, satellites and so forth, to predict the weather.
"Tell me again."
Bandar repeated.
The crown prince took a deep breath. "May God decide what is good for all of us." Then he asked loudly, "Do you know how soon the storm is going to hit?"
"Sir," Bandar said, potentially blowing operational security if any foreign embassy or anyone else with the capability was listening in, "I don't know, but watch TV." Preparing to Inform the Nation
In his interview last December, Bush recalled the moment. "It's been a very long day. I get upstairs, and I can't sleep. Because I've got about an hour and a half now." He didn't want to speak until the bombers were off their targets. "I was trying to take a little nap."
Once more, he called Rice. No news.
He tried to sleep or read or find something to do and couldn't so he called Rice again.
"Mr. President, we've just got a report from the person on the ground. A convoy has pulled into the complex."
"Is that convoy full of kids?" Bush asked. It hit him that there was no turning back now. The bombers were going in first, followed immediately by 36 cruise missiles. They had doubled the Tomahawk attack package. The Tomahawk cruise missiles, which had been launched to the Dora Farm target more than an hour earlier, had no self-destruct mechanism so they were going in no matter what.
"No," Rice replied, "he thinks that it looks like the kind of convoy that would bring Saddam Hussein."
About an hour later, the president came down to the Oval Office and did a read-through, then went to his study off the Oval Office.
Normally at the end of the day press secretary Ari Fleischer would put a "lid" on, telling the White House reporters that there would be no more news that night. But Fleischer knew that the extraordinarily long Oval Office meeting meant something, especially with all the running around by the principals and the presence of even a few unfamiliar faces. So he was going to be careful. Finally, Card took Fleischer into his corner office.
It's going to start tonight, Card said. These are the early stages. We have a target of opportunity and are sending a stealth fighter to go after it.
"Are we sending anything else in?"
"I told you everything you need to know," Card replied. The attack would be south of Baghdad. Iraqi antiaircraft batteries would soon be going off.
Rice, Card, Bartlett and Fleischer gathered around the TV in Rice's office. At 9:30 p.m. reports came that air raid sirens had gone off in Baghdad. Antiaircraft fire soon followed.
"Go out," Rice told Fleischer.
Fleischer was at the podium at 9:45: "The opening stages of the disarmament of the Iraqi regime have begun. The president will address the nation at 10:15."
Myers reported to Hadley that the F-117s had successfully dropped their bombs, but the pilots were not yet out of hostile territory. Hadley went to the study off the Oval Office where the president was getting his makeup, and relayed the report to Bush and Rice.
"Let's pray for the pilots," Bush said.
10:16 p.m.
The president appeared on television, the stock flags and family photos in the background. He said the "early stages" of the military campaign against Hussein had begun, without offering any details. "More than 35 countries are giving crucial support," he said. "A campaign on the harsh terrain of a nation as large as California could be longer and more difficult than some predict." It was a time of "grave danger" and "peril."
"Our forces will be coming home as soon as their work is done," he said. "This will not be a campaign of half-measures."
When he was done, he asked Rice how the speech had gone. One of the better ones, she told him.
Hadley called Myers, who reported about 11 p.m. that the pilots were out of hostile airspace and on the approach to land. Rice called the president.
"The pilots are out of harm's way," she said.
"Well, thank God for that."
A few minutes before midnight in Washington (8 a.m. Iraqi time), Tim sent a report saying that the principal ROCKSTAR reported that Hussein and his sons were at Dora Farm when the bombs and missiles hit, but he did not know their status. Tim did not want to report again until he was pretty sure they had gotten Hussein.
Before dawn in Washington (about noon in Iraq), he sent another cable. Again he had to report what the ROCKSTARS said, but he was uncertain because he was just getting snatches from ROCKSTARS fleeing the scene. Rokan, their source, had been killed by a cruise missile. One of Hussein's sons, it was unclear which, had come out shouting, "We've been betrayed" and shot another of the ROCKSTARS in the knee. The other son had emerged from the rubble bloody and disoriented but it wasn't clear whether it was his blood or someone else's. Hussein had been injured, according to a ROCKSTAR witness, and had to be dug out of the rubble. He was blue. He was gray. He was being given oxygen. He had been put on a stretcher and loaded into the back of an ambulance, which then did not move for half an hour before departing the farm across a bridge.
About 4:30 a.m. Tenet called the Situation Room and told the duty officer, "Tell the president we got the son of a bitch."
They didn't wake the president. And by the time Bush arrived at the Oval Office about 6:30 a.m. Thursday, March 20, they weren't so sure. It looked as though Hussein may have survived. Epilogue
On March 24, 2003, five days after the start of the war, Tim made his way down to Dora Farm. It looked like the remnants of a flea market, people were still carting stuff away. There were craters and clearly the place had been attacked. He searched everywhere. There was no bunker or any hint of one. He found a subterranean pantry for food storage attached to the main house. Perhaps that was what his ROCKSTAR agents had been referring to. It was baffling and mysterious. Was it possible that manzul was neither a place of refuge nor a bunker, but a pantry?
Tim eventually tracked down some of the ROCKSTAR agents who had reported that night. Two said their wives had been captured by Hussein's agents and had their fingernails pulled out. Another maintained that his house had been bulldozed. There was some evidence to support these claims, but Tim was unsure.
Soon Tim was reassigned to CIA headquarters to work undercover on other issues. Saul and other superiors asked him and the team members to put down the sequence of events of the day and night of March 19 to 20, 2003. They wanted a very briefable, immaculate package. The more Tim searched his memory and the few documents, he realized that much was cloudy. Everyone had been stressed. The ROCKSTARS on the ground had not wanted to disappoint, and had obviously been worried about being captured or killed.
Tim made a series of efforts to write down in a meaningful way what had happened. He tried a version. Did he have 40 percent? Or 62 percent? Or 83 percent? he wondered. What percentage of the truth was available? What had slipped away? What had been untrue? He tried several more times. It wasn't black or white, and it certainly wasn't a straight line. Was he getting closer or further from the truth?
He never produced a definitive version. The biggest unanswered question was whether Saddam Hussein and his entourage had really been there that night.
Mark Malseed contributed to this report.
...
jezebel 03:31 - [Link] - Comments ()
...
2004-04-21
Blair Steady in Support
By Bob Woodward
This is the fourth of five articles adapted from "Plan of Attack," a book by Bob Woodward that is a behind-the-scenes account of how and why President Bush decided to go to war against Iraq. Simon & Schuster. © 2004.
On Sunday, March 9, 2003 -- 10 days before launching war with Iraq -- President Bush was increasingly worried about the political peril of his chief ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"Do you think he could lose his government?" Bush asked Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser.
"Yes," she replied.
"Would the British really do that?"
"Remember Churchill," she said, noting that he had lost his government after winning World War II. Though Blair's Labor Party had more than a 2 to 1 majority in Parliament, the defection of 150 or more Laborites would leave the opposition Conservatives with the temptation or opportunity to join the Labor defectors to bring down Blair's government in a vote of no confidence.
