Bush set sights on Saddam after 9/11, never looked back This story was reported by John Diamond, Judy Keen, David Moniz, Bill Nichols, Susan Page and Barbara Slavin, and was written by Page. <i>The White House refused to let a crisis in North Korea be a distraction. It pushed past opposition from traditional allies. Complaints that the hunt for al-Qaeda was being diluted were dismissed. And in the end, the U.S. would go to war without the United Nations.</i> President Bush didn't want the war with Iraq to start too soon after his ultimatum to Saddam Hussein expired Wednesday night, aides say. He relished the idea of his Iraqi nemesis sitting in Baghdad, watching the skies, wondering when the first bombs would fall. But after CIA Director George Tenet reported that cruise missiles just might be able to strike a group of senior Iraqi leaders, maybe even Saddam himself, Bush authorized the start of the war nearly an hour before the deadline was up. The momentous decision Wednesday evening was almost anti-climactic. Within weeks of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the president and his most influential advisers set a goal of toppling Saddam — if possible by coup or exile, more likely by force. Bush began to make the case to the world with his speech to the United Nations a year and a day after the attacks. With Wednesday's decision, Bush finally pulled the trigger. But the gun was cocked for a long time, since the Sept. 12 speech. The six months since then have been a time of diplomatic maneuvers, military deployments, rhetorical shifts and single-minded determination. Bush refused to let anything deter him. · He minimized a nuclear showdown with North Korea that even some administration officials believed posed a more immediate threat. The divisions within the president's inner circle over North Korea were severe. When New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson told Secretary of State Colin Powell he had gotten a call from North Korean diplomats, Powell said Richardson should go ahead and meet with them — but told him to avoid talking about it to Powell's rivals in the administration. · He dismissed the complaints of then-Senate Intelligence Chairman Bob Graham, D-Fla., and others that in targeting Iraq as the second front in the war on terror the administration was shortchanging the first battleground, in Afghanistan and against al-Qaeda. A senior Defense Department official worried that combat operations in Afghanistan last spring were poorly planned because the Central Command was preoccupied with the next war. · He was defiant when the U.N. Security Council refused to endorse the resolution he and British Prime Minister Tony Blair had sought to pave the way for the attack. The president had fought hard behind the scenes for the U.N. imprimatur. After a private White House dinner with Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he included an initiative to fight AIDS in Africa in the State of the Union address. Annan had mentioned the issue as a personal priority. Administration officials even found themselves addressing other worldly matters as they lobbied the president of Guinea, one of the Security Council's 15 members. He was desperately ill with kidney disease. His concern: Which vote was more likely to get him into heaven? In the end, it was Bush's unyielding determination that undermined the diplomatic campaign. Skeptical foreign leaders complained that the administration's earlier willingness to go to the United Nations and agree to renewed weapons inspections in Iraq was only for show. The president had his mind made up, they said, no matter what. Some top administration officials agree. "He was not going to be easily deterred or distracted," a senior adviser says. "It would have taken nothing less than an Iraqi capitulation. Either Saddam and his inner circle would have had to leave or they would have had to really, truly, completely, verifiably disarm. Bottom line: Bush was not looking for a way out." Aides and outsiders interviewed for this article cite a mix of motives behind the president's focus — some call it an obsession — on Iraq: His view of Saddam as a brutal despot who threatened Israel and unsettled the Middle East. An almost Shakespearean impulse to finish the job his father had started. The prospect of more stable oil supplies. Bush himself says he is thinking about the verdict of history. He says Saddam's weapons programs and his ties with terrorists could pose a threat so grave one day that the United States should act pre-emptively to quell it. "I don't want history to look back and say, 'Where was President Bush?' " he said in an interview with USA TODAY last month. " 'How come he didn't act on behalf of the security of the American people?' " Aug. 16, 2002 Crawford, Texas The airborne attacks on New York and Washington had transformed Bush's presidency. But by the dog days of last summer, the sense of mission he had projected since then seemed to be faltering. August was his most difficult time since 9/11. While he spent most of the month at his ranch in Texas, his plan for "regime change" in Iraq came under harsh scrutiny. A memo by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, arguing that Bush didn't need authorization from Congress to launch an attack, was leaked. It created a furor. Blair, Bush's staunchest ally, was getting hammered by war opponents at home. The sharpest sting of all came from people who had served the president's father, especially Brent Scowcroft, his national security adviser. Even some officials in the current administration wondered if Scowcroft was reflecting the elder Bush when he began to make the critics' case. There is "scant evidence" that Saddam is linked to al-Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, Scowcroft wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Aug. 15. A