Decision Points Part 14

***A spinning pitch that is hard to hit, similar to a screwball in baseball.

n Wednesday, March 19, 2003, I walked into a meeting I had hoped would not be necessary.

The National Security Council had gathered in the White House Situation Room, a nerve center of communications equipment and duty officers on the ground floor of the West Wing. The top center square of the secure video screen showed General Tommy Franks sitting with his senior deputies at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. In the other five boxes were our lead Army, Navy, Marine, Air Force, and Special Operations commanders. Their counterparts from the British Armed Forces and Australian Defense Forces joined as well.

I asked each man two questions: Do you have everything you need to win? And are you comfortable with the strategy?

Each commander answered affirmatively.

Tommy spoke last. "Mr. President," the commanding general said, "this force is ready."

I turned to Don Rumsfeld. "Mr. Secretary," I said, "for the peace of the world and the benefit and freedom of the Iraqi people, I hereby give the order to execute Operation Iraqi Freedom. May G.o.d bless the troops."

Tommy snapped a salute. "Mr. President," he said, "may G.o.d bless America."

As I saluted back, the gravity of the moment hit me. For more than a year, I had tried to address the threat from Saddam Hussein without war. We had rallied an international coalition to pressure him to come clean about his weapons of ma.s.s destruction programs. We had obtained a unanimous United Nations Security Council resolution making clear there would be serious consequences for continued defiance. We had reached out to Arab nations about taking Saddam into exile. I had given Saddam and his sons a final forty-eight hours to avoid war. The dictator rejected every opportunity. The only logical conclusion was that he had something to hide, something so important that he was willing to go to war for it.

I knew the consequences my order would bring. I had wept with widows of troops lost in Afghanistan. I had hugged children who no longer had a mom or a dad. I did not want to send Americans into combat again. But after the nightmare of 9/11, I had vowed to do what was necessary to protect the country. Letting a sworn enemy of America refuse to account for his weapons of ma.s.s destruction was a risk I could not afford to take.

I needed time to absorb the emotions of the moment. I left the Situation Room, walked up the stairs and through the Oval Office, and took a slow, silent lap around the South Lawn. I prayed for our troops, for the safety of the country, and for strength in the days ahead. Spot, our springer spaniel, bounded out of the White House toward me. It was comforting to see a friend. Her happiness contrasted with the heaviness in my heart.

On the South Lawn after ordering troops into Iraq. White House/Eric Draper White House/Eric Draper There was one man who understood what I was feeling. I sat down at my desk in the Treaty Room and scrawled out a letter: Dear Dad,...At around 9:30 a.m., I gave the order to SecDef to execute the war plan for Operation Iraqi Freedom. In spite of the fact that I had decided a few months ago to use force, if need be, to liberate Iraq and rid the country of WMD, the decision was an emotional one....I know I have taken the right action and do pray few will lose life. Iraq will be free, free, the world will be safer. The emotion of the moment has pa.s.sed and now I wait word on the covert action that is taking place. the world will be safer. The emotion of the moment has pa.s.sed and now I wait word on the covert action that is taking place.I know what you went through.Love,George A few hours later, his reply came across the fax: Dear George,Your handwritten note, just received, touched my heart. You are doing the right thing. Your decision, just made, is the toughest decision you've had to make up until now. But you made it with strength and with compa.s.sion. It is right to worry about the loss of innocent life be it Iraqi or American. But you have done that which you had to do.Maybe it helps a tiny bit as you face the toughest bunch of problems any President since Lincoln has faced: You carry the burden with strength and grace....Remember Robin's words 'I love you more than tongue can tell.'Well, I do.Devotedly,Dad

The bombs that fell on Baghdad that night marked the opening phase in the liberation of Iraq. But that was not the first airstrike on Iraq to make news during my presidency.

In February 2001, I visited President Vicente Fox Vicente Fox in San Cristobal, Mexico. My first foreign trip as president was designed to highlight our commitment to expanding democracy and trade in Latin America. Unfortunately, news out of Iraq intruded. As we admired the serene vistas of Vicente's ranch, American bombers struck Iraq's air defense system. It was a relatively routine mission to enforce the no-fly zones that had been created after Saddam ma.s.sacred thousands of innocent s.h.i.+a and Kurds following the Gulf War. in San Cristobal, Mexico. My first foreign trip as president was designed to highlight our commitment to expanding democracy and trade in Latin America. Unfortunately, news out of Iraq intruded. As we admired the serene vistas of Vicente's ranch, American bombers struck Iraq's air defense system. It was a relatively routine mission to enforce the no-fly zones that had been created after Saddam ma.s.sacred thousands of innocent s.h.i.+a and Kurds following the Gulf War.*

With Vicente Fox. White House/Paul Morse White House/Paul Morse Saddam fired off a barrage that lit up the Baghdad sky and grabbed the attention of CNN. When Vicente and I stepped out of his home for a press conference, a Mexican reporter began, "I have a question for President Bush....Is this the beginning of a new war?"