The president was very worried. He called Blair for one of their regular conversations. They explored the possibilities, which other countries on the U.N. Security Council they could get to support or at least acquiesce in a war. His last choice, said Bush, would be "to have your government go down. We don't want that to happen under any circumstances. I really mean that."
If it would help, Bush said, he would let Blair drop out of the coalition and they would find some other way for Britain and its 41,000 military personnel in the region around Iraq to participate.
"I said I'm with you. I mean it," Blair replied.
Bush said they could think of another role for the British forces -- "a second wave, peacekeepers or something. I would rather go alone than have your government fall."
"I understand that," Blair responded, "and that's good of you to say. I said, I'm with you."
Bush said he really meant that it would be all right for Blair to opt out. "You can bank on that."
"I know you do," Blair said, "and I appreciate that. I absolutely believe in this, too. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's good of you to say that," the prime minister repeated in his very British way. "But I'm there to the very end."
It was an extraordinary offer, confirmed by Bush in an interview in December. Had Blair accepted, the United States would have been virtually alone in launching the war -- with only a few thousand troops from countries such as Australia and Poland. Blair Pushes U.N. Route
On the morning of Sept. 7, 2002, Blair left London on a transatlantic flight to see Bush at Camp David. The president had invited him to come for dinner and a three-hour talk on Iraq. Blair would be on the ground for about six hours -- an unusually short stay.
In Blair's conversations with Bush, it was increasingly clear to the prime minister how committed Bush was to action. But as Blair's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, had signaled to his counterpart, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in a meeting the month before, the message from the British in essence was: If you are really thinking about war and you want us to be a player, we cannot be unless you go to the United Nations. Powell also favored a U.N. resolution, and he knew this would add to the pressure on Bush, who absolutely had to have Blair on board.
Blair's style was to have ongoing debates with himself and his small circle of advisers, testing, searching, "weighing things up," as one of his advisers said. On Iraq, Blair had traveled several roads. "Look, if Bush hadn't been exercised after 9/11 about these issues," he told his advisers several times, "I would have been worrying about them, and I raised them with him before 9/11." The issues were terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and Iraq. For years, Blair had warned about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
Of the three countries Bush cited as constituting the "axis of evil," Blair was most worried about North Korea, and he believed Iran was close to developing dangerous WMD stockpiles. Iraq was at the bottom of the list for the prime minister, one adviser said, suggesting Blair was not at this point as driven about Hussein as Bush.
"Iraq is an American question," that adviser added. "It's not a British question. And it couldn't be anybody else's because no one else had the capability." Britain was not setting the military agenda, needless to say. It was out of the question that Britain would ever go it alone. "We couldn't have invaded Iraq."
Blair was keenly aware that in Britain the question was: Does Blair believe in the United Nations? It was critical domestically for the prime minister to show his own Labor Party, a pacifist party at heart, opposed to war in principle, that he had gone the U.N. route. Public opinion in Britain favored trying to make international institutions work before resorting to force. Going through the United Nations would be a large and much-needed plus.
After taking questions from reporters, the two leaders, with Vice President Cheney in attendance, sat down for a private talk. There was no specific war planning. The issue was political strategy.
Blair said he had to be able to show that he had tried the United Nations and sought a new resolution requiring the readmission of weapons inspectors inside Iraq. "He's there to make the case for a resolution," Bush recalled in an interview in December. He told Blair he had decided to go to the United Nations, and it seemed he would seek a new resolution.
Blair was relieved.
Bush looked Blair in the eye. "Saddam Hussein is a threat. And we must work together to deal with this threat, and the world will be better off without him." Bush recalled that he was "probing" and "pushing" the prime minister. He said it might require -- would probably entail -- war. Blair might have to send British troops.
"I'm with you," the prime minister replied, looking Bush back in the eye, pledging flat out to commit British military force if necessary, the critical promise Bush had been seeking.
"We want you to be part of this," he told the prime minister. Blair's resolve had made a real impression, the president later recalled.
After the meeting, Bush walked into the conference room where Alastair Campbell, the prime minister's communications director, and several other Blair aides were waiting.
"Your man has got cojones," the president said, using a colloquial Spanish term for courage.
The president recalled, "And of course these Brits don't know what cojones are." He said he would call the Camp David session with Blair "the cojones meeting."
As a practical matter, by agreeing to the urging of Blair and Powell to go to the United Nations to seek a new resolution, Bush had improved his position immeasurably. It meant that no matter what happened, as long as Blair kept his word, he would not have to go it alone. An Absolute Political Necessity
Two months later, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1441 unanimously, 15 to 0, requiring new weapons inspections and declaring that if Hussein continued to violate his disarmament obligations, he would face "serious consequences."
The U.N. inspectors went into Iraq, but Bush became frustrated and angry at their lack of progress. In early January 2003, the president secretly decided on war, but he continued to pursue a diplomatic solution publicly.
On Jan. 31, 2003, Bush was scheduled to meet again with Blair at Camp David, but a mix of rain and ice kept them at the White House. Blair told Bush that he needed to get a second U.N. resolution. He had promised that to his party at home, and he was confident that together he and Bush could rally the United Nations and the international community.
Bush was set against a second resolution. So were Cheney and Powell -- a rare case in which they agreed. The first resolution had taken seven weeks, and this one would be much harder. But Blair had the winning argument. It was necessary for him politically. It was no more complicated than that, an absolute political necessity. Blair said he needed the favor. Please.
That was language Bush understood. "If that's what you need, we will go flat out to try and help you get it," he told Blair. He also didn't want to go alone, and without Britain he would be close to going alone.
"Blair's got to deal with his own Parliament, his own people, but he has to deal with the French-British relationship as well, and its context within Europe," Bush said later. "And so he's got a very difficult assignment. Much more difficult, by the way, than the American president in some ways. This was the period where slowly but surely the French became the issue inside Britain."
Bush called it "the famous second-resolution meeting" and said Blair "absolutely" asked for help. The new resolution, which would declare that Hussein had "failed to" comply, was introduced in late February, but the efforts to get other Security Council members to sign on floundered. Pleading for Votes
On March 12, three days after he had declined Bush's offer for Britain to not use its troops in combat, Blair called Bush for an update on where things stood in the Security Council.
"If we don't have the votes," Bush said, "pull it down. We're through." He had had it with the resolutions.
"Would you try one more time?" Blair asked, referring to the key votes of Mexican President Vicente Fox and Chilean President Ricardo Lagos.
"Of course," Bush said. "I'd be glad to do that."
Bush called Fox. "Vicente, I'm insisting there be a vote tomorrow in the U.N. Can we count on your vote?"
"Exactly what's the language like in the resolution?" Fox asked.
"Vicente, we've debated this issue long enough. The security of the United States is on the line. I want your vote."
Fox said he would get back to Bush. Later, during dinner, Rice called Bush to say she had received a phone call saying that Luis Ernesto Derbez, Mexico's foreign minister, was now in charge of the Mexican policy because Fox had to go into the hospital for back surgery.