war with Iraq would "divert us" from the war on terrorism. "We need to think through this issue very carefully." The sentence suggested the president had failed to do that. The next day, Aug. 16, Bush convened the National Security Council by videoconference from a building beside his ranch house. He was able to see the White House participants on a large screen. Even his most senior aides weren't yet sure what he planned to say in the U.N. speech. Powell urged Bush to use the address to begin building an international coalition against Iraq. He wouldn't be limiting his options, Powell said. Saddam would never agree to real disarmament; his intransigence would help the administration convince the world to act. Everyone agreed on a key argument Bush could make: The United Nations had to move to enforce the resolutions it passed at the end of the 1991 Gulf War that demanded disarmament. Otherwise, it risked being irrelevant. It was the United Nations' fight, too. The idea seemed so inspired that afterward credit for it was variously attributed to Vice President Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Powell. But left unsettled was a fierce dispute between Cheney and Powell over whether the United States should seek a new Security Council resolution demanding that Iraq disarm and resuming U.N. weapons inspections. Other nations were likely to insist on more inspections before approving the use of force. The back-and-forth, the horse-trading, the diplomatic blather would eat up months of valuable time, Cheney warned. Powell argued that a coalition was essential, and not just for show. The United States would need to use bases in Saudi Arabia and Turkey in a war and international assistance rebuilding Iraq after one. The meeting ended without Bush signaling a decision. Both advisers took their arguments public, an unusual display of division in an administration known for its discipline. In two speeches later in August, Cheney made it clear that he thought inspections would be a waste of time. Analysts assumed the vice president was speaking for the administration. Cheney rarely lost internal battles. But the next week, on Labor Day, Powell sent a different message. As he was flying to Johannesburg, South Africa, for a U.N. conference, Powell spoke with the reporters accompanying him. Bush would seek another U.N. resolution, he indicated. Powell had a powerful ally. The weekend before the U.N. speech, Blair visited Camp David. He urged Bush to seek a resolution and tone down his rhetoric. Talk about disarmament, he advised, not about regime change. Other countries wouldn't agree to target one leader's rule, but they might sign on to dismantle the weapons of mass destruction he was developing. There was another reason for Bush to seek a resolution. Polls showed that a majority of Americans supported an invasion only if it had U.N. backing. He needed the U.N.'s backing — or at least needed to demonstrate a good-faith effort to get it — to ensure support at home. Sept. 12, 2002 The United Nations Bush didn't relay his decision until the night before the speech. He told Powell and Rice that he would seek a resolution. The draft of his speech was hurriedly revised, the key statement added. Incredibly, the old version was loaded into the teleprompter at the United Nations the next morning. As he spoke, Bush noticed the words were missing and added them. "We will work with the U.N. Security Council for the necessary resolutions," he declared. But aides were sure Bush didn't believe diplomacy would or could take care of the threat Saddam posed. Going to the U.N. was a means, not an end. Two days earlier, Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander in the Persian Gulf, had delivered updated plans for an invasion of Iraq to the White House. Sept. 12, 2002 Kabul, Afghanistan The reaction in Afghanistan to Bush's speech was anxious. A week earlier, 30 people were killed and more than 150 wounded when two bombs exploded in Kabul. It was the worst terror strike in Afghanistan since U.S. forces ousted the Taliban regime the year before. It fed President Hamid Karzai's fears that a war with Iraq would distract the United States from the dangers that persisted in Afghanistan, opening the way to chaos. Some Pentagon officials shared the concern. During Operation Anaconda in March, Army units had encountered more resistance from al-Qaeda forces than expected. They were pinned down by enemy fire. One senior Defense official said the operation had been poorly planned because the Central Command was distracted as it worked on an invasion of Iraq. Dec. 4, 2002 The White House When things seemed to be going off track in August, Bush had assured a worried aide that, when he returned to Washington, he would reclaim the agenda just like that, snapping his finger. Now his confidence seemed to have been justified. Everything was going his way. As Blair had urged, Bush and his aides had dropped talk of "regime change" in Iraq. The issue, they said, was disarmament. At a session with USA TODAY in October, Powell almost offhandedly suggested for the first time that Saddam might be able to remain in power if he disarmed. Bush soon said the same thing. The change in rhetoric was temporary and, in the White House view, largely cosmetic. But it helped bring others on board. Bush had momentum: · In October, the House and Senate passed by overwhelming margins a resolution authorizing Bush to act against Iraq. The quick vote meant Congress would have few opportunities to weigh in over the months to follow. · In November, Republicans widened their narrow margin of control in the House by a bit and won back control of the Senate. The president's aggressive campaigning got a fair amount of the credit. · A few days later, after intense negotiations, the Security Council approved a resolution declaring Iraq in "material breach" of