The flare-up was a reminder of the deteriorating situation America faced in Iraq. More than a decade earlier, in August 1990, Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein's tanks blasted across the border into Kuwait. Dad declared that Saddam's unprovoked aggression would not stand and gave him an ultimatum to withdraw from Kuwait. When the dictator defied his demands, Dad rallied a coalition of thirty-four countries-including Arab nations-to enforce it.

The decision to send American troops to Kuwait was agonizing for Dad-and frustrating to implement. The Senate voted to authorize military force by a slim margin, 52 to 47. A group of lawmakers presented Dad with a letter that predicted ten thousand to fifty thousand American deaths. Former President Jimmy Carter urged members of the Security Council to oppose the war. The UN voted to support it anyway.

Operation Desert Storm proved a stunning success. Coalition forces drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait in fewer than 100 hours. Ultimately, 149 Americans were killed in action. I was proud of Dad's decisiveness. I wondered if he would send troops all the way to Baghdad. He had a chance to rid the world of Saddam once and for all. But he stopped at the liberation of Kuwait. That was how he had defined the mission. That was what Congress had voted for and the coalition had signed up to do. I fully understood his rationale.

As a condition for ending hostilities in the Gulf War, UN Resolution 687 required Saddam to destroy his weapons of ma.s.s destruction and missiles with a range of more than ninety miles. The resolution banned Iraq from possessing biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons or the means to produce them. To ensure compliance, Saddam was required to submit to a UN monitoring and verification system.

At first, Saddam claimed he had only a limited stockpile of chemical weapons and Scud missiles. Over time, UN inspectors discovered a vast, haunting a.r.s.enal. Saddam had filled thousands of bombs, sh.e.l.ls, and warheads with chemical agents. He had a nuclear weapons program that was about two years from yielding a bomb, much closer than the CIA's prewar estimate of eight to ten years. When his son-in-law defected in 1995, Saddam acknowledged that the regime had been hiding a biological weapons program that included anthrax and botulinum toxin.

To keep Saddam in check, the UN imposed strict economic sanctions. But as outrage over Iraq's invasion of Kuwait faded, the world's attention drifted. Saddam diverted nearly two billion dollars from the Oil-for-Food program-which the UN had created to provide for the basic humanitarian needs of innocent Iraqis-to enrich his cronies and reconst.i.tute his military strength, including programs related to weapons of ma.s.s destruction. As children starved, he launched a propaganda campaign blaming sanctions for the suffering.

By 1998 Saddam had persuaded key trading partners like Russia and France to lobby the UN to loosen the restrictions. Then he forced the UN weapons inspectors to leave the country. The problem was clear: Saddam had never verified that he had destroyed all of his weapons from the Gulf War. With the inspectors gone, the world was blind to whether he had restarted his programs.

The Clinton administration responded by launching Operation Desert Fox-a four-day bombing campaign conducted jointly with Great Britain and aimed at degrading Saddam's WMD capabilities. In a primetime address from the Oval Office in December 1998, President Clinton explained: The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, the security of the world. The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government-a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people....Heavy as they are, the costs of action must be weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors. He will make war on his own people. And mark my words, he will develop weapons of ma.s.s destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them.

The same year, Congress overwhelmingly pa.s.sed and President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act. The law declared a new official policy of the United States: "To support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government." from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government."

By early 2001, Saddam Hussein was waging a low-grade war against the United States. In 1999 and 2000, his forces had fired seven hundred times at our pilots patrolling the no-fly zones.

For my first eight months in office, my policy focused on tightening the sanctions-or, as Colin Powell put it, keeping Saddam in his box. Then 9/11 hit, and we had to take a fresh look at every threat in the world. There were state sponsors of terror. There were sworn enemies of America. There were hostile governments that threatened their neighbors. There were nations that violated international demands. There were dictators who repressed their people. And there were regimes that pursued WMD. Iraq combined all those threats.

