Decision Points

by George W. Bush

  By March 2003, the battle plan was ready. After more than a year of probing and questioning, Tommy Franks and his team had developed an operation that I was confident would overthrow Saddam Hussein swiftly and decisively, while minimizing the loss of American and Iraqi life. The one remaining uncertainty was the role of Turkey. For months, we had been pressing the Turks to give us access to their territory so that we could send fifteen thousand troops from the Fourth Infantry Division to enter Iraq from the north. We promised to provide economic and military aid, help Turkey access key programs from the International Monetary Fund, and maintain our strong support for Turkey’s admission to the European Union.

  At one point, it looked like we would get permission. Prime Minister Abdullah Gül’s cabinet approved our request. But when the Turkish parliament held a final vote on March 1, it came up just short of passage. I was frustrated and disappointed. On one of the most important requests we had ever made, Turkey, our NATO ally, had let America down.

  Don and Tommy held the Fourth Infantry Division in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, where it could deploy through Turkey if the government changed its mind or, otherwise, join the invasion from Kuwait. We also planned to deploy a thousand paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne to the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. This wasn’t our first choice, but at least we would have a foothold for a northern front.

  In the south, we had more than 150,000 American troops on Iraq’s border, with some 90,000 more stationed in the Gulf region. I had made it abundantly clear that we would use them if necessary. Coercive diplomacy had brought us to our maximum point of leverage. The military and diplomatic tracks had fully converged. The choice between war and peace belonged to Saddam Hussein alone.

  For months, the National Security Council had been meeting almost daily to discuss Iraq. I knew where all my advisers stood. Dick Cheney was concerned about the slow diplomatic process. He warned that Saddam Hussein could be using the time to produce weapons, hide weapons, or plot an attack. At one of our weekly lunches that winter, Dick asked me directly, “Are you going to take care of this guy, or not?” That was his way of saying he thought we had given diplomacy enough time. I appreciated Dick’s blunt advice. I told him I wasn’t ready to move yet. “Okay, Mr. President, it’s your call,” he said. Then he deployed one of his favorite lines. “That’s why they pay you the big bucks,” he said with a gentle smile.

  Don Rumsfeld was not as definitive. He assured me the military would be ready if I gave the order. He also warned that we couldn’t leave 150,000 troops sitting on Iraq’s border forever. The logistical strain of supporting that many forces was immense. At some point, the buildup would lose its coercive value because Saddam would conclude we weren’t serious about sending the troops in.

  Condi was careful to stay neutral at the NSC meetings, but she gave me her opinion in private. She had been a strong supporter of inspections. But after meeting with Blix and his team, she was convinced Saddam would do nothing but stall. She reluctantly concluded that the only way to enforce the UN resolution would be to use the military option.

  Colin had the deepest reservations. In a one-on-one meeting in early 2003, he had told me he believed we could manage the threat of Iraq diplomatically. He also told me he was not fully comfortable with the war plans. That did not surprise me. The operation Tommy Franks had conceived would use about a third as many troops as we had in the Gulf War. It marked a stark departure from the belief that America could win wars only by deploying massive, decisive force—commonly known as the Powell Doctrine.

  I was pleased when Colin told me he had shared his concerns about the plan with Tommy. Colin had been chairman of the Joint Chiefs during Desert Storm, and I was confident Tommy would take his input seriously. While I was still hopeful diplomacy would work, I told Colin it was possible that we would reach the point where war was the only option left. Neither of us wanted war, but I asked if he would support military action as a last resort. “If this is what you have to do,” he said, “I’m with you, Mr. President.”

  On Sunday morning, March 16, I boarded Air Force One and winged my way to the Azores Islands, a Portuguese territory about two thirds of the way from Washington to Lisbon. I was headed to a last-minute summit on diplomatic strategy with Tony Blair, José Maria Aznar, and Prime Minister José Barroso of Portugal. With the French, Germans, and Russians opposed to the second UN resolution, and the Mexicans and Chileans unwilling to provide their votes, we all agreed the diplomatic track had reached its end. We planned to withdraw the second UN resolution Monday morning. That evening, I would give Saddam Hussein and his sons forty-eight hours to leave the country, a final opportunity to avoid war.