earlier U.N. resolutions and launching new weapons inspections. Winning support from France required intricate compromises. Even Syria, which had seemed implacably opposed, signed on, making the vote 15-0. But there were warning signs on the horizon. Gerhard Schroeder was elected chancellor of Germany on an anti-war platform. Bush was so angered by the campaign that he did not make the customary congratulatory phone call. Protests against the war were growing. Two of Bush's closest aides sat down on Dec. 4 to hear about the rising tide of world opinion from leaders of a Council on Foreign Relations task force. That morning, the Pew Research Center released a survey of people in 44 nations. Andrew Kohut, the center's director and a task force member, was among those who went to the White House. The group met first with Rice in her West Wing office, then with Karl Rove in a small conference room. The message they heard wasn't encouraging. Although the Sept. 11 attacks brought a groundswell of sympathy, there was now a growing backlash against the United States. That was true even in countries that were U.S. allies. Seven in 10 of those surveyed in Egypt, Pakistan and Jordan held unfavorable attitudes toward the United States. Solid majorities in France, Germany and Russia said the United States was targeting Saddam to get control of Iraqi oil fields. "The odds are very great that it's going to get worse," Kohut told them. Dec. 17, 2002 London Tribal warriors, businessmen, thugs and clerics mingled in the lobby at the Hilton Metropole Hotel. A long-delayed summit of Iraqi exile groups finally had begun. Bush's special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, held court in a suite upstairs. The Afghan-American tried to nudge the fractious groups together. The wide divide he had to bridge was evident even in the lobby: Some delegates sipped beer in bars decorated with twinkling Christmas lights while others rolled out prayer mats. The goal of the summit was modest. The delegates were to name 20 or so representatives to a committee that would discuss with the United States the role they could play in a post-Saddam Iraq. Prominent among the exiles was Ahmad Chalabi, the U.S.-educated, Armani-clad leader of the Iraqi National Congress. Conservatives in the Bush administration saw Chalabi as an ally who could help build a democratic nation. Skeptics in the State Department thought the Iraqi dissidents were too divided and, in some cases, too corrupt to be of much use. The 350 delegates began their meeting on Sunday, Dec. 14. They talked and squabbled until 3 or 4 the next morning. The meeting, planned for two days, stretched into a third. The 20-member advisory group grew to 35, then 40. Hotel managers finally told the dissident groups they had to clear out to make way for other guests. By then, the committee's membership had ballooned to include 75 members — more than one in five delegates, hardly a sign of unity. No steering committee had been named, nor a leader. Officials in the Pentagon and Cheney's office continued to lobby for Chalabi and others to have a role in the reconstruction of Iraq. But the State Department quashed the idea that any of the exiles were credible enough to be named to top posts. Chalabi wasn't discouraged. In February, he installed himself in northern Iraq to wait for the U.S. invasion. Jan. 11, 2003 Santa Fe The Bush administration was pushing for a confrontation with Iraq. But officials were doing everything they could to downplay a crisis that was developing on its own in North Korea, which Bush had labeled part of an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and Iran. In October, North Korea admitted it was pursuing a nuclear weapons program, a violation of the agreement it had struck in 1994 with the Clinton administration. North Korea reactivated a nuclear facility and demanded direct talks with the United States about the ensuing controversy. Bush refused, saying the talks would reward bad behavior. North Korea reached out to an unlikely liaison. Bill Richardson was a Democrat who had just been elected governor of New Mexico. As Clinton's U.N. ambassador, he had gone twice to the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. He had gotten to know a North Korean diplomat, Han Song Ryol, who was now the country's deputy U.N. ambassador. Richardson had no desire to make a bad situation worse. He called Powell. Meet with them, Powell agreed. But he added a caveat: Talk to the North Koreans, but not to my rivals in the Bush administration. Cheney aides called Richardson's staffers, but they weren't talking. For nine hours over three days, the governor met with the North Koreans. He dubbed the talks the "green chili summit" for the spicy cuisine he served one day at lunch. But there were no breakthroughs. Richardson urged the Bush administration to follow up with direct talks. But the White House still ruled that out. The crisis in North Korea would have to wait. Jan. 22, 2003 The White House The table seemed small in the middle of the Red Room, just 14 chairs around it for the president and his guests. Bush's attention was focused on one in particular: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Powell, Rice and U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte were there, along with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar. The private dinner had been arranged at the last minute. Bush wanted to make sure Annan knew how seriously he wanted U.N. support for the showdown with Saddam that was ahead. After Bush talked about Iraq, his top priority, Annan discussed issues critical to him. High on the list was the spread of AIDS in Africa. President Clinton had focused on that issue; his successor had not. There was no mistaking that this was a working dinner, but Bush was careful to make the setting informal, almost familial. When