After the NSC meeting, I studied previous UN resolutions about Iraq; many seemed ambiguous and open-ended, reflecting the UN’s inclination to avoid conflict if possible. At 4:30 that afternoon, the principals met again. With all the talk of war in the room, it was almost refreshing to hear Condi remind everyone, “The president is not anxious to go to war. War is the last resort. He is not ready to go to war without demonstrating reasonableness.” She emphasized that it was important to President Bush that whatever proposal we settled on must look different from the status quo. It must be something new, compared to the old ways of dealing with Saddam, which clearly were not working.
The following day, September 10, the NSC met at 7:30 a.m. in the Situation Room. I sat in my usual spot, along the wall a few feet directly to the president’s right. With the first anniversary of 9/11 only a day away, not surprisingly, the president began by asking CIA director George Tenet about the overnight threat reports. George replied, “We’re in a tough place right now; there is a lot of intelligence chatter.” Against that backdrop, the potential danger of a marriage between Saddam and al-Qaeda seemed particularly ominous.
While discussing the need to seek international support, in a rather somber tone, Vice President Cheney remarked, “Saddam is a threat to the United States. We have to eliminate the threat, and if we adopt a strategy to put the decision out of our hands, that is a mistake.”
Secretary Powell commented, “There is no support internationally for giving cover to the United States for regime change in Iraq. Our allies have said they will support any type of inspection regime. Most of our allies, however, want one last ultimatum to Iraq. If we go alone, we may have trouble getting access from other countries.”
The president replied, “There is no question that if it looks like the same old stuff, we will look weak.” He continued thoughtfully, “Before we commit troops to war, people have to believe that we were reasonable . . . We cannot look as though we are looking for an excuse. We do not want to go alone. It would be a mistake. We need to find a way to make it easier for countries to join us.”
I studied the president as he spoke. He seemed uneasy about the way forward, but he was strong at the same time, believing that we had to put the burden—would there be war or not—on Saddam Hussein. The president looked at Secretary Powell. “Be tough,” he said. “The world wants to avoid war. They will be weak and want to compromise and negotiate with Saddam. But be tough.” He urged Powell to push for a UN resolution that included a finding of material breach on Iraq’s part, and an authorization to pursue all necessary means. “Unfortunately, the best way to clean up Iraq is through war,” President Bush said. “It is expensive, but it is the best way to achieve disarmament. But it is not my first choice.”
I wondered, What choice does the president really have? If he does nothing and something horrific happens, and it is later discovered that we suspected Saddam might be dangerous but ignored the threat, the American people would never forgive us. The president’s intelligence team has been telling him that Hussein was a dangerous threat to the United States. No one in the room honestly expected Saddam to willingly disarm, and few—if any—held on to hopes that he would allow inspections. Beyond that, I didn’t believe that anybody in the room had confidence that the UN would be tough and refuse to negotiate with Saddam.
The president concluded the meeting by acknowledging that critics would use the war in Afghanistan against us. “We need to make sure there is a clear focus there, no distractions,” he said.
Another related issue that concerned President Bush was the Middle East. He told Powell, “It’s important that we start dialogue, because we need to show some progress there.” He instructed Secretary Powell to show the world that we were still engaged on this issue.
Throughout this time period, we were still dealing with Yasser Arafat, the duplicitous leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), trying to reach a lasting peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, and we had little progress to show for it. In an NSC meeting, Colin Powell had wryly commented about the PLO leader, “Arafat never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Arafat was well known for speaking incessantly about peace, yet inciting violence against the Israelis. Nevertheless, during Secretary Powell’s trip to the Middle East only a few months previously (April 2002), Powell had suggested the possibility of an international conference on the Israeli-Palestinian issues. That was not an option the president endorsed, and Powell had to backtrack. Now the president was expressing hopes that Secretary Powell could still influence the Middle East toward peace.
There were many complicated pieces to the entire Middle East puzzle, and all were interrelated. How we resolved one issue impacted our options on another.
The president addressed the UN General Assembly on September 12, 2002. In his speech, he laid out the case against Saddam Hussein, outlining the UN resolutions and the breaches by Saddam. President Bush challenged the UN to be relevant, to do its job and demand Saddam’s compliance with the UN resolutions—or else. He ended in stirring fashion:
But the purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced, the just demands of peace and security will be met or action will be unavoidable and a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.5
The response to President Bush’s speech among UN delegates was unenthusiastic. A few applauded politely, while many delegates exhibited no outward response at all. Too bad; he was the one world leader who was still saying, “The resolutions of this body need to be respected.”
A few days later, on September 18, the principals met again in the Situation Room to discuss the congressional and UN resolutions regarding Iraq. Powell reported that the president’s speech was “electrifying,” possibly even changing the dynamics of the UN. Really? You’d never guess that by the outward responses of the delegates. Nevertheless, that was hopeful news.