Saddam Hussein didn't just sympathize with terrorists. He had paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and given sanctuary to terrorists like Abu Nidal Abu Nidal, who led attacks that killed nineteen people at an Israeli airline's ticket counters in Rome and Vienna, and Abu Abbas Abu Abbas, who hijacked the Italian cruise s.h.i.+p Achille Lauro Achille Lauro and murdered an elderly, wheelchair-bound American. and murdered an elderly, wheelchair-bound American.

Saddam Hussein wasn't just a sworn enemy of America. He had fired at our aircraft, issued a statement praising 9/11, and made an a.s.sa.s.sination attempt on a former president, my father.

Saddam Hussein didn't just threaten his neighbors. He had invaded two of them, Iran in the 1980s and Kuwait in the 1990s.

Saddam Hussein didn't just violate international demands. He had defied sixteen UN resolutions, dating back to the Gulf War.

Saddam Hussein didn't just rule brutally. He and his henchmen had tortured innocent people, raped political opponents in front of their families, scalded dissidents with acid, and dumped tens of thousands of Iraqis into ma.s.s graves. In 2000, Saddam's government decreed that people who criticized the president or his family would have their tongues slashed out. Later that year, an Iraqi obstetrician was beheaded on charges of prost.i.tution. The woman's true crime was speaking out about corruption in the Iraqi health ministry.

Saddam Hussein didn't just pursue weapons of ma.s.s destruction. He had used them. He deployed mustard gas and nerve agents against the Iranians and ma.s.sacred more than five thousand innocent civilians in a 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja. n.o.body knew what Saddam had done with his biological and chemical stockpiles, especially after he booted inspectors out of the country. But after reviewing the information, virtually every major intelligence agency in the world had reached the same conclusion: Saddam had WMD in his a.r.s.enal and the capacity to produce more. One intelligence report summarized the problem: "Since the end of inspections in 1998, Saddam has maintained the chemical weapons effort, energized the missile program, made a bigger investment in biological weapons, and has begun to try to move forward in the nuclear area."

Before 9/11, Saddam was a problem America might have been able to manage. Through the lens of the post-9/11 world, my view changed. I had just witnessed the damage inflicted by nineteen fanatics armed with box cutters. I could only imagine the destruction possible if an enemy dictator pa.s.sed his WMD to terrorists. With threats flowing into the Oval Office daily-many of them about chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons-that seemed like a frighteningly real possibility. The stakes were too high to trust the dictator's word against the weight of the evidence and the consensus of the world. The lesson of 9/11 was that if we waited for a danger to fully materialize, we would have waited too long. I reached a decision: We would confront the threat from Iraq, one way or another.

My first choice was to use diplomacy. Unfortunately, our track record with Iraq was not encouraging. We maintained a bilateral relations.h.i.+p with Baghdad in the 1980s. We obtained UN Security Council resolutions in the 1990s. Despite our engagement, Saddam grew only more belligerent.

If diplomacy was going to succeed, we needed a fundamentally different approach. We believed Saddam's weakness was that he loved power and would do anything to keep it. If we could convince him we were serious about removing his regime, there was a chance he would give up his WMD, end his support for terror, stop threatening his neighbors, and, over time, respect the human rights of his people. The odds of success were long. But given the alternative, it was worth the effort. The approach was called coercive diplomacy.

Coercive diplomacy with Iraq consisted of two tracks: One was to rally a coalition of nations to make clear that Saddam's defiance of his international obligations was unacceptable. The other was to develop a credible military option that could be used if he failed to comply. These tracks would run parallel at first. As the military option grew more visible and more advanced, the tracks would converge. Our maximum leverage would come just before they intersected. That would be the moment of decision. And ultimately, it would be Saddam Hussein's decision to make.

In February 2001, British Prime Minister Tony Blair Tony Blair and his wife, and his wife, Cherie Cherie, came to visit Laura and me at Camp David. Tony was the first foreign leader we invited, a tribute to the special relations.h.i.+p between the United States and Great Britain.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Tony. I knew he was a left-of-center Labour Party prime minister and a close friend of Bill Clinton's. I quickly found he was candid, friendly, and engaging. There was no stuffiness about Tony and Cherie. After dinner, we decided to watch a movie. When they agreed on Meet the Parents Meet the Parents, a comedy starring Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller, Laura and I knew the Bushes and Blairs would get along.