"Interesting," Bush said. He called Lagos -- a distinguished leader in Bush's view, so he was polite. No threats.
"Can we count on your vote?" Bush asked the 65-year-old Socialist leader.
"Are you sure it's time to bring up the vote?"
"It's time to bring up the vote, Ricardo. We've had this debate too long."
"But we're making progress," Lagos replied.
"That's only because we've got a couple of hundred thousand troops. If those troops weren't there, there'd be even less progress diplomatically. And Saddam Hussein could care less. Any progress you think is being made is illusionary." Bush then stated his predicament clearly. "And I'm not going to leave our troops there. They're either going to go in, and remove him, or they're coming home, Ricardo."
This was a sobering thought. For both practical and political reasons, bringing the troops home without solving the Hussein problem was unthinkable for Bush. It was similar to the position his father had found himself in during January 1991 with 500,000 military men and women in the Middle East. "We have to have a war," President George H.W. Bush had told his advisers several weeks before launching the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Once again a President Bush, this time with more than 200,000 troops in the Middle East, had put himself into the position where he had to have a war.
Bush asked Lagos, "Ricardo, what's your vote?"
No, the Chilean president replied.
"Thank you very much," Bush said.
Bush called Blair and described his talks with Fox and Lagos. "You have to consider these two conversations," Bush said. "This is not positive news. It's over." An End to Diplomatic Planning
The next day Bush told his advisers he wanted to have a summit with Blair to show solidarity. In part it was to fill the void. War was certain, but the diplomatic circus hadn't ended. What could he do? He did not want to just sit around. But Blair's people were concerned about the prime minister leaving the country for even eight hours because of the Margaret Thatcher precedent: In 1990, she went abroad to a conference and was ousted as party leader when she returned. Blair didn't want Bush to give a speech or issue an ultimatum. He, Blair, had to pick the right moment to call for a parliamentary vote. It was Thursday, and any speech from Bush had to wait until at least Monday.
Whatever would serve the British, Bush decided. And on Friday there was another concession to Blair -- an announcement in the Rose Garden of a "road map" for peace in the Middle East that Blair thought should not be delayed until after the Iraq issue was resolved.
The White House proposed a meeting on Bermuda. But that was too far for Blair and too close to the United States. Another White House proposal was for Bush to go to London. Blair's aides balked -- the American president in London at that time would have been a provocation for massive protests. They finally settled on the Azores, a group of Portuguese islands in the North Atlantic closer to London than to Washington.
The summit's purpose, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said, was "to review this diplomacy as it's brought to its conclusion." It began on Sunday, March 16, and included Bush, Blair, Spanish President Jose Maria Aznar and Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barraso -- all supporters of a war.
In a closed-door session, Bush told the others that he was going to give a speech giving an ultimatum to Hussein to get out of Iraq with his sons within 48 hours. "That's what I'm going to do, okay?" Bush said. He wasn't consulting. He was informing. "So everybody knows," he added.
They turned to the possibility that France, Russia or some other Security Council member would introduce a counter-resolution to delay "serious consequences" and force a vote. That could be a real problem. All they could do, they agreed, was get on the phone and head off the undecideds, get their commitment to oppose a counter-resolution and vote no if necessary.
Blair stiffened. "If another country tried to introduce a new resolution for the sole purpose of delaying us," the prime minister said, "we'd have to regard that as a hostile act diplomatically."
This brought them back to the French, the guiding force of delay. "I'd be glad to veto something of theirs," Bush said. "Really glad!"
The diplomatic planning was over. "You know," Bush said, "we're going to, we have to keep planning for a future postwar Iraq, and we all agree on the five basic principles. Territorial integrity has to remain. We need immediate, we need to be ready with humanitarian aid to get it in there immediately to head off any food or displaced-persons crisis."
The United Nations would continue its oil-for-food program, Bush said. "We have to build an international consensus for Iraq, a new Iraq, at peace with its neighbors, and we'll go back to the U.N. for another resolution after the war. The U.N. can help with many issues but should not run the country."
He made it clear that the coalition would be in charge.
When the meeting broke up, Rice saw chief White House speechwriter Michael Gerson, who had come with Bush on the 4,600-mile round trip to the Azores so they could work on the ultimatum speech. "Do you have a copy of the speech?" Rice asked, and she handed it to Blair.
Gerson was a little bug-eyed. It was about as closely held a document as there might be. At the same time, Gerson realized that it could have a tremendous impact not only on American politics but also on the course of British politics because of the impending vote of confidence in Parliament. Gerson noticed that Campbell, Blair's communications and strategy adviser, was reading the copy and jotting notes.
The British wanted the speech to be more conditional, with the phrase or concept "if war comes" liberally sprinkled throughout. Though it implied war, it should not be a war speech. A kernel of hope for a peaceful solution had to remain.
Blair had to get home to tend to the politics of war and rebellion in his party. White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. noted that Blair had been filled with both resolve and angst. It wasn't confident resolve. Rice thought it was very much touch-and-go about Blair's future. As she stood watching the British depart, she said, "Gee, I hope this isn't the last time we see them."
On Air Force One, Bush and Rice agreed it was now just a matter of managing the politics of the United Nations and not pulling the plug before Blair had his vote in Parliament. Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett, the former and current communications directors, joined them, and they went over the speech draft line by line. The British suggestions were acceptable, and Gerson went back on one of the plane's computers and carefully put in the changes.
After Gerson was finished, he joined the president and all the others who were about 10 minutes into the Mel Gibson movie "Conspiracy Theory." Bush loudly summarized the plot, and during the rest of the movie he made fun of it as fairly predictable. Blair's Day of Reckoning
In a 15-minute call the next day, Monday, March 17, Bush and Blair, back in their respective capitals, coordinated efforts to make sure there was no counter-resolution. They agreed that the Russians would have to be talked to at various levels.
Blair said his prospects looked better, but it was still tough for him right now. "I think I can win," Blair said. "I'm concerned about the margin of victory. I don't want to depend on Tory votes. I want to win my own party strong. I know I'm not going to win them all, but I don't want the Tories to be able to say without us, you would have lost, and I'm working hard on the Labor Party to make sure I get a very clear solid majority of the Labor votes."
Tuesday, March 18, was Blair's day of reckoning. Even some of his leading critics called his one-hour speech in Parliament that day one of his most effective and passionate.
"In this dilemma, no choice is perfect, no cause ideal," Blair said. "But on this decision hangs the fate of many things."
At 1:30 p.m., Bush called Blair to say, "Tremendous speech."
"I know now I've got the votes to win the resolution," Blair said, "because the whip counters have been up all night working away. And the only question is the margin, but I'm confident."
They talked about the need to give Russia, France and Germany a way back into the fold.
Bush had never paid such close attention to a debate or vote in a foreign legislature as the one going on that day in the British Parliament. "What's the vote count?" he had asked a number of times during the day.
Finally, at 5:15 p.m. -- 10:15 p.m. London time -- Parliament voted. Blair won by 396 to 217. Though he had lost a full third of his own party's vote, the Tories -- and Britain -- had voted for war.