  With three steadfast European allies at the Azores Islands, (from left) José Barroso, Tony Blair, and José Maria Aznar. White House/Eric Draper

  Tony’s critical vote in parliament would come Tuesday. He told me he would resign if the vote failed, meaning that Great Britain would withdraw from the military coalition. I never imagined I would be following a British parliamentary vote so closely, let alone pulling for the Labour Party prime minister. I shook hands with my friend and his team as we left the Azores. “I hope that’s not the last time we ever see them,” Condi said on the walk to Air Force One.

  The flight home was long and quiet. After so much planning and waiting, the moment had arrived. Unless Saddam fled the country, we would be at war in three days. I was deeply disappointed that diplomacy had failed. But I had promised the American people, our allies, and the world that we would enforce the UN resolutions. I was not going to break my word.

  For months I had solicited advice, listened to a variety of opinions, and considered the counterarguments. Some believed we could contain Saddam by keeping the inspectors in Iraq. But I didn’t see how. If we were to tell Saddam he had another chance—after declaring this was his last chance—we would shatter our credibility and embolden him.

  Others suggested that the threat wasn’t as serious as we thought. That was easy for them to say. They weren’t responsible for protecting the country. I remembered the shattering pain of 9/11, a surprise attack for which we had received no warning. This time we had a warning like a blaring siren. Years of intelligence pointed overwhelmingly to the conclusion that Saddam had WMD. He had used them in the past. He had not met his responsibility to prove their destruction. He had refused to cooperate with the inspectors, even with the threat of an invasion on his doorstep. The only logical conclusion was that he was hiding WMD. And given his support of terror and his sworn hatred of America, there was no way to know where those weapons would end up.

  Others alleged that America’s real intent was to control Iraq’s oil or satisfy Israel. Those theories were false. I was sending our troops into combat to protect the American people.

  I knew the cost would be high. But inaction had a cost, too. Given everything we knew, allowing Saddam to stay in power would have amounted to an enormous gamble. I would have had to bet that either every major intelligence agency was wrong or that Saddam would have a change of heart. After seeing the horror of 9/11, that was not a chance I was willing to take. Military action was my last resort. But I believed it was necessary.

  The next day, Monday, March 17, 2003, Ambassador John Negroponte withdrew the second resolution at the UN. That night, I addressed the nation from the Cross Hall of the White House. “The United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities, so we will rise to ours,” I said, “… Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within forty-eight hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing.”

  The next two days felt like a week. We did get some good news on Tuesday: Tony Blair had won his vote in parliament by a solid margin. Great Britain would be at our side.

  George Tenet and Colin Powell kept me updated on the latest developments with Iraq. Our last-ditch hope was that Saddam would agree to go into exile. At one point, an offer from a Middle Easter
n government to send Saddam to Belarus with $1 to $2 billion looked like it might gain traction. Instead, in one of his last acts, Saddam ordered the tongue of a dissident slashed out and left the man to bleed to death. The dictator of Iraq had made his decision. He chose war.

  On Wednesday morning, I convened the entire National Security Council in the Situation Room, where I gave the order to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom. Six hours later, I got an unexpected call from Don Rumsfeld. He said that he had something major to discuss. He and George Tenet were on their way to the Oval Office.

  “What’s going on?” I asked when they arrived.

  “Mr. President,” George said, “we think we have a chance to kill Saddam Hussein.”

  What followed was one of the most extraordinary meetings of my presidency. With the full national security team gathered in the Oval Office, advisers scrambled in and out providing the latest updates from the field. A network of intelligence sources in Iraq reported that Saddam and some of his family were likely to spend the night at a complex outside Baghdad called Dora Farms. If we bombed the site, we might be able to decapitate the regime.

  I was skeptical. If I ordered the airstrike, we would be departing from our well-conceived plan, which called for two days of covert operations before the air war commenced. I pictured all that could go wrong. Two F-117 bombers would have to fly unescorted over a heavily fortified city. My biggest concern was that