The president joined us about a half hour into the meeting. He said, “It is important for us to continue clarifying that Saddam is trying to create doubt. There has to be clarity of thought. We need to remind people that Saddam Hussein is the bad guy.” He emphasized, “It is important the UN understands that if there is no tough resolution, we will take matters into our own hands.”
If we got a strong UN resolution and Saddam continued to resist inspections, we could join a coalition of countries under the resolution to use force. If, however, the UN resolution was weak or ambiguous with respect to weapons inspections, or did not include an “all necessary means” provision for enforcement, the United States might have to rely on some other legal doctrine to use force.
On September 19, the president called together key congressional leaders for a briefing in the White House Cabinet Room on our Iraq strategy and to discuss a congressional resolution regarding the use of military force in Iraq, if necessary. The president opened the meeting by stating, “This is a historic moment for our great country to deal with this threat.” He clearly told the leaders that he wanted to see the military option in their resolution. He also emphasized to them that we would win. “Once the people of Iraq see that the war is being lost, that Saddam is the problem, the people will rise up.”
Not surprisingly, the congressional leaders raised concerns, especially about putting US ground troops in Iraq, as well as the post-Saddam Iraq, and, of course, the cost. They also wondered how to best share this information with the public. The president assured them that the military option was the last, not the first, option, and that congressional hearings could educate the public.
President Bush did not back off. “Yes, military action would be expensive,” he said. “We are already spending a lot in Afghanistan, and we need to modernize our military assets.” Nevertheless, as I listened to the congressional leaders, I felt sure that if they felt they were responding to a national security threat, they’d find a way to come up with the money. Nobody wanted a repeat of 9/11.
My work on the congressional resolution took top priority for me over the next few weeks. We asked for a provision recognizing the president’s constitutional authority to defend the United States against acts of terrorism. Congress insisted on receiving reports, and we agreed to provide a presidential determination letter, warranting certain conditions had been met before using force. One of the conditions was, in the president’s judgment, that the use of force against Iraq would not negatively impact the war on terrorism. The president balked at including this in the certification. We compromised and included a “whereas” provision that recognized the use of force in Iraq was a furtherance of the war on terrorism.
One “whereas” provision we included was extremely helpful in our self-defense argument. The provision stated, “Whereas Iraq has demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, the risks that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces, or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack, combine to justify action by the United States to defend itself.”
On September 30, a large group of advisors met with the president regarding new homeland security legislation. During that meeting, President Bush initiated a discussion about the congressional resolution on Iraq. Karl Rove was in this meeting and indicated that we needed more time to sell our Iraq plan to the public. That was the first time I had ever heard Karl speak about any national security matter. Indeed, he was never present at the National Security Council or principals committee meetings, so I considered his commenting on a national security matter noteworthy.
The president, however, told Karl that he had already been selling the Iraq plan to the public for three months.
Karl wasn’t convinced. He repeated that he thought we needed more time because the polls showed that support was soft.
President Bush responded, “I don’t care if the polls showed 20 percent for the plan and 80 percent against, I would still do this because it is the right thing to do.” Courage. It is one of the characteristics of every successful president—the courage to do what is right no matter how unpopular.
As we worked toward finalizing a congressional resolution, we encountered new challenges regarding a UN resolution. Apparently, not only were we not going to get a resolution that included a finding of material breach on the part of Iraq and the authority to use all necessary means, it now appeared that some countries were backing away from saying that Iraq had committed a material breach of their responsibilities under previous resolutions.
At an NSC meeting on October 2, the president expressed frustration with the UN and cautioned the National Security Council team to “be strong.” Speaking of the UN, he said, “We need to put them on the defense. It has to be clear that it is their responsibility to force Iraq into compliance. The status quo is unacceptable. Whatever resolution we arrive at, it must provide for unfettered, unrestricted access for inspections.
“We have a problem,” the president said. “We know Iraq is arming, but our intelligence agencies cannot find the arms. This is a dynamic process, always changing. We have to be able to adjust. Saddam will game the system, so we have to be aggressive about getting an aggressive resolution in place.”
He shook his head as though frustrated. “The UN does not want force to be used; they want the problem to go away. This is not about inspections; this is about disarming Iraq. If Blix is serious about disarming, he will come here with serious plans.”
The president was clearly concerned. The French were uneasy about saying out front that there was a material breach, since arguably this would allow the United States to use force under previous resolutions. The Germans were equally tepid in their response to Iraq’s breaches. Both of these countries, it would later be suggested, had ulterior motives for their reticence.6 Some members of the UN wanted the Security Council to determine whether there was a breach before authorizing action. It was this potential second vote that most troubled the president. The delays such a vote represented could be interminable, and potentially deadly if Saddam and his cohorts got wind of it, as they surely would.