Mark Malseed contributed to this report.
...
jezebel 03:23 - [Link] - Comments ()
...
Cheney Was Unwavering in Desire to Go to War
By Bob Woodward
This is the third of five articles adapted from "Plan of Attack," a book by Bob Woodward that is a behind-the-scenes account of how and why President Bush decided to go to war against Iraq. Simon & Schuster. © 2004.
On April 10, 2003, Ken Adelman, a Reagan administration official and supporter of the Iraq war, published an op-ed article in The Washington Post headlined, " 'Cakewalk' Revisited," more or less gloating over what appeared to be the quick victory there, and reminding readers that 14 months earlier he had written that war would be a "cakewalk." He chastised those who had predicted disaster. "Taking first prize among the many frightful forecasters" was Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser in the first Bush administration. Adelman wrote that his own confidence came from having worked for Donald H. Rumsfeld three times and "from knowing Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz for so many years."
Vice President Cheney phoned Adelman, who was in Paris with his wife, Carol. What a clever column, the vice president said. You really demolished them. He said he and his wife, Lynne, were having a small private dinner Sunday night, April 13, to talk and celebrate. The only other guests would be his chief adviser, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Wolfowitz, now deputy secretary of defense. Adelman realized it was Cheney's way of saying thank you, and he and his wife came back from Paris a day early to attend the dinner.
When Adelman walked into the vice president's residence that Sunday night, he was so happy he broke into tears. He hugged Cheney for the first time in the 30 years he had known him. There had been reports in recent days of mass graves and abundant, graphic evidence of torture by Saddam Hussein's government, so there was a feeling that they had been part of a greater good, liberating 25 million people.
"We're all together. There should be no protocol; let's just talk," Cheney said when they sat down to dinner.
Wolfowitz embarked on a long review of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and what a mistake it had been to allow the Iraqis to fly helicopters after the armistice. Hussein had used them to put down uprisings.
Cheney said he had not realized then what a trauma that time had been for the Iraqis, particularly the Shiites, who felt the United States had abandoned them. He said that experience had made the Iraqis worry that war this time would not end Hussein's rule.
"Hold it! Hold it!" Adelman interjected. "Let's talk about this Gulf war. It's so wonderful to celebrate." He said he was just an outside adviser, someone who turned up the pressure in the public forum. "It's so easy for me to write an article saying, 'Do this.' It's much tougher for Paul to advocate it. Paul and Scooter, you give advice inside and the president listens. Dick, your advice is the most important, the Cadillac. It's much more serious for you to advocate it. But in the end, all of what we said was still only advice. The president is the one who had to decide. I have been blown away by how determined he is." The war has been awesome, Adelman said. "So I just want to make a toast, without getting too cheesy. To the president of the United States."
They all raised their glasses. Hear! Hear!
Adelman said he had worried to death that there would be no war as time went on and support seemed to wane.
After Sept. 11, 2001, Cheney said, the president understood what had to be done. He had to do Afghanistan first, sequence the attacks, but after Afghanistan -- "soon thereafter" -- the president knew he had to do Iraq. Cheney said he was confident after Sept. 11 that it would come out okay.
Adelman said it was still a gutsy move. When John F. Kennedy was elected by the narrowest of margins, Adelman said, he told everyone in his administration that the big agenda items such as civil rights would have to wait for a second term. Certainly it was the opposite for Bush.
Yes, Cheney said. And it began the first minutes of the presidency, when Bush said they were going to go full steam ahead. There is such a tendency, Cheney said, to hold back when there is a close election, to do what the New York Times and other pundits suggest and predict. "This guy was just totally different," Cheney said. "He just decided here's what I want to do, and I'm going to do it. He's very directed. He's very focused."
"I want you three guys to shut up," Lynne Cheney said, pointing at Cheney, Wolfowitz and Adelman. "Let's hear what Scooter thinks."
Libby, smiling, just said he thought what had happened was "wonderful."
It was a pretty amazing accomplishment, they all agreed, particularly given the opposition to war. Here was Scowcroft, the pillar of establishment foreign policy, vocally on the other side, widely seen as a surrogate for the president's father. There had been James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, insisting on a larger coalition of nations. And Lawrence Eagleburger, Baker's successor in the last half year of the first Bush administration, on television all the time saying war was justified only if there was evidence that Hussein was about to attack us. Eagleburger had accused Cheney of "chest thumping."
They turned to the current secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, and there were chuckles around the table.
Cheney and Wolfowitz remarked that Powell was someone who followed his poll ratings and bragged about his popularity. Several weeks earlier in a National Public Radio interview, Powell had said, "If you would consult any recent Gallup poll, the American people seem to be quite satisfied with the job I'm doing as secretary of state."
He sure likes to be popular, Cheney said.
Wolfowitz said that Powell did bring credibility and that his presentation to the United Nations on weapons of mass destruction intelligence had been important. As soon as Powell had understood what the president wanted, Wolfowitz said, he became a good, loyal member of the team.
Cheney shook his head, no. Powell was a problem. "Colin always had major reservations about what we were trying to do."
Cheney said he had just had lunch with the president. "Democracy in the Middle East is just a big deal for him. It's what's driving him."
"Let me ask," Adelman inquired, "before this turns into a love fest. I was just stunned that we have not found weapons of mass destruction." There were several hundred thousand troops and others combing the country.
"We'll find them," Wolfowitz said.
"It's only been four days, really," Cheney said. "We'll find them." Immediate Focus on Iraq
In early January 2001, before Bush was inaugurated, Cheney passed a message to the outgoing secretary of defense, William S. Cohen, a moderate Republican who served in the Democratic Clinton administration.
"We really need to get the president-elect briefed up on some things," Cheney said, adding that he wanted a serious "discussion about Iraq and different options." The president-elect should not be given the routine, canned, round-the-world tour normally given incoming presidents. Topic A should be Iraq.
Cheney had been secretary of defense during George H.W. Bush's presidency, which included the Gulf War, and he harbored a deep sense of unfinished business about Iraq. In addition, Iraq was the only country the United States regularly, if intermittently, bombed these days.
The U.S. military had been engaged in a frustrating low-grade, undeclared war with Iraq since the Gulf War when Bush's father and a United Nations-backed coalition had ousted Hussein and his army from Kuwait after they had invaded that country. The United States enforced two designated no-fly zones, which meant the Iraqis could fly neither planes nor helicopters in these areas, which made up about 60 percent of the country. Cheney wanted to make sure Bush understood the military and other issues in this potential tinderbox.
On Jan. 10, a Wednesday morning 10 days before the inauguration, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Powell went to the Pentagon to meet with Cohen. Afterward, Bush and his team went downstairs to the Tank, the secure domain and meeting room for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Two generals briefed them on the state of the no-fly zone enforcement. No-fly zone enforcement was dangerous and expensive. Multimillion-dollar jets were put at risk bombing 57mm antiaircraft guns. Hussein had warehouses of them. As a matter of policy, was the Bush administration going to keep poking Hussein in the chest? Was there a national strategy behind this, or was it just a static tit for tat?