Laura and me with Cherie and Tony Blair. and me with Cherie and Tony Blair. White House/Eric Draper White House/Eric Draper Tony and I talked through the major issues of the day. He gave me a briefing on the politics of Europe. We discussed our common goals to expand free trade, relieve suffering in Africa, and address the violence in the Holy Land. We didn't spend much time on the social issues. That was left for Cherie and me.

In the summer of 2001, the Blairs invited Laura and me to Chequers, the storied country estate of the British prime minister. Chequers is a large, creaky house filled with rustic, comfortable furniture and portraits of former prime ministers. Rather than throw a formal reception, the Blairs arranged a cozy family dinner with their four children-including little Leo, age fourteen months.

About halfway through the meal, the death penalty death penalty came up. Cherie made clear she didn't agree with my position. Tony looked a little uncomfortable. I listened to her views and then defended mine. I told her I believed the death penalty, when properly administered, could save lives by deterring crime. A talented lawyer whom I grew to respect, Cherie reb.u.t.ted my arguments. At one point, Laura and I overheard Euan, the Blairs' bright seventeen-year-old son, say, "Give the man a break, Mother." came up. Cherie made clear she didn't agree with my position. Tony looked a little uncomfortable. I listened to her views and then defended mine. I told her I believed the death penalty, when properly administered, could save lives by deterring crime. A talented lawyer whom I grew to respect, Cherie reb.u.t.ted my arguments. At one point, Laura and I overheard Euan, the Blairs' bright seventeen-year-old son, say, "Give the man a break, Mother."

The more time we spent together, the more I respected Tony. Over the years, he grew into my closest partner and best friend on the world stage. He came to the United States for meetings more than thirty times during my presidency. Laura and I visited him in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and London. In November 2003, Tony and Cherie invited us to their home in Trimdon Colliery, an old mining area in the countryside. They served us a cup of tea in their redbrick Victorian and took us to a town pub, the Dun Cow Inn. We ate fish and chips with mushy peas, which I washed down with a nonalcoholic Bitburger lager. After lunch, we dropped by a local school and watched a soccer practice-known as football to our hosts. The people were decent and welcoming, aside from the protester who carried a sign that read "Mad Cowboy Disease."

Tony had a quick laugh and a sharp wit. After our first meeting, a British reporter asked what we had in common. I quipped, "We both use Colgate toothpaste." Tony fired back, "They're going to wonder how you know that, George." When he addressed a Joint Session of Congress in 2003, Tony brought up the War of 1812, when British troops burned the White House. "I know this is kind of late," he said, "but...sorry."

Unlike many politicians, Tony was a strategic thinker who could see beyond the immediate horizon. As I would come to learn, he and I were kindred spirits in our faith in the transformative power of liberty. In the final week of my presidency, I was proud to make him one of the few foreign leaders to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.**

Above all, Tony Blair had courage. No issue demonstrated it more clearly than Iraq. Like me, Tony considered Saddam a threat the world could not tolerate after 9/11. The British were targets of the extremists. They had extensive intelligence on Saddam. And they understood in a personal way the menace he posed. Saddam was shooting at their pilots, too.

If we had to remove Saddam from power, Tony and I would have an obligation to help the Iraqi people replace Saddam's tyranny with a democracy. The transformation would have an impact beyond Iraq's borders. The Middle East was the center of a global ideological struggle. On one side were decent people who wanted to live in dignity and peace. On the other were extremists who sought to impose their radical views through violence and intimidation. They exploited conditions of hopelessness and repression to recruit and spread their ideology. The best way to protect our countries in the long run was to counter their dark vision with a more compelling alternative.

That alternative was freedom. People who could choose their leaders at the ballot box would be less likely to turn to violence. Young people growing up with hope in the future would not search for meaning in the ideology of terror. Once liberty took root in one society, it could spread to others.

In April 2002, Tony and Cherie visited Laura and me in Crawford. Tony and I talked about coercive diplomacy as a way to address the threat from Iraq. Tony suggested that we seek a UN Security Council resolution that presented Saddam with a clear ultimatum: allow weapons inspectors back into Iraq, or face serious consequences. I didn't have a lot of faith in the UN. The Security Council had pa.s.sed sixteen resolutions against Saddam to no avail. But I agreed to consider his idea.

