At the Pentagon on the afternoon of 9/11, because the fires nonetheless burned and ambulances blared, Secretary of Protection Donald Rumsfeld returned from the smoke-filled courtyard to his workplace. His closest aide, Undersecretary Stephen Cambone, cryptically recorded the secretary’s interested by Saddam Hussein and Osama (or Usama) bin Laden: “Hit S. H. @identical time; Not solely UBL; close to time period goal wants—go huge—sweep all of it up—want to take action to hit something helpful.”
The president didn’t agree. That night time, when George W. Bush returned to Washington, his most important concern was reassuring the nation, relieving its struggling, and galvanizing hope. Knowledgeable that al-Qaeda was probably answerable for the assault, he didn’t concentrate on Iraq. The following day, at conferences of the Nationwide Safety Council, Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Protection Paul Wolfowitz advocated motion in opposition to Saddam Hussein. With no good targets in Afghanistan and no conflict plans to dislodge the Taliban, Protection officers thought Iraq would possibly supply the perfect alternative to show American resolve and resilience. Their arguments didn’t resonate with anybody current.
The next night, nevertheless, President Bush encountered his outgoing counterterrorism knowledgeable, Richard Clarke, and several other different aides outdoors the Scenario Room within the White Home. In keeping with Clarke, the president stated, “I need you, as quickly as you possibly can, to return over every part, every part. See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any approach.” Clarke promised he would however insisted that al-Qaeda, not Hussein, was accountable. Then he muttered to his assistants, “Wolfowitz obtained to him.”
There isn’t any actual proof that Wolfowitz did get to Bush. The president might have talked about attacking Iraq in a dialog with British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday, September 14. However when Wolfowitz raised the difficulty once more at Camp David over the weekend, Bush made it clear that he didn’t assume Hussein was linked to 9/11, and that Afghanistan was precedence No. 1. His vice chairman, nationwide safety advisers, and CIA director had been all in settlement.
Bush’s resolution to invade Iraq was neither preconceived nor inevitable. It wasn’t about democracy, and it wasn’t about oil. It wasn’t about rectifying the choice of 1991, when america did not overthrow Hussein, nor was it about getting even for the dictator’s try to assassinate Bush’s father, George H. W. Bush, in 1993. Somewhat, Bush and his advisers had been motivated by their issues with U.S. safety. They urgently needed to thwart every other potential assault on People, they usually had been decided to foreclose Hussein’s capacity to make use of weapons of mass destruction to verify the long run train of American energy within the Center East.
Bush resolved to invade Iraq solely after many months of excessive anxiousness, a interval wherein hard-working, if overzealous, officers tried to parse intelligence that was incomplete and unreliable. Their extreme concern of Iraq was matched by an extreme preoccupation with American energy. They usually had been unnerved, after 9/11’s stunning revelation of an unimagined vulnerability, by a way that the nation’s credibility was eroding.
In Bush’s key speeches in the course of the first week after 9/11, he didn’t dwell on Iraq. When reporters requested the president if he had a particular message for Saddam Hussein, Bush spoke generically: “Anyone who harbors terrorists must concern america … The message to each nation is, there will likely be a marketing campaign in opposition to terrorist exercise, a worldwide marketing campaign.” When Normal Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces within the Center East, instructed to Bush that they start army planning in opposition to Iraq, the president instructed him to not.
Rumsfeld and his prime advisers remained extra involved about Iraq—a regime, wrote Undersecretary of Protection Douglas Feith on September 18, “that engages in and helps terrorism and in any other case threatens US very important pursuits.” However even they weren’t advocating a full-scale invasion. As a substitute, Wolfowitz favored seeding a Shia insurrection within the south, establishing an enclave or a liberation zone for organizing a provisional authorities, and denying Hussein management over the area’s oil. “If we’re able to mounting an Afghan resistance in opposition to the Soviets,” Wolfowitz advised me, “we may have been able to mounting an Arab resistance.”
Bush was not solely unsympathetic to this strategy, however neither Rumsfeld nor Wolfowitz may persuade him to divert his consideration from Afghanistan and the broader Conflict on Terror. Wolfowitz deferred to Bush’s precedence, in the end serving to devise the technique that toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan. However he, Feith, and their civilian colleagues on the Pentagon didn’t relinquish the concept of regime change in Iraq. They had been incensed by Hussein’s gloating over the 9/11 assault. They usually had been satisfied that he was harmful.