Lots of acronyms and program names were thrown around -- most of them familiar to Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell, who had spent 35 years in the Army and been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993. President-elect Bush asked some practical questions about how things worked, but he did not offer or hint at his desires.
The Joint Chiefs' staff had placed a peppermint at each place. Bush unwrapped his and popped it into his mouth. Later he eyed Cohen's mint and flashed a pantomime query, Do you want that? Cohen signaled no, so Bush reached over and took it. Near the end of the hour-and-a-quarter briefing, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, noticed Bush eyeing his mint, so he passed it over.
Cheney listened, but he was tired and closed his eyes, conspicuously nodding off several times. Rumsfeld, who was sitting at a far end of the table, paid close attention, though he kept asking the briefers to please speak up or please speak louder. "We're off to a great start," one of the chiefs commented privately to a colleague after the session. "The vice president fell asleep, and the secretary of defense can't hear."
Given Cheney's background in national security going back to the Ford administration, his time on the House intelligence committee and as secretary of defense, the new president said that at the top of his list of things he wanted Cheney to do was intelligence.
In the first months of the new administration, Cheney made the rounds of the intelligence agencies -- the CIA; the National Security Agency, which intercepts communications; and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. He was determined to get up to speed on what had transpired in the eight years since he had left government. Bush also asked Cheney to study the nation's vulnerability to terrorism, primarily from biological and chemical threats. By the summer of 2001, Cheney had hired a retired admiral, Steve Abbott, to oversee a program for taking homeland defense more seriously.
With the president's full knowledge and encouragement, Cheney became the self-appointed examiner of worst-case scenarios. He would look at the darker side, the truly bad and terrifying scenarios. Because of his experience and temperament, it was the ideal assignment for Cheney. He felt the administration had to be prepared to think about the unthinkable. It was one way to be an effective second-in-command -- carve out a few matters, become the expert in them and then press the first-in-command to adopt your solutions.
Cheney thought that the Clinton administration had failed in its response to terrorist acts, going back to the World Trade Center bombing, in 1993, and that there had been a pattern of weak responses: no effective response to the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers, the U.S. military installation in Saudi Arabia; not enough to the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa; none to the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.
After Sept. 11, it was clear to Cheney that the threat from terrorism had changed and grown enormously. So two matters would have to change. First, the standard of proof would have to be lowered -- irrefutable smoking-gun evidence would not have to be required for the United States to defend itself. Second, defense alone wasn't enough. They needed an offense.
The most serious threat now facing the United States was a nuclear weapon or a biological or chemical agent in the hands of a terrorist inside the country's borders. And everything, in his view, had to be done to stop it.
"The vice president, after 9/11, clearly saw Saddam Hussein as a threat to peace," Bush said in an interview last December. "And was unwavering in his view that Saddam was a real danger." Powell Gets Bush's Ear
Colin Powell had always been just one level beneath Cheney in the pecking order. Over three decades he had worked his way up to become the top uniformed military man, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and had wound up reporting to Cheney, who had been an improbable pick as defense secretary for Bush's father when the nomination of Sen. John Tower (R-Tex.) was rejected by his Senate colleagues. Then as secretary of state, the senior Cabinet post, Powell was again outranked by Cheney, this time the unexpected pick as vice president. At National Security Council meetings, Cheney sat at Bush's right hand, Powell at his left.
Powell was often confounded by Cheney. Years earlier, writing his best-selling memoir, Powell kept trying to pin down the remoteness of the man and had drafted and redrafted the sections on Cheney, sending them off to his best friend, Richard L. Armitage, now deputy secretary of state. Not quite right, Armitage kept replying. Powell finally told Armitage he had found a way to be "relatively truthful but not harmful."
In the final version of "My American Journey," published in 1995, Powell wrote of Cheney, "He and I had never, in nearly four years, spent a single purely social hour together." He told of Cheney's last day as defense secretary, when he had gone to Cheney's suite of offices at the Pentagon and asked, "Where's the secretary?" Informed that Cheney had left hours ago, Powell wrote, "I was disappointed, even hurt, but not surprised. The lone cowboy had gone off into the sunset without even a last, 'So long.' "
Powell had different issues with Bush. They were uncomfortable with each other. A sense of competition hovered in the background of their relationship, a low-voltage pulse nearly always present. Powell had considered running for president in 1996. He had had stratospheric poll ratings as the country's most admired man. For personal reasons and after making a calculation that there were no guarantees in American politics, he had decided not to run. But he had been the man in the wings, the former general and war hero, a moderate voice who would not run in 2000 when George W. Bush did.
For the first 16 months of the administration, Powell had been "in the refrigerator," or worse, as he and Armitage called his frequent isolation. It gnawed at him when stories appeared in the media suggesting that he was going to resign, what he privately called the "Powell's-on-his-way-out-again mode." As planning for a war with Iraq became the focus of the war cabinet, Powell became more and more frustrated. Armitage had been pushing hard for Powell to request private time with the president to build a personal relationship -- and present his case.
He achieved a breakthrough of sorts on Aug. 5, 2002, when Bush invited Powell and Condoleezza Rice to the residence. The meeting expanded to include dinner in the family dining room and then continued in the president's office.
Powell's notes filled three or four pages. War could destabilize friendly governments in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, he said. It could divert energy from almost everything else, not just the war on terrorism, and dramatically affect the supply and price of oil. What of the image of an American general running an Arab country, a Gen. MacArthur in Baghdad? Powell asked. How long would it be? No one could know. How would success be defined? War would take down Hussein, and "you will become the government until you get a new government."
By the time they were in Bush's office, Powell was on a roll.
"You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people," he told the president. "You will own all their hopes, aspirations and problems. You'll own it all." Privately, Powell and Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.
"It's going to suck the oxygen out of everything," the secretary continued. So as not to sidestep the politics of it, he added, "This will become the first term." The clear implication was: Did the president want to be defined this way? Did he want to run for reelection on an Iraq war?
Powell thought he was scoring. Iraq has a history that is quite complex, he said. The Iraqis have never had a democracy. "So you need to understand that this is not going to be a walk in the woods."
The president listened and asked some questions but did not push back that much. Finally he looked at Powell. "What should I do? What else can I do?"
Powell realized he needed to offer a solution. "You can still make a pitch for a coalition or U.N. action to do what needs to be done," he said. The United Nations was only one way, but some way had to be found to recruit allies, to internationalize the problem.
Though the conversation was tense several times, Powell felt that he had left nothing unsaid. There were no histrionics. The president thanked him after two hours, an extraordinary amount of time for Powell without static from Cheney and Rumsfeld. A Strong Assertion From Cheney
Cheney saw he was rapidly losing ground. Talk of the United Nations, diplomacy and now patience was wrong in his view. Nothing could more effectively slow down the march to war -- a war he deemed necessary. It was the only way. His former colleagues from the Ford and the first Bush administrations were weighing in with a blizzard of commentary -- Scowcroft with his cautionary antiwar message, former secretary of state Baker, who urged that unilateral action be avoided. Former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger, dean of realpolitik foreign policy, had on Aug. 12, 2002, published a long, somewhat convoluted piece in The Washington Post supporting Bush for forcing the issue of Hussein to a head, but warning about the importance of building support from the public and the world.