I raised Iraq with other world leaders throughout 2002. Many shared my a.s.sessment of the threat, including John Howard of Australia, Jose Maria Aznar Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, Junichiro Koizumi of j.a.pan, of Spain, Junichiro Koizumi of j.a.pan, Jan Peter Balkenende Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands, Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark, Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, and most other leaders in Central and Eastern Europe. It was revealing that some of the strongest advocates for confronting Saddam were those with the freshest memories of tyranny. "In the late 1930s, the Western democracies hesitated in the face of danger," Prime Minister Siim Kallas of Estonia, a former Soviet republic, told me. "As a consequence, we fell under dictators.h.i.+ps and many people lost their lives. Action is sometimes necessary." of the Netherlands, Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark, Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, and most other leaders in Central and Eastern Europe. It was revealing that some of the strongest advocates for confronting Saddam were those with the freshest memories of tyranny. "In the late 1930s, the Western democracies hesitated in the face of danger," Prime Minister Siim Kallas of Estonia, a former Soviet republic, told me. "As a consequence, we fell under dictators.h.i.+ps and many people lost their lives. Action is sometimes necessary."

Other leaders had a different outlook. Vladimir Putin didn't consider Saddam a threat. It seemed to me that part of the reason was Putin didn't want to jeopardize Russia's lucrative oil contracts. France also had significant economic interests in Iraq. I was not surprised when Jacques Chirac told me he would support intrusive weapons inspections but cautioned against threatening military force. The problem with his logic was that without a credible threat of force, the diplomacy would be toothless once again.

With Jacques Chirac (left) and Vladimir Putin. White House/Eric Draper White House/Eric Draper One of the toughest leaders to figure out was Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder Gerhard Schroeder of Germany. I met with Gerhard five times in 2001. He was relaxed, affable, and interested in strengthening our bilateral relations.h.i.+p. I appreciated his leaders.h.i.+p on Afghanistan, especially his willingness to host the of Germany. I met with Gerhard five times in 2001. He was relaxed, affable, and interested in strengthening our bilateral relations.h.i.+p. I appreciated his leaders.h.i.+p on Afghanistan, especially his willingness to host the loya jirga loya jirga in Bonn. in Bonn.

I discussed Iraq with Gerhard during his visit to the White House on January 31, 2002. In my State of the Union address two days earlier, I had outlined the threats posed by Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. "States like these, and their terrorist allies, const.i.tute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world," I said. The media seized on the phrase "axis of evil." They took the line to mean that the three countries had formed an alliance. That missed the point. The axis I referred to was the link between the governments that pursued WMD and the terrorists who could use those weapons. There was a larger point in the speech that no one could miss: I was serious about dealing with Iraq.

In a small Oval Office meeting, joined by Condi Rice and Andy Card Andy Card, I told the German chancellor I was determined to make diplomacy work. I hoped he would help. I also a.s.sured him our words would not be empty. The military option was my last choice, but I would use it if necessary.

"What is true of Afghanistan is true of Iraq," he said. "Nations that sponsor terror must face consequences. If you make it fast and make it decisive, I will be with you."

I took that as a statement of support. But when the German elections arrived later that year, Schroeder had a different take. He denounced the possibility of using force against Iraq. His justice minister said, "Bush wants to divert attention from domestic political problems....Hitler also did that." I was shocked and furious. It was hard to think of anything more insulting than being compared to Hitler by a German official. I continued to work with Gerhard Schroeder on areas of mutual interest. But as someone who valued personal diplomacy, I put a high premium on trust. Once that trust was violated, it was hard to have a constructive relations.h.i.+p again.

Two months after 9/11, I asked Don Rumsfeld to review the existing battle plans battle plans for Iraq. We needed to develop the coercive half of for Iraq. We needed to develop the coercive half of coercive diplomacy coercive diplomacy.

Don tasked General Tommy Franks with updating the plans. Just after Christmas 2001, Tommy came to Crawford to brief me on Iraq. The plan on the shelf required a six-month buildup and four hundred thousand troops. The experience in Afghanistan was at the forefront of our minds. Thanks to new technology and innovative planning, we had destroyed the Taliban and closed the al Qaeda camps using far fewer troops. We were not viewed as occupiers by the Afghan people.

Tommy told the national security team that he was working to apply the same concept of a light footprint to Iraq. He envisioned a fast invasion from Kuwait in the south, Saudi Arabia and Jordan in the west, and Turkey in the north. "If we have multiple, highly skilled Special Operations Forces identifying targets for precision-guided munitions, we will need fewer conventional ground forces," he said. "That's an important lesson learned from Afghanistan."

