by Dick Cheney
There was bipartisan support for the operation. Among the Democrats who spoke out was Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, then a member of the House Intelligence Committee. “Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region,” she said, “and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspections process.” A number of senators, including Democrats John Kerry, Carl Levin, and Tom Daschle, wrote to President Clinton urging that he “take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.” Senator Joe Biden, writing in the Washington Post two months before the strikes, noted the limitation of any policy that left Saddam in power. “Ultimately, as long as Saddam Hussein is at the helm, no inspectors can guarantee that they have rooted out the entirety of Saddam Hussein’s weapons program,” he wrote, and he observed that “the only way to remove Saddam is a massive military effort, led by the United States.”
Saddam Hussein did not find Desert Fox persuasive. In 1999 he began firing on U.S. and British planes that were enforcing the no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq. The United States together with the United Kingdom and France had established the zones to prevent Saddam from oppressing the Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south. Meanwhile, as we would later learn, Saddam was using the oil-for-food program, intended for the people of Iraq, to enrich himself, bribe others, and purchase improvements for facilities that had the potential to be used for WMD development.
In 1999 the U.S. intelligence community assessed that Saddam had revitalized his biological weapons program. In 2000 a National Intelligence Estimate on worldwide biological weapons threats contained this key judgment:
Despite a decade-long international effort to disarm Iraq, new information suggests that Baghdad has continued and expanded its offensive BW program by establishing a large scale, redundant, and concealed BW agent production capability. We judge that Iraq maintains the capability to produce previously declared agents and probably is pursuing development of additional bacterial and toxin agents. Moreover, we judge that Iraq has BW delivery systems available that could be used to threaten US and Allied forces in the Persian Gulf region.
There was also consistent reporting that Saddam had in place the personnel and the infrastructure for a nuclear weapons program and that he was continuing to acquire technologies that had the potential for either nuclear or nonnuclear use.
One of the first intelligence reports that George Bush and I received in late 2000 before we were sworn in was a far-ranging assessment of Iraq’s activities concerning weapons of mass destruction. Although the report itself remains classified, the title does not. It was called Iraq: Steadily Pursuing WMD Capabilities. As there had been in the preceding decade, there would be over the next twenty-seven months a steady drumbeat of intelligence warnings about the threat posed by Saddam.
THERE WERE ALSO BY this time sixteen United Nations Security Council resolutions aimed at mitigating the danger arising from Iraq. Saddam repeatedly violated them, ignoring requirements related to weapons of mass destruction as well as those that had to do with terrorism. Resolution 687, passed in 1991, had declared that Iraq must not commit or support terrorism, or allow terrorist organizations to operate in Iraq. But in 1993 the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) attempted to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush, and throughout the 1990s, the IIS participated in terrorist attacks. Saddam provided safe haven to Abdul Rahman Yasin, the Iraqi bomb maker who supplied the bomb for the first attack on the World Trade Center, in 1993. He also provided sanctuary to Abu Abbas, the Palestinian terrorist who led the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and the killing of an American passenger, and to Abu Nidal, who had killed a number of civilians in attacks on El Al ticket counters at airports in Rome and Vienna.
In the wake of 9/11, after the United States had gone into Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom, CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “We have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad.” The CIA had “solid reporting” of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda and “credible reporting” that al Qaeda was seeking contacts in Iraq that could help them acquire capabilities in weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein was by this time providing $25,000 payments to the relatives of Palestinian suicide bombers, and, Director Tenet noted, “Iraq’s increasing support to extremist Palestinians, coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al-Qa’ida, suggest that Baghdad’s links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action.”
In Senate testimony in 2003, Director Tenet also noted that Iraq was providing safe haven to Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born terrorist who had trained in Afghanistan and become a key al Qaeda lieutenant. He had arrived in Iraq in 2002, spent time in Baghdad, and then supervised camps in northern Iraq that provided a safe haven for as many as two hundred al Qaeda fighters escaping Afghanistan. At one of those camps, called Khurmal, Zarqawi’s men tested poisons and plotted attacks to use them in Europe. From his base in Iraq, Zarqawi also directed the October 2002 killing of Laurence Foley, a U.S. Agency for International Development officer, in Jordan.
For a period extending back to the first Gulf War, the U.S. intelligence community had been providing detailed assessments concerning Saddam Hussein’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons, carry on biological and chemical weapons programs, and support terror. The National Intelligence Estimate that we received in 2002 was a continuation of earlier evaluations, and sobering as its judgments were, what the president and I read in our daily briefings was even “more assertive,” as Director Tenet would later write.
After 9/11 no American president could responsibly ignore the steady stream of reporting we were getting about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. We had experienced an unprecedented attack on our homeland. Three thousand Americans, going about their everyday lives, had been killed. The president and I were determined to do all we could to prevent another attack, and our resolution was made stronger by the awareness that a future attack could be even more devastating. The terrorists of 9/11 were armed with airplane tickets and box cutters. The next wave might bring chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.