The New York Times had made the Scowcroft and Kissinger positions the lead article on its front page on Aug. 16: "Top Republicans Break with Bush on Iraq Strategy." It was a misinterpretation of Kissinger's remarks, which more or less backed Bush. The Times eventually ran a correction, but Cheney and his deputy, Scooter Libby, found the article extremely aggravating. The correction would never catch up with the front-page headline, and Scowcroft's dissent was indisputable and more potent. It looked as if the march to war was put off.
Cheney decided that everyone was offering an opinion except the administration. There was no stated administration position and he wanted to put one out, make a big speech if necessary. It was highly unusual for the vice president to speak on such a major issue before the president, who was going to address the United Nations on Iraq on Sept. 12. But Cheney couldn't wait. Nature and Washington policy debates abhor a vacuum. He was not going to cede the field to Scowcroft, Baker, a misinterpreted Kissinger -- or Powell. He spoke privately with the president, who gave his approval without reviewing the details of what Cheney might say.
At an NSC meeting, Cheney said to the president, "Well, I'm going to give that speech."
"Don't get me in trouble," Bush half joked.
Trouble is what Cheney had in mind.
"Cheney Says Peril of a Nuclear Iraq Justifies Attack," read the headline in the New York Times on Aug. 27. Powell was dumbfounded. The vice president had delivered a hard-line address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Nashville and basically called weapons inspections futile. "A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of his compliance with U.N. resolutions," Cheney had said of Hussein. "On the contrary, there is a great danger that it would provide false comfort that Saddam was somehow 'back in the box.' "
The vice president also issued his own personal National Intelligence Estimate of Hussein: "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction [and] there is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us." Ten days earlier, the president himself had said only that Hussein "desires" these weapons. Neither Bush nor the CIA had made any assertion comparable to Cheney's.
Cheney also said that these weapons in the hands of a "murderous dictator" are "as great a threat as can be imagined. The risks of inaction are far greater than the risk of action."
These remarks, just short of a declaration of war, were widely interpreted as administration policy. Powell was astonished. It was a preemptive attack on what the president had agreed to 10 days earlier. Cheney's speech blew it all up. Now Powell felt boxed in. To add to his problem, the BBC started releasing excerpts of an interview Powell had given before Cheney's speech, asserting, "The president has been clear that he believes weapons inspectors should return."
Stories began appearing saying that Powell was contradicting Cheney. He was accused of disloyalty, and he counted seven editorials calling for his resignation or implying he should quit. How can I be disloyal, he wondered, when I'm giving the president's stated position?
Adelman thought Bush was really delaying too long in deposing Hussein. Two days after Cheney's speech, he weighed in with a blistering op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. Hussein was a bigger threat than al Qaeda, he wrote, because he had a country, billions in oil revenue, an army and "scores of scientific laboratories and myriad manufacturing plants cranking out weapons of mass destruction."
The problem could not be solved with new U.N. inspections, Adelman wrote. "Every day Mr. Bush holds off liberating Iraq is another day endangering America. Posing as a 'patient man,' he risks a catastrophic attack. Should that attack occur and be traced back to an Iraqi WMD facility, this president would be relegated to the ash heap of history."
It was strong stuff. Cheney did not communicate directly with Adelman on such matters, but he passed word to a mutual friend, who called Adelman right after his article appeared to report the vice president's reaction. "Ken has been extremely helpful in all this," the friend quoted Cheney as saying, "and I really appreciate what he has done and it's been great."
A day later, Aug. 29, Cheney spoke to the Veterans of the Korean War in San Antonio. It was the same speech with significant differences. He dropped his assertion that weapons inspections might provide "false comfort" and watered down his criticism, saying that "inspections are not an end in themselves."
Instead of asserting as he had in the first version of the speech that, "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons," he said simply that Hussein was pursuing "an aggressive nuclear weapons program." Some other language was moderated, by eliminating a "very," for example, and about eight paragraphs were removed from the speech. Cheney and Powell at Odds
On the evening of Sept. 6, the national security principals met at Camp David without Bush to go over the U.N. issues before Saturday morning's scheduled NSC meeting with the president and afternoon summit with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Cheney continued to argue that to ask for a new resolution would put them back in the hopeless soup of U.N. process. All Bush needed to say in his speech was that Hussein was bad -- a willful, serial violator of U.N. resolutions -- and that the president reserved the right to act unilaterally.
But that would not be asking for U.N. support, Powell replied. The United Nations would not just roll over, declare Hussein evil and authorize war. That approach was not salable. The president had decided to give the United Nations a chance, and the only practical way to do that was to seek a new resolution.
Powell detected a kind of fever in Cheney. He was not the steady, unemotional rock that he had witnessed a dozen years earlier during the run-up to the Gulf War. The vice president was beyond hell-bent for action against Hussein. It was as if nothing else existed. Powell attempted to summarize the consequences of unilateral action, an argument he felt he had down pretty well. He added a new dimension, saying that the international reaction would be so negative that he would have to close U.S. embassies around the world if we went to war alone.
That is not the issue, Cheney said. Hussein and the clear threat are the issue.
Maybe it would not turn out as the vice president thinks, Powell said. War could trigger all kinds of unanticipated and unintended consequences -- some that none of them, he included, had imagined.
Not the issue, Cheney said.
The conversation exploded into a tough debate between the two men, who danced on the edge of civility but did not depart from the formal deference they generally showed each other. It was sharp and biting, however, and they both knew how to score debating points as they pulled apart the last fraying threads of what had connected them for so many years. Powell appeared to harbor a deep-seated anger even though he was getting his way this time.
On Saturday morning, Sept. 7, Bush met with the NSC and the argument was joined again. Powell said that if for no other reason than U.S. credibility, they needed to offer a plan to begin inspections again as part of any reengagement with the United Nations on Iraq. Procedurally, the only way to do this was to seek new resolutions.
Cheney then listed all the reasons inspections could mire them in a tar pit. First, the inspectors would not be Americans, but lawyers and experts from around the world who were less concerned about, and less skeptical of, Hussein. Second, these inspectors, like those in the past, would be more inclined to accept what they were told by Iraqi authorities, less likely to challenge, more likely to be fooled. The end result, Cheney said, would be deliberations or reports that would be inconclusive. So inspections would make getting to a decision to actually take out Hussein much more difficult.
Swayed by Blair's plea later that day that for his political viability he had to be able to show he had tried the United Nations, Bush decided this time in Powell's favor. Cheney Stands His Ground
On Jan. 31, 2003, Blair again prevailed on Bush to go to the United Nations, again over Cheney's objections. This time the president asked Powell to make the case against Hussein. As Powell was preparing his speech, he received a call from Cheney.