“The burden of proof is on him,” the president said of Saddam. “If he is not serious about disarming, we will go disarm him, and others need to come along. The key is not to agree to something that two months from now we regret. If he doesn’t disarm, we are moving against him.”
The president then turned his attention to the chief UN inspector, Hans Blix. “Will Blix allow himself to be manipulated? Does Blix understand how dangerous Saddam Hussein is? If Blix does not believe Saddam is a threat, he has no incentive to find something that may lead to war.”
It was a good assessment of the challenges we faced. The president’s final question summed up our dilemma: “How do we negotiate a UN resolution that achieves our objectives?”
How indeed?
CHAPTER 23
DANCING WITH A DEVIL
The political pot was already stirring. On September 9, 2002, Democratic senator Richard Durbin contacted George Tenet, urging him to produce a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a written assessment of Iraq’s WMD threat potential and programs. The following day, Tenet received a letter from Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, officially asking for an NIE “on the status of Iraq’s programs to develop weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems, the status of the Iraqi military forces, including their readiness and willingness to fight, the effects a US led attack on Iraq would have on its neighbors, and Saddam Hussein’s likely response to a US military campaign designed to effect regime change in Iraq.”1 The Democrats were apparently seeking more information before an anticipated October vote on the use of military force in Iraq.
But an NIE report of this sort would normally draw information from at least six different sections of the intelligence community, and would involve a process requiring six to ten months. The Senate Intelligence Committee wanted it produced within weeks. The CIA delivered a ninety-page NIE around 10:30 at night on October 1, 2002.2 While refusing to excuse the CIA’s responsibility to deliver accurate intelligence information, Tenet would later look to that truncated time frame as one of the major reasons some of the included information was flawed or uncertain, and some was just wrong.3 Making matters worse, this same flawed report would provide some of the material on which Colin Powell based his much-publicized speech to the UN about Iraq’s WMD on February 5, 2003. But of course we didn’t know then the report was flawed.
Complicating matters further, the NIE included information gleaned from British intelligence about a purported attempt by Saddam to acquire milled uranium oxide, a substance known as yellowcake, an element that can be enriched to produce nuclear weapons–grade uranium. Ostensibly, Saddam had hoped to purchase these materials from Niger, a large, heavily populated, impoverished country located on the southern rim of the Sahara Desert in Africa. Niger’s main export is uranium ore.
The NIE reported that Saddam might have tried to obtain yellowcake from Niger, but even that inclusion was a relatively minor point. More importantly, the NIE noted Saddam already possessed a whopping 550 metric tons of yellowcake in Iraq—enough to produce at least one hundred nuclear weapons. This fact was known to the international UN inspectors who were supposedly keeping tabs on Saddam’s yellowcake. Saddam’s attempted purchase was never proven, but the fact that it was noted in the NIE came back to haunt us a year or so later.
Although it seemed obvious that Saddam wanted a nuclear bomb, even if he had received yellowcake from Niger, the NIE remained nebulous about his ability to produce a nuclear weapon within a year. Perhaps he could succeed in several years, almost certainly by the end of the decade.
As Tenet later pointed out, the phrase we do not know appears some thirty times in the ninety-page report, and the words we know
appear only three times. Instead, the CIA used language such as we judge or we assess as analytical statements, not as facts.4 The document also included dissenting and alternative views, even highlighting them in colored boxes within the report.
The CIA included a five-page summary (presented as “Key Judgments”) at the front of the document. Tenet later commented these were written in terms that were too assertive, especially concerning chemical and biological weapons, and “convey[ed] an air of certainty that does not exist in the rest of the paper.”5
Even noting Tenet’s disclaimers, the NIE report was damning against Saddam. The now declassified document included the following statements in the summary:
We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.
Although we assess that Saddam does not yet have nuclear weapons or sufficient material to make any, he remains intent on acquiring them. Most agencies assess that Baghdad started reconstituting its nuclear program about the time that inspectors departed—December 1998.
Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al-Qaeda—with worldwide reach and extensive terrorist infrastructure, and already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States—could perpetuate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct.
In such circumstances, he might decide that the extreme step of assisting the Islamist terrorists in conducting a CBW [chemical or biological weapon] attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.6
With caveats like “if left unchecked” and “Saddam . . . might,” the document was far from definitive in tone. The problem is that although the statement about Iraq’s missiles was accurate, the judgments about biological and chemical weapons should not have been characterized as facts, as Tenet himself acknowledged.7 In his 2007 book, At the Center of the Storm, he writes that the report should have read as follows:
True Faith and Allegiance Page 28