When we looked around the world in those first months after 9/11, there was no place more likely to be a nexus between terrorism and WMD capability than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. With the benefit of hindsight—even taking into account that some of the intelligence we received was wrong—that assessment still holds true. We could not ignore the threat or wish it away, hoping naïvely that the crumbling sanctions regime would contain Saddam. The security of our nation and of our friends and allies required that we act. And so we did.
THE PRESIDENT AND I spoke about Iraq privately in the weeks following 9/11. I was aware that Secretary Rumsfeld had set up a process to review all Department of Defense war plans, and I suggested to the president that it would be useful to make certain that Rumsfeld had assigned priority to planning for possible military action against Saddam Hussein. I knew from my experience as secretary of defense during Desert Storm that good military planning takes time. Instructing Rumsfeld to have the military update our Iraq war plans was the best way for the president to ensure that he would have effective, responsible options should military action become necessary. I also suggested that our planning be undertaken at Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida. CENTCOM, under the command of General Tommy Franks, was responsible for the Middle East, including Iraq, and planning we did there was much less likely to leak than planning we did in Washington.
On December 28, 2001, I sat in my second-floor study at our home in Wyoming. Outside my window, snow covered the ground. On the desk in front of me was the secure videoconference monitor that allowed me to participate remotely in classified meetings with the presiden
t and other members of the NSC. For the meeting that morning, the president was at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, with General Franks. Don Rumsfeld was joining the meeting from his home in Taos, New Mexico; various others, including Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and George Tenet, joined from D.C.
After updating us on the situation in Afghanistan, Franks turned to the briefing he had prepared on Iraq. The current war plan, Op Plan 1003, was essentially the same as the one that we had gone to war with in 1991. Pentagon planners had been revising it, but it still called for more than four hundred thousand troops; required a six-month, very public buildup; and failed to take account of the way the world had changed. Saddam’s military, though formidable, was about half the size it had been during the first Gulf War. Our military was also smaller, but its capabilities had increased, largely because of advances in precision weaponry and the ability to coordinate air strikes with ground operations. Franks presented the beginnings of a reconceptualized war plan, one that would allow us to move faster by simultaneously targeting multiple centers of power within Iraq. He laid out several assumptions, a primary one of which was that Iraq would use weapons of mass destruction against our troops, and we needed to prepare for that. He also noted that should we go to war against Iraq, other parts of the U.S. government would have important roles to play. The State Department, which had worked with the international community to establish a provisional government in Afghanistan, would need to undertake a similar effort for Iraq.
All of us in the meeting were aware of the success we had just had in Afghanistan with CIA operatives working with special operations forces and Afghan fighters. George Tenet cautioned that Iraq would be a different matter.
I knew that Saddam Hussein’s regime was a hard target to penetrate, but I wanted a better understanding of just what the CIA could do inside Iraq, and so I asked Tenet to set up a briefing. On January 3, 2002, Tenet and two of his top officers, including the director of the Iraq Operations Group, came to my West Wing office to meet with me and Scooter Libby. The IOG director, whose name remains classified, began with a short history of agency involvement in Iraq, including a botched operation in the mid-1990s that Saddam had crushed. Then he moved on to a discussion of what lessons the agency had learned from its Iraq operations. At the top of his list, he emphasized that covert action could accomplish a good deal, but it could not, by itself, oust Saddam. Any U.S. covert action should be part of overall U.S. policy, and all elements of that policy needed to point to the same goal in a coordinated fashion. Second, it would be important to have a clear understanding of what we were willing to do militarily. Covert action would be much more effective with military support. Third, we needed a process for timely decision making. The success or failure of operations—and the lives of the people involved—might depend upon getting a fast answer from policymakers in Washington.
One of his most important points was the need to rebuild trust between the United States and the Iraqi people. They remembered that we had encouraged them to rise up during Desert Storm and then stood by while Saddam’s gunships slaughtered thousands and put down the uprising. They were terrified of Saddam and doubted our word. When CIA officers attempted to recruit sources inside Iraq, they were most often met with skepticism about our seriousness in wanting to oust Saddam. If we wanted to establish an effective covert action program inside Iraq, we would need to convince the Iraqis that this time we meant it.
This task was complicated, the IOG director said, by our “bifurcated strategy”—working through the United Nations for sanctions and inspections while simultaneously pursuing regime change. His point was well taken, but the dual-track policy was intentional. The best way to get Saddam to come into compliance with UN demands was to convince him we would use force if he didn’t comply. I understood that international meetings, resolutions, and negotiations might convey uncertainty about our willingness to use military force, but for now there was no alternative.
THAT SPRING THE PRESIDENT asked me to travel to the Middle East.
With President Bush in the Oval Office in March 2002. We had already toppled the Taliban and the President had asked me to travel to the UK and the Middle East to consult with our allies in the War on Terror. (Official White House Photo/David Bohrer)
I was scheduled to visit twelve countries in ten days for discussions on a range of issues, including not only our operations in Afghanistan but also our ongoing efforts in the worldwide War on Terror. I planned to discuss the next phases in the War on Terror, which meant talking about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. I knew that at each stop I would also be discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which had been marked by terrible violence in the last year and a half.