I had a lot of concerns. I wanted to know how fast our troops could move and what kind of basing we would need. As in Afghanistan, I was concerned about starvation of the local population and asked what we could do to protect innocent life. I worried about Saddam sabotaging the oil fields or firing missiles at Israel. My biggest fear was that he would use biological or chemical weapons against our troops, our allies, or Iraqi civilians.

I asked the team to keep working on the plan. "We should remain optimistic that diplomacy and international pressure will succeed in disarming the regime," I said at the end of the meeting. "But we cannot allow weapons of ma.s.s destruction to fall into the hands of terrorists. I will not allow that to happen."

Between December 2001 and August 2002, I met or spoke with Tommy more than a dozen times. The plan was getting better, but I wasn't satisfied. I wanted to make sure we had thought through as many contingencies as possible. I asked Don and Tommy a lot of questions that started with "What if Saddam decides to...?" One scenario I brought up frequently was Saddam consolidating his forces in Baghdad and engaging our troops in b.l.o.o.d.y urban combat. I remembered the battle in Somalia in 1993 and did not want to see that repeated in Iraq. Tommy and his team didn't have all the answers on the spot, and I didn't expect them to. But they were working hard to refine the plan, and every iteration they brought me was an improvement on the previous version.

The updated plan Tommy presented in the Situation Room on August5, 2002, resolved several key concerns. We had lined up basing and overflight permission from leaders in the Gulf. Tommy had devised a plan for Special Operations to secure suspected WMD sites, Iraq's southern oil fields, and Scud missile launchers. He had also designed a ma.s.sive aerial bombardment that would make it costly for Saddam's elite Republican Guard units to remain in the capital, reducing the chances of a Fortress Baghdad scenario. "Mr. President," Tommy said in his Texas drawl, "this is going to be shock and awe."

There were plenty of issues left to resolve. We all worried about the possibility of Saddam launching a biological or chemical attack on our troops, so the military was in the process of procuring hazmat suits. We had gradually increased the level of troops and equipment in Kuwait under the guise of training and other routine exercises, which would make it possible to begin combat operations rapidly if I gave the order to launch. Joint Chiefs Chairman d.i.c.k Myers talked about the importance of persuading Turkey to open its territory so we could establish a northern front. George Tenet raised concern about a broader regional war in which Syria attacked Israel, or Iran directed its proxy terrorist group, Hezbollah, to foment instability. Don Rumsfeld pointed out that a war could destabilize Jordan and Saudi Arabia, that America could get stuck in a manhunt for Saddam, and that Iraq could fracture after liberation.

Those potential scenarios were sobering. But so were the briefings we were receiving. A report in July read, "Iraq has managed to preserve and in some cases even enhance the infrastructure and expertise necessary for WMD production." Another briefing warned that Saddam's regime was "almost certainly working to produce the causative agent for anthrax along with botulinum toxin, aflatoxin, and ricin." It continued: "Unmanned aerial vehicles give Baghdad a more lethal means to deliver biological...weapons." It went on, ominously, "Experience shows that Saddam produces weapons of ma.s.s destruction to use, not just to deter."

In the summer of 2002, I received a startling piece of news. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an al Qaeda al Qaedaaffiliated terrorist who had experimented with biological weapons in Afghanistan, was operating a lab in northeastern Iraq. "Suspect facility in this area may be producing poisons and toxins for terrorist use," the briefing read. "Al-Zarqawi is an active terrorist planner who has targeted U.S. and Israeli interests: Sensitive reporting from a [cla.s.sified] service indicates that al-Zarqawi has been directing efforts to smuggle an unspecified chemical material originating in northern Iraq into the United States."

We couldn't say for sure whether Saddam knew Zarqawi was in Iraq. We did have intelligence indicating that Zarqawi had spent two months in Baghdad receiving medical treatment and that other al Qaeda operatives had moved to Iraq. The CIA had worked with a major Arab intelligence service to get Saddam to find and extradite Zarqawi. He refused.

The question was whether to bomb the poisons lab in the summer of 2002. We held a series of NSC meetings on the topic. General d.i.c.k Myers talked through the options: Tomahawk missiles, a B-2 bomber strike, or a covert ground raid. d.i.c.k Cheney and Don saw Zarqawi as a clear threat and argued that taking him out would reinforce the doctrine that America would not tolerate safe havens for terror.