Bush’s consideration didn’t gravitate to Iraq till the autumn, after anthrax spores circulated by way of the U.S. mail, killing a number of postal employees, and turned up in a Senate workplace constructing and at a facility dealing with White Home mail. On October 18, sensors contained in the White Home alerted workers to the presence of a lethal toxin; it was a false alarm, however one which intensified worries about an assault with organic or chemical weapons.
Bush and his advisers had been troubled by what they thought they knew about Iraq, although assessing Hussein’s intentions and capabilities was tough. The Iraqi dictator had expelled worldwide inspectors in 1998, leaving the CIA unable to gather data. However analysts had been satisfied that Hussein couldn’t be trusted to have destroyed the entire weapons of mass destruction he’d beforehand possessed. Their suspicions had been bolstered when an Iraqi defector claimed that Iraq had established cell biological-weapons-production crops and now possessed “capabilities surpassing the pre–Gulf Conflict period.”
Michael Morell, the president’s CIA briefer, insisted to me that somebody reexamining the obtainable proof on the time would nonetheless conclude that Hussein “had a chemical-weapons functionality, that he had chemical weapons stockpiled, that he had a biological-weapons-production functionality, and he was restarting a nuclear program. At the moment you’d come to that judgment based mostly on what was on that desk.” However what was on the desk, Morell advised me, was circumstantial and suspect, a lot of it coming from Iraqi Kurdish foes of the regime. Morell acknowledged that he ought to have stated, “Mr. President, here’s what we predict … However what you actually need to know is that now we have low confidence in that judgment and right here is why.” As a substitute, Morell was telling the president that Hussein “had a chemical-weapons program. He’s obtained a biological-weapons-production functionality.”
Bush and his prime advisers had been predisposed to assume that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. This was true not solely of the hawks within the administration. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Nationwide Safety Adviser Condoleezza Rice believed that Hussein possessed WMDs. So did State Division analysts and their counterparts within the CIA and on the Nationwide Safety Company. They disagreed in regards to the objective of aluminum tubes and about Iraq’s acquisition of uranium yellowcake, they usually had been conscious that Hussein would wish 5 to seven years to develop a nuclear weapon as soon as the regime started engaged on it once more. Nonetheless, they thought they knew that Iraq had organic and chemical weapons, or may develop them rapidly, and that Hussein aspired to reconstitute a nuclear program.
Overseas-intelligence companions concurred. Tony Blair and his most trusted advisers felt the identical approach. No one advised Bush that Hussein didn’t have WMDs.
Hussein had been severely hampered by sanctions and the presence of inspectors. However now the inspectors had been gone, and the sanctions had been disappearing. The conundrum dealing with U.S. coverage makers was learn how to comprise Hussein if the sanctions regime ended and if United Nations screens didn’t return. “I wasn’t apprehensive about what he would do in 2001,” Wolfowitz advised me. “I used to be apprehensive about what he would do in 2010 if the present containment … collapsed.”
Hussein was not doing a lot to allay American fears. He was utilizing his oil revenues to leverage assist from France, China, and Russia to finish UN sanctions. He had not ceased offering assist for terrorist exercise in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, a few of which focused American assist employees. And reviews of his pervasive repressions inside Iraq persevered.
On the identical time, Hussein was investing his rising monetary reserves in strengthening Iraq’s military-industrial complicated and buying supplies that might be used for chemical and organic weapons. In keeping with British intelligence, the Iraqis had been nonetheless concealing details about 31,000 chemical munitions, 4,000 tons of chemical compounds that might be used for weapons, and enormous portions of fabric that might be employed for the manufacturing of organic weapons.
Such assessments held by way of the winter. “Iraq continues to pursue its WMD programmes,” concluded the British Joint Intelligence Committee in February 2002. “If it has not already accomplished so, Iraq may produce important portions of organic warfare brokers inside days and chemical warfare brokers inside weeks of a call to take action.”
“I’ve little doubt we have to take care of Saddam,” Blair had written to Bush within the fall of 2001. But when we “hit Iraq now,” Blair had warned, “we’d lose the Arab world, Russia, most likely half the EU and my concern is the influence on Pakistan.” Much better to deliberate quietly and keep away from public debate “till we all know precisely what we need to do; and the way we are able to do it.” Bush agreed.