This was my first trip overseas as vice president, and I was aware my office carried with it certain demands of ceremony and protocol, but I asked that these be kept to a minimum. I had previously traveled to all of the countries on my schedule, with the exception of Yemen. I’d known most of their leaders for more than a decade, and I knew my time would be best spent in frank and direct conversations with them.
I began my trip with a stop in London to visit one of America’s closest and best allies in the War on Terror, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
My first stop was London where I met with Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of America’s most steadfast allies, at 10 Downing Street. (Official White House Photo/David Bohrer)
I have tremendous respect for Prime Minister Blair. He is a Labour Party liberal and I am a conservative Republican, and we didn’t always agree on strategy or tactics. But America had no greater ally during our time in office. His speeches about the war were some of the most eloquent I’ve been privileged to hear. I particularly recall sitting in the vice president’s chair behind the podium in the chamber of the House of Representatives in July 2003 as the prime minister addressed a joint session of Congress. He knew that critics in America were asking why we had to take the lead in liberating Iraq and confronting terror, and he gave the answer: “Because destiny put you in this place in history, this moment in time, and the task is yours to do.” But America wouldn’t be alone, he pledged. “We will be with you in this fight for liberty.”
As we met in March 2002 at Number 10 Downing Street, the prime minister and I discussed our ongoing efforts in Afghanistan, including plans to rebuild the Afghan National Army, expand the NATO mission, and get the international community more engaged in helping to rebuild that troubled country. I told Blair that the president had not decided yet about military action against Saddam Hussein and that we wanted to consult widely with our allies as the process unfolded. I also told the prime minister, as I did other leaders on this trip, that if war came, there should be no doubt about the outcome. The president wanted it to be absolutely clear that if he decided to go to war, we would finish the job. We would remove Saddam Hussein, eliminate the threat he posed, and establish a representative government.
We also discussed the upcoming meeting of the Arab League in Beirut, where the topic would be the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israelis were threatening to bar Yasser Arafat from leaving his Ramallah compound to travel to the summit. I told the prime minister that we were encouraging the Israelis to allow Arafat to attend, but if he continued to incite Palestinian violence while he was gone, we would urge Israel not to allow him back into the West Bank.
In truth, by this time I was skeptical that Arafat could ever be a partner for peace. I believe the president shared my concerns. Just a few months before, Israeli commandos had stormed a freighter on the Red Sea, the Karine-A, and found millions of dollars of Iranian-produced weapons bound for terrorists in Gaza. There was no doubt in my mind that Arafat and his colleagues were behind the purchase. Their real interest was in the Karine-A’s cargo of Katyusha rockets and C-4 explosive, not in peace.
Still, I stressed to Prime Minister Blair that the United States would certainly remain engaged in attempting to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, b
ut we would not do so at the expense of the War on Terror. I was not as confident as Blair that solving this crisis would take the steam out of the terrorist threat. I believed then, and do now, that were the Israeli-Palestinian crisis solved tomorrow, the terrorists would simply find another rationale for their continuing jihad.
At a press conference following our session, the prime minister was unhesitating in describing the threat that his intelligence, as well as ours, indicated that Saddam represented:
Let’s be under no doubt whatever, Saddam Hussein has acquired weapons of mass destruction over a long period of time. He’s the only leader in the world that’s actually used chemical weapons against his own people. He is in breach of at least nine UN Security Council resolutions about weapons of mass destruction.
Blair concluded, “That there is a threat from Saddam Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction that he has acquired is not in doubt at all.” I added that in the context of what we had learned about al Qaeda’s efforts to acquire nuclear, biological, and chemical capability, we needed to be very concerned “about the potential marriage, if you will, between a terrorist organization like al Qaeda and those who hold or are proliferating knowledge about weapons of mass destruction.”
That afternoon Lynne and I took a brief side trip to visit Winston Churchill’s war rooms, the underground complex used by the prime minister and his cabinet during World War II. The modest rooms, their walls hung with yellowed maps, were a powerful reminder of Churchill’s brave leadership and the heroic fight of the Allies against Hitler. I remembered first reading Churchill’s account of World War II nearly forty years before when I’d been building power line in Wyoming during the day and reading his volumes by a Coleman lantern at night.
I FLEW FROM LONDON to Amman, Jordan, for meetings with King Abdullah II. During the first Gulf War, King Abdullah’s father, the late King Hussein, had sided with Saddam Hussein, but now Jordan was a close ally in the War on Terror. I thanked the king for Jordan’s help in combatting terror and then walked him through our concerns about Iraq, none of which surprised him. Iraq’s neighbors were keenly aware of the threat Saddam posed, but they were apprehensive about the consequences of military action. I made clear that military action was not imminent, but could become necessary. If so, it would be decisive, with no question about the outcome.