Colin, the vice president said, look carefully at the terrorism case that Scooter prepared. Give it a good look.
Sure, Dick, Powell said. He generally used the vice president's first name when they were alone. Cheney was not ordering him or trying to direct him. It was just a request to take a serious look.
Powell looked at it. Four meetings between Sept. 11 pilot Mohamed Atta with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague -- meetings that had been alleged but never proved to have taken place. That was worse than ridiculous. Powell pitched it.
Powell thought that Cheney had the fever. The vice president and Wolfowitz kept looking for the connection between Hussein and Sept. 11. It was a separate little government that was out there -- Wolfowitz, Libby, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith and Feith's "Gestapo office," as Powell privately called it. He saw in Cheney a sad transformation. The cool operator from the first Gulf War just would not let go. Cheney now had an unhealthy fixation. Nearly every conversation or reference came back to al Qaeda and trying to nail the connection with Iraq. He would often have an obscure piece of intelligence. Powell thought that Cheney took intelligence and converted uncertainty and ambiguity into fact.
It was about the worst charge that Powell could make about the vice president. But there it was. Cheney would take an intercept and say it shows something was happening. No, no, no, Powell or another would say, it shows that somebody talked to somebody else who said something might be happening. A conversation would suggest something might be happening, and Cheney would convert that into a "We know." Well, Powell concluded, we didn't know. No one knew. Strained Relations
After major combat operations ended in Iraq in May 2003, Powell spent the next months more often than not on the defensive. To those who thought he should have been a more forceful advocate against war, he replied that he had taken his best shot. He had not misled anyone, he told associates. He had argued successfully in August and September 2002 that the president should adopt two tracks -- plan for war and conduct diplomacy through the United Nations. The president could travel those two tracks only so long before he would reach a fork in the road, and one fork was war.
"He's the president," Powell told associates, "and he decided and, therefore, it was my obligation to go down the other fork with him."
As the war planning had progressed over the nearly 16 months, Powell had felt that the easier the war looked, the less Rumsfeld, the Pentagon and Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks had worried about the aftermath. They seemed to think that Iraq was a crystal goblet and that all they had to do was tap it and it would crack. It had turned out to be a beer mug instead. Now they owned the beer mug.
Visiting Iraq in the fall of 2003, Powell saw the mass graves and heard the testimony of witnesses to the torture and oppression. He was delighted that Hussein and his whole rotten government were gone. It was the saving grace. Certainly the decision to go to war was not 100 percent wrong. History, after all, had not yet determined whether it was right or wrong.
Cheney continued to be Powell's bête noire. At meetings of the principals, in Powell's view, Cheney improved on his technique of not betraying his position by insisting he either didn't have one, or could change his mind in 30 minutes. Powell finally decoded the technique. He concluded that he had to listen carefully because Cheney's disavowals generally turned out to be positions about which Cheney was not going to change his mind.
Relations became so strained that Powell and Cheney could not, and did not, have a sit-down lunch or any discussion about their differences. Never.
Powell thought that now that Bush and the administration had to live with the consequences of their Iraq decisions, they were becoming dangerously protective of those decisions. There was no one in the White House who could break through to insist on a realistic reassessment. There was no Karen Hughes who could go to Bush and say, "Pay attention, you're in trouble." Powell believed it was the hardest of all tasks to go back to fundamentals and question one's own judgment, and there was no sign it was going to happen. So he soldiered on once again against the current. Cheney in Charge?
At the beginning of 2004, Cheney was confident that the Iraq war would be seen as a history-shaping event. He was unrepentant about his analysis of terrorism and his assertions about Hussein. The great threat to the nation was al Qaeda armed -- not just with box cutters and airline tickets, but with a nuke in the middle of an American city. The administration had been accused of not having connected the dots before Sept. 11. How could it afford to ignore the dots after Sept. 11? It was just that simple.
Cheney believed that given the intelligence reporting about Iraq-al Qaeda links over so many years and the intelligence evidence on weapons of mass destruction, no one in his right mind sitting in Bush's position as president could have ignored it.
There was so much focus on the aftermath and criticism of the postwar planning. Cheney thought it wouldn't matter in the end. It would be noise to history as long as they were successful in what they were trying to do. Outcomes mattered. He thought history would treat Bush very well, though he acknowledged that the jury was still out.
Nearly all presidents have had to deal with vice presidents with real or imagined political futures. Even Bush senior, the super-loyal vice president, broke publicly with President Ronald Reagan several times when he deemed it politically necessary, such as when the Reagan administration was negotiating with Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega and Bush had distanced himself from dealings with the unsavory strongman. But Cheney had made it clear he did not aspire to the presidency.
On a few occasions, political adviser Karl Rove and the president had discussed the news stories that Cheney was the one pulling the strings and running things behind the scenes. Some of the White House communications people worried about this. Bush laughed. Both of them had seen how deferential Cheney was. "Yes, Mr. President," or "No, Mr. President." It was no different when the president and Cheney were alone.
When the president wasn't around, Cheney often referred to him as "The Man," saying, "The Man wants this." Or, "The Man thinks this." Cheney was a forceful, persistent advocate, but the president decided. The clearest evidence of that was Cheney's strenuous objection to going to the United Nations to seek new weapons inspection resolutions. The president had gone against his advice. Cheney had saluted.
Rove argued that the politics of the Cheney-is-in-charge thesis worked in their favor. First, anyone who believed that was long lost to them anyway. Second, Rove wanted them to keep talking about it, throw the campaign into that briar patch. He believed the ordinary person wouldn't buy it. Here 67 percent were saying Bush was a strong leader and that included a third of the people who disapproved of his performance in office. A strong leader would not kowtow to his vice president, and Bush did not look meek in public.
Mark Malseed contributed to this report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
...
jezebel 03:46 - [Link] - Comments ()
...
Cheney Was Unwavering in Desire to Go to War
By Bob Woodward
This is the third of five articles adapted from "Plan of Attack," a book by Bob Woodward that is a behind-the-scenes account of how and why President Bush decided to go to war against Iraq. Simon & Schuster. © 2004.
On April 10, 2003, Ken Adelman, a Reagan administration official and supporter of the Iraq war, published an op-ed article in The Washington Post headlined, " 'Cakewalk' Revisited," more or less gloating over what appeared to be the quick victory there, and reminding readers that 14 months earlier he had written that war would be a "cakewalk." He chastised those who had predicted disaster. "Taking first prize among the many frightful forecasters" was Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser in the first Bush administration. Adelman wrote that his own confidence came from having worked for Donald H. Rumsfeld three times and "from knowing Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz for so many years."
Vice President Cheney phoned Adelman, who was in Paris with his wife, Carol. What a clever column, the vice president said. You really demolished them. He said he and his wife, Lynne, were having a small private dinner Sunday night, April 13, to talk and celebrate. The only other guests would be his chief adviser, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Wolfowitz, now deputy secretary of defense. Adelman realized it was Cheney's way of saying thank you, and he and his wife came back from Paris a day early to attend the dinner.