“President Bush believed,” Rumsfeld subsequently wrote, “that the important thing to profitable diplomacy with Saddam was a reputable risk of army motion. We hoped that the method of transferring an rising variety of American forces right into a place the place they may assault Iraq would possibly persuade the Iraqis to finish their defiance.” As Stephen Hadley, the deputy nationwide safety adviser throughout Bush’s first time period, advised me: “We thought it might coerce him … to do what the worldwide group requested, which is both destroy the WMD or present us that you just destroyed it. That was it. Both do it or, in the event you’ve already accomplished it, present it, show it.”
Bush needed to make use of the specter of drive to renew inspections and achieve confidence that Iraq didn’t possess WMDs which may fall into the arms of terrorists or be used to blackmail the U.S. sooner or later. However he additionally needed to make use of the specter of drive to take away Hussein from energy. He didn’t actually know which of those targets had precedence. He by no means clearly sorted out these overlapping but conflicting impulses, at the same time as every appeared to turn out to be extra compelling.
“One of the best ways to get Saddam to come back into compliance with UN calls for,” wrote Cheney in his memoir, In My Time, “was to persuade him we’d use drive.” Distinguished Democrats didn’t disagree. In early February 2002, Senator Joseph Biden, the Democratic chair of the Overseas Relations Committee, held hearings coping with the State Division’s request for the 2003 finances. Secretary Powell emphasised that the Conflict on Terror was his No. 1 precedence. There have been regimes, Powell stated, that not solely supported terror however had been growing WMDs. They “may present the wherewithal to terrorist organizations to make use of these types of issues in opposition to us.”
Biden requested whether or not this meant that the president was asserting a brand new coverage of preemption, as overseas allies thought he was doing. After Powell denied this allegation, Biden proclaimed his personal fears in regards to the proliferation of WMDs, particularly in Iraq. “I occur to be one which thinks that a technique or one other Saddam has obtained to go and it’s prone to be required to have U.S. drive to have him go,” he stated. “The query is learn how to do it, in my opinion, not if to do it.”
Intelligence reviews over the next months didn’t ease Bush’s anxieties. What alarmed the president was new data that al-Qaeda was searching for organic and chemical weapons, alongside the information that Iraq had had them and used them.
In late Might 2002, analysts reported that al-Qaeda operatives had been transferring into Baghdad, together with the high-ranking jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. “Different people related to al-Qaida,” the top of the State Division’s intelligence workplace knowledgeable Powell, “are working in Baghdad and are involved with colleagues who, in flip, could also be extra immediately concerned in assault planning.” Since 9/11, there had been little al-Qaeda exercise in Iraq, and specialists disagreed in regards to the nature of the connection between the Iraqi dictator and Osama bin Laden. Hardly anybody thought Iraq had something to do with 9/11, however, in keeping with a postwar Senate investigation, there have been “a dozen or so reviews of various reliability mentioning the involvement of Iraq or Iraqi nationals in al-Qa’ida’s efforts to acquire” chemical- and biological-warfare coaching.
Al-Zarqawi was a recognized terrorist, a Jordanian who had fought in Afghanistan, met with bin Laden, and managed his personal coaching camps in Herat. Already infamous for his toughness, radicalism, and barbarity, he lusted to wreak revenge on People. Reviews of al-Zarqawi’s presence in Iraq got here shortly earlier than U.S. coverage makers obtained details about an Iraqi procurement agent’s exercise in Australia. Allegedly, this agent was searching for to purchase GPS software program that might permit the regime to map American cities. Would possibly the Iraqi dictator be plotting a WMD assault inside america?
Al-Zarqawi was additionally collaborating with Ansar al-Islam, an Islamist extremist group that was battling a mainline Kurdish get together for management of northeastern Iraq. A small CIA workforce had infiltrated the area close to the town of Khurmal and reported in July that al-Zarqawi had begun experimenting with organic and chemical brokers that terrorists may put in air flow techniques. In keeping with one of many CIA brokers, “they had been full-bore on organic and chemical warfare … They had been doing a number of testing on donkeys, rabbits, mice, and different animals.”
In Washington, the Joint Chiefs of Workers favored army motion in Khurmal. So did Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz. They didn’t imagine that al-Qaeda could be in Iraq—even a component not managed by Hussein—with out the dictator’s acquiescence. Their suspicions grew when data positioned al-Zarqawi and different al-Qaeda fighters in Baghdad. The CIA brokers in Iraq noticed no proof that the al-Qaeda operatives had been linked to Hussein, however everybody they spoke with believed that Hussein had WMDs.
Bush stated he would act with “deliberation,” using solely the perfect intelligence. However the intelligence was murky, resulting in contentious assessments, conflicting judgments, and unsure suggestions. Generally, the president overstated the proof he had. Hussein’s a risk, Bush advised the press corps in November 2002, “as a result of he’s coping with al-Qaeda.” Though this was an exaggeration, Bush did know that al-Zarqawi had been in Baghdad, had hyperlinks to al-Qaeda, and was experimenting with organic and chemical weapons. And he knew that Hussein supported suicide bombings and celebrated their “martyrs.”
Bush selected to not authorize army motion in Khurmal. On July 31, he advised Blair that he had not but selected conflict—that he would possibly give the Iraqi dictator yet one more probability to abide by his guarantees to permit inspections and destroy his weapons of mass destruction. On the identical time, nevertheless, the president instructed Normal Franks to proceed together with his conflict planning.
Though Bush had not resolved whether or not he meant to disarm or depose the Iraqi dictator, he mobilized public and congressional assist for his insurance policies. In October, the Home permitted a decision authorizing him to make use of army drive, by a vote of 296–133, and the Senate did the identical, 77–23. The political effort in Washington was matched by a diplomatic one in New York. On November 8, the UN Safety Council handed Decision 1441, which demanded inspections and stipulated that the Iraqi regime was already in breach of previous resolutions. Within the administration’s view, this supplied justification for the U.S. to take unilateral motion if it selected to take action.
Bush was training coercive diplomacy, hoping to attain his targets by way of intimidation. “We had been giving Saddam one ultimate alternative,” his British companion on this coverage, Blair, defined in 2011. If Hussein proved recalcitrant, the president’s credibility—and America’s—could be in danger, wherein case coercive diplomacy must finish with a army intervention. The prices of that intervention, nevertheless, had not been calculated.
Bush did need a free, democratic Iraq to emerge if he resorted to army motion, however he had spent little time discussing the establishments, insurance policies, and expenditures that might be required to translate the liberation of Iraq into a greater life for its residents. In a gathering with Normal Franks, Bush requested, “Can we win?”
“Sure, sir,” stated Franks.
“Can we do away with Saddam?” the president requested once more.
“Sure, sir,” stated his basic.
The president didn’t ask, “What then?”
After the invasion became a chaotic, dysfunctional occupation and Iraq’s alleged WMDs weren’t discovered, Bush instructed his director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, to determine a particular mission named the Iraq Survey Group to analyze what had occurred to those lethal armaments. The group’s first director, David Kay, appeared earlier than the Senate Armed Providers Committee on January 28, 2004: “Let me start,” he admitted, “by saying that we had been nearly all flawed” about Iraqi WMD packages. Although chastened by the misreading of Iraqi capabilities, Kay didn’t assume that intelligence analysts had misled coverage makers in regards to the elementary risk. “I believe the world is much safer with the disappearance and elimination of Saddam Hussein.”
The survey group’s second chief, Charles Duelfer, oversaw a part of the interrogation of Saddam Hussein after U.S. forces captured him in December 2003. Duelfer dwelled on Hussein’s “controlling presence.” Hussein “was not a cartoon,” Duelfer emphasised. “He was catastrophically good and intensely gifted in a black, insidious approach,” very like Joseph Stalin, the chief whom Hussein most needed to emulate. And his aspirations had been clear: to thwart Iran, defeat Israel, and dominate the area. To attain these targets, Hussein yearned to accumulate WMDs.
That was Duelfer’s conclusion when, in September 2004, he delivered the ultimate, complete report of the survey group. The proof appeared conclusive: Iraq didn’t have WMD stockpiles, nor any lively packages. However “it was very clear,” Duelfer later wrote in his memoir, Disguise and Search: The Seek for Fact in Iraq, “that Saddam complied with UN disarmament restrictions solely as a tactic.” Hussein’s overriding goals, the survey group affirmed, had been to convey sanctions to an finish and to maneuver forward with securing WMDs. “Just about” no senior Iraqi chief “believed that Saddam had forsaken WMD without end.” Denied his need to be executed by firing squad, Hussein was hanged in jail on December 30, 2006.