Annan accepted the offer of a cigar, Bush walked the expanse of the room to summon a steward to produce a lighter. A week later, Bush offered a concrete sign of his goodwill. In the State of the Union address on Jan. 29, he unexpectedly added a plan to triple spending to deal with AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. Feb. 5, 2002 The United Nations The battle for a second U.N. resolution would prove to be much more difficult than the first one. There was no mistaking that this was a vote that paved the way for war, not for more inspections. Powell, seen as the U.S. official most reluctant to go to war, was sent to present the case. He promised to bring new intelligence information, the evidence Bush and others had been alluding to as proof of Saddam's weapons program and his ties to al-Qaeda. Powell and CIA Director George Tenet spent the weekend of Feb. 1 at CIA headquarters in suburban Virginia, going over the evidence. They ordered in pizza, passing the boxes over stacks of some of the government's most sensitive intelligence. Some of the things the experts found most convincing were excluded as too esoteric. Some intercepts of encrypted communication were put aside because the National Security Agency warned that their release would put an end to prized sources of information. They settled on photos from spy satellites and intercepts of phone calls that had Iraqis using words like "nerve agents" and "forbidden ammo." They wanted evidence that was easy to understand and impossible to refute. "Saddam will stop at nothing until something stops him," Powell declared when he spoke to the United Nations on Feb. 5. Tenet sat just behind him. But none of the three skeptical Security Council members that could wield a veto — France, China and Russia — was immediately convinced. France and Germany already had seen some of the intelligence. In some cases, they had helped generate it. There were questions about whether some of the satellite photos showed what Powell claimed, whether a link between Saddam and al-Qaeda had been proven. The administration still didn't have the votes it needed to win. February 23, 2003 Camp Virginia, Kuwait Lt. Gen. William Wallace, the soft-spoken commander of the Army's V Corps, worried whether he had been too hard on his staff the night before, chewing them out when a key communication link failed. He was the commander for U.S. ground forces, and the biggest advantage they had was electronic, their intelligence and communications. It had better work. He had other problems on his mind, too. Troops from the Army's 4th Infantry Division were stuck in Texas, their tanks and howitzers on cargo ships in the Mediterranean. They were waiting for permission to offload in Turkey, to prepare for a northern front. But despite lobbying by Bush, Cheney and members of Congress, the Turkish parliament refused to grant permission. Central Command leaders scrambled to devise new war plans. A light infantry brigade based in Italy could be ferried to northern Iraq by helicopter and dropped by parachute. But the troops wouldn't have the heavy tanks from the ships. A retired Army general said he feared hasty, last-minute changes to the attack plan would increase U.S. casualties. March 17, 2003 The United Nations Six months earlier Bush had addressed the General Assembly. Now the resolution he and Blair had wanted faced certain defeat. Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, Jeremy Greenstock, stood in a basement hallway behind a snack bar to announce it would be withdrawn. The room he normally would have used for such momentous news wasn't available because it was being renovated. The news was momentous, but it wasn't a surprise. For a week, since a British compromise was rejected out of hand by France, U.S. officials knew this day was coming. The last-minute calculations were no longer focused on how to win — all the best weapons for that had been used already — but on how to explain a loss. Every U.S. maneuver seemed to fail or backfire. Washington used the tough language in a Jan. 27 report by chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix to bolster the arguments for war. That alarmed Blix; he was careful not to be so critical in future reports. Arm-twisting of undecided countries was seen as another sign of U.S. arrogance. Russia felt taken for granted. Bush renewed talk of "regime change," which unsettled some council members. The final get-tough tactic failed to move a single vote. Bush declared at a news conference that he would force a vote. Cheney and others had urged the demand. It just might push undecided countries to vote "yes," the reasoning went. In any case, it would put those that voted "no" on the spot after the war was won. In an embarrassing turnabout, Bush backed down on forcing a vote after Powell argued that to lose would cloud the legal authority of the war. The resolution was withdrawn Monday morning. March 19, 2003 The White House On Wednesday, Bush already had met twice with his war Cabinet when Tenet brought word that intelligence officials thought they knew where Saddam was at just that moment. The president and his top aides spent more than three hours studying maps of military positions and debating the validity of the intelligence. Finally, Bush told his advisers it was time. At 7:12 p.m., he turned to Rumsfeld and said, "Let's go." At 10:16 p.m., he addressed the nation from the Oval Office. It was the first time he had used the office for a speech since Sept. 11, 2001, the night of the terrorist attacks that had changed so much. "My fellow citizens," he said, "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." The war had begun. March 2003 Contributing: Ellen Hale in London; Steven Komarow in Kuwait; Donna Leinwand in Turkey; Tom Squitieri in Afghanistan; and Jim Cox, Kathy Kiely and Laurence McQuillan in Washington