When Adelman walked into the vice president's residence that Sunday night, he was so happy he broke into tears. He hugged Cheney for the first time in the 30 years he had known him. There had been reports in recent days of mass graves and abundant, graphic evidence of torture by Saddam Hussein's government, so there was a feeling that they had been part of a greater good, liberating 25 million people.
"We're all together. There should be no protocol; let's just talk," Cheney said when they sat down to dinner.
Wolfowitz embarked on a long review of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and what a mistake it had been to allow the Iraqis to fly helicopters after the armistice. Hussein had used them to put down uprisings.
Cheney said he had not realized then what a trauma that time had been for the Iraqis, particularly the Shiites, who felt the United States had abandoned them. He said that experience had made the Iraqis worry that war this time would not end Hussein's rule.
"Hold it! Hold it!" Adelman interjected. "Let's talk about this Gulf war. It's so wonderful to celebrate." He said he was just an outside adviser, someone who turned up the pressure in the public forum. "It's so easy for me to write an article saying, 'Do this.' It's much tougher for Paul to advocate it. Paul and Scooter, you give advice inside and the president listens. Dick, your advice is the most important, the Cadillac. It's much more serious for you to advocate it. But in the end, all of what we said was still only advice. The president is the one who had to decide. I have been blown away by how determined he is." The war has been awesome, Adelman said. "So I just want to make a toast, without getting too cheesy. To the president of the United States."
They all raised their glasses. Hear! Hear!
Adelman said he had worried to death that there would be no war as time went on and support seemed to wane.
After Sept. 11, 2001, Cheney said, the president understood what had to be done. He had to do Afghanistan first, sequence the attacks, but after Afghanistan -- "soon thereafter" -- the president knew he had to do Iraq. Cheney said he was confident after Sept. 11 that it would come out okay.
Adelman said it was still a gutsy move. When John F. Kennedy was elected by the narrowest of margins, Adelman said, he told everyone in his administration that the big agenda items such as civil rights would have to wait for a second term. Certainly it was the opposite for Bush.
Yes, Cheney said. And it began the first minutes of the presidency, when Bush said they were going to go full steam ahead. There is such a tendency, Cheney said, to hold back when there is a close election, to do what the New York Times and other pundits suggest and predict. "This guy was just totally different," Cheney said. "He just decided here's what I want to do, and I'm going to do it. He's very directed. He's very focused."
"I want you three guys to shut up," Lynne Cheney said, pointing at Cheney, Wolfowitz and Adelman. "Let's hear what Scooter thinks."
Libby, smiling, just said he thought what had happened was "wonderful."
It was a pretty amazing accomplishment, they all agreed, particularly given the opposition to war. Here was Scowcroft, the pillar of establishment foreign policy, vocally on the other side, widely seen as a surrogate for the president's father. There had been James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, insisting on a larger coalition of nations. And Lawrence Eagleburger, Baker's successor in the last half year of the first Bush administration, on television all the time saying war was justified only if there was evidence that Hussein was about to attack us. Eagleburger had accused Cheney of "chest thumping."
They turned to the current secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, and there were chuckles around the table.
Cheney and Wolfowitz remarked that Powell was someone who followed his poll ratings and bragged about his popularity. Several weeks earlier in a National Public Radio interview, Powell had said, "If you would consult any recent Gallup poll, the American people seem to be quite satisfied with the job I'm doing as secretary of state."
He sure likes to be popular, Cheney said.
Wolfowitz said that Powell did bring credibility and that his presentation to the United Nations on weapons of mass destruction intelligence had been important. As soon as Powell had understood what the president wanted, Wolfowitz said, he became a good, loyal member of the team.
Cheney shook his head, no. Powell was a problem. "Colin always had major reservations about what we were trying to do."
Cheney said he had just had lunch with the president. "Democracy in the Middle East is just a big deal for him. It's what's driving him."
"Let me ask," Adelman inquired, "before this turns into a love fest. I was just stunned that we have not found weapons of mass destruction." There were several hundred thousand troops and others combing the country.
"We'll find them," Wolfowitz said.
"It's only been four days, really," Cheney said. "We'll find them." Immediate Focus on Iraq
In early January 2001, before Bush was inaugurated, Cheney passed a message to the outgoing secretary of defense, William S. Cohen, a moderate Republican who served in the Democratic Clinton administration.
"We really need to get the president-elect briefed up on some things," Cheney said, adding that he wanted a serious "discussion about Iraq and different options." The president-elect should not be given the routine, canned, round-the-world tour normally given incoming presidents. Topic A should be Iraq.
Cheney had been secretary of defense during George H.W. Bush's presidency, which included the Gulf War, and he harbored a deep sense of unfinished business about Iraq. In addition, Iraq was the only country the United States regularly, if intermittently, bombed these days.
The U.S. military had been engaged in a frustrating low-grade, undeclared war with Iraq since the Gulf War when Bush's father and a United Nations-backed coalition had ousted Hussein and his army from Kuwait after they had invaded that country. The United States enforced two designated no-fly zones, which meant the Iraqis could fly neither planes nor helicopters in these areas, which made up about 60 percent of the country. Cheney wanted to make sure Bush understood the military and other issues in this potential tinderbox.
On Jan. 10, a Wednesday morning 10 days before the inauguration, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Powell went to the Pentagon to meet with Cohen. Afterward, Bush and his team went downstairs to the Tank, the secure domain and meeting room for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Two generals briefed them on the state of the no-fly zone enforcement. No-fly zone enforcement was dangerous and expensive. Multimillion-dollar jets were put at risk bombing 57mm antiaircraft guns. Hussein had warehouses of them. As a matter of policy, was the Bush administration going to keep poking Hussein in the chest? Was there a national strategy behind this, or was it just a static tit for tat?
Lots of acronyms and program names were thrown around -- most of them familiar to Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell, who had spent 35 years in the Army and been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993. President-elect Bush asked some practical questions about how things worked, but he did not offer or hint at his desires.
The Joint Chiefs' staff had placed a peppermint at each place. Bush unwrapped his and popped it into his mouth. Later he eyed Cohen's mint and flashed a pantomime query, Do you want that? Cohen signaled no, so Bush reached over and took it. Near the end of the hour-and-a-quarter briefing, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, noticed Bush eyeing his mint, so he passed it over.
Cheney listened, but he was tired and closed his eyes, conspicuously nodding off several times. Rumsfeld, who was sitting at a far end of the table, paid close attention, though he kept asking the briefers to please speak up or please speak louder. "We're off to a great start," one of the chiefs commented privately to a colleague after the session. "The vice president fell asleep, and the secretary of defense can't hear."
Given Cheney's background in national security going back to the Ford administration, his time on the House intelligence committee and as secretary of defense, the new president said that at the top of his list of things he wanted Cheney to do was intelligence.
In the first months of the new administration, Cheney made the rounds of the intelligence agencies -- the CIA; the National Security Agency, which intercepts communications; and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. He was determined to get up to speed on what