Bush determined, initially, to confront Hussein—not invade Iraq. The president feared one other assault, one maybe much more dire than 9/11. Rogue states like Iraq, Bush apprehensive, would possibly share the world’s deadliest weapons with terrorists who desperately needed to inflict ache on America, puncture its air of invincibility, undermine its establishments, and make People doubt the worth of their freedoms.
But concern alone didn’t form the president’s technique. Bush’s religion in American would possibly was equally essential. From the outset of his administration, he aimed to broaden American army capabilities, which already far exceeded these of every other nation. The usage of airpower, particular forces, and new applied sciences to expel the Taliban from Kabul in 2001 bolstered his sense of energy. America’s attain appeared to don’t have any bounds. Washington, he felt, should not be dissuaded from serving to its associates and defending its pursuits, particularly in areas harboring essential uncooked supplies and vitality reserves. The U.S. had the facility to take action and wanted to show it.
Concern and energy had been bolstered by hubris. Bush insisted that each one folks needed to stay by American values—to be free to say what they happy and pray as they wished. If america overthrew a brutal dictator, American officers may take satisfaction in realizing that they had been enriching the lives of his benighted topics.
Spurred by concern, rising confidence in American energy, and a way of ethical advantage, Bush embraced coercive diplomacy. The technique was interesting as a result of nearly everybody surrounding Bush believed that Hussein’s defiance wouldn’t stop till he was confronted by superior drive. However the technique was adopted with out a clear aim—regime change or WMD elimination.
When, after the invasion, these weapons weren’t discovered, Bush shifted to a extra ideological discourse. “The failure of Iraq democracy,” he warned, “would embolden terrorists all over the world … Success will ship forth the information, from Damascus to Teheran—that freedom could be the way forward for each nation.” When the U.S. obtained locked in an insurrectionary battle and Islamic fundamentalism surged, neither Bush’s targets nor his technique appeared to make sense. His critics mocked his naivete, accused him of dishonesty, and ridiculed his democratic zealotry.
These critics underestimated Bush’s qualities and misconstrued his considering. Bush failed not as a result of he was a weak chief, a naive ideologue, or a manipulative liar. He was at all times absolutely in control of the administration’s Iraq coverage, and he didn’t rush to conflict. He went to conflict not to make Iraq democratic however to take away a murderous dictator who supposed to restart his weapons packages, supported suicide missions, and cultivated hyperlinks with terrorist teams (even when not, truly, al-Qaeda).
In these slim goals, Bush succeeded. One other assault on American soil didn’t happen and he did eradicate a brutal, erratic, and harmful tyrant. However he didn’t obtain that at a suitable price. The conflict proved catastrophic for Iraq. Over the following years, greater than 200,000 Iraqis perished because of the conflict, rebellion, and civic strife, and greater than 9 million folks—a few third of the prewar inhabitants—had been internally displaced or fled overseas.
The intervention additionally exacted a human, monetary, financial, and psychological toll on america that hardly anybody had foreseen. The conflict enhanced Iranian energy within the Persian Gulf, diverted consideration and assets from the continuing battle inside Afghanistan, divided America’s European allies, and supplied further alternative for China’s rise and Russia’s revanchism. The battle besmirched America’s status and heightened anti-Americanism. It fueled the sense of grievance amongst Muslims, accentuated perceptions of American conceitedness, sophisticated the battle in opposition to terrorism, and dampened hopes for democracy and peace amongst Arabs and Jews within the Center East. Somewhat than having unfold liberty, the president and his advisers left workplace witnessing the worldwide recession of freedom.
Concern, energy, and hubris clarify America’s march to conflict in Iraq. By considering in any other case, by simplifying the story and believing that each one could be effectively if we solely had extra trustworthy officers, stronger leaders, and extra lifelike coverage makers, we delude ourselves. Tragedy happens not as a result of our leaders are naive, silly, and corrupt. Tragedy happens when earnest and accountable officers attempt their greatest to make America safer and find yourself making issues a lot worse. We have to ask why this occurs. We have to admire the hazards that lurk when there’s an excessive amount of concern, an excessive amount of energy, an excessive amount of hubris—and inadequate prudence.
This text is customized from Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq.