Colin and Condi felt a strike on the lab would create an international firestorm and disrupt our efforts to build a coalition to confront Saddam-especially our attempt to recruit Turkey, which was highly sensitive about any activity in northeastern Iraq. "This would be viewed as a unilateral start to the war in Iraq," Colin said.

I faced a dilemma. If America was. .h.i.t with a biological attack from Iraq, I would be responsible for not having taken out the threat when we had the chance. On the other hand, bombing the camp could undermine diplomacy and trigger a military conflict.

I told the intelligence community to keep a close eye on the facility. For the time being, I decided to continue on the diplomatic track. But one thing was clear to me: Iraq was a serious threat growing more dangerous by the day.

I spent much of August 2002 in Crawford, a good place to reflect on the next decision I faced: how to move forward on the diplomatic track.

One option was to seek a UN resolution calling on Saddam to readmit weapons inspectors. The other was to issue an ultimatum demanding that he disarm-and rally a coalition to remove him if he did not comply.

From a legal standpoint, a resolution was unnecessary. Three years earlier, President Clinton and our NATO allies had removed the dictator Slobodan Milosevic Slobodan Milosevic from power in Serbia without an explicit UN resolution. d.i.c.k and Don argued we didn't need one for Iraq, either. After all, we already had sixteen. They believed that going to the UN would trigger a long bureaucratic process that would leave Saddam even more dangerous. from power in Serbia without an explicit UN resolution. d.i.c.k and Don argued we didn't need one for Iraq, either. After all, we already had sixteen. They believed that going to the UN would trigger a long bureaucratic process that would leave Saddam even more dangerous.

I shared that concern. On the other hand, almost every ally I consulted-even staunch advocates of confronting Saddam like Prime Minister John Howard John Howard of Australia-told me a UN resolution was essential to win public support in their countries. of Australia-told me a UN resolution was essential to win public support in their countries.

Colin agreed. The day before I left for Crawford, I asked him to meet with me privately in the Treaty Room. Colin was more pa.s.sionate than I had seen him at any NSC meeting. He told me a UN resolution was the only way to get any support from the rest of the world. He went on to say that if we did take out Saddam, the military strike would be the easy part. Then, as Colin put it, America would "own" Iraq. We would be responsible for helping a fractured country rebuild. I listened carefully and shared Colin's concern. It was another reason I hoped that diplomacy would work.

That summer, the possibility of war had become an all-consuming news story in Was.h.i.+ngton. Reporters asked frequently whether I had a war plan on my desk.

On August 15, I opened the Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal to find a column by to find a column by Brent Scowcroft Brent Scowcroft, Dad's national security adviser. It was headlined "Don't Attack Saddam." Brent argued that war with Iraq would distract from the war on terror and could unleash "an Armageddon in the Middle East." His conclusion was that we should "be pressing the United Nations Security Council to insist on an effective no-notice inspection regime for Iraq."

That was a fair recommendation. But I was angry that Brent had chosen to publish his advice in the newspaper instead of sharing it with me. I called Dad. "Son, Brent is a friend," he a.s.sured me. That might be true. But I knew critics would later exploit Brent's article if the diplomatic track failed.

Some in Was.h.i.+ngton speculated that Brent's op-ed was Dad's way of sending me a message on Iraq. That was ridiculous. Of all people, Dad understood the stakes. If he thought I was handling Iraq wrong, he d.a.m.n sure would have told me himself.

On Sat.u.r.day, September 7, 2002, I convened a meeting of the national security team at Camp David to finalize my decision on the resolution. Fifty-one weeks earlier, we had gathered in Laurel Lodge to plan the war in Afghanistan. Now we sat in the same room trying to find a way to remove the threat in Iraq without war.

I gave everyone on the team a chance to make their arguments. d.i.c.k Cheney recommended that we restate the case against Saddam, give him thirty to sixty days to come clean, and then disarm him by force if he refused to comply. "It is time to act," d.i.c.k said. "We can't delay for another year....An inspection regime does not solve our problem."

Colin pushed for the UN resolution. "If we take the case to the UN, we can get allies to join. If not, it will be hard to act unilaterally. We won't have the international support we need to execute the military plan."

After listening to the options one last time, I made a decision: We would seek a resolution. "There's ambiguity in the international community's view of Saddam," I said, "and we need to clear it up. Either he will come clean about his weapons, or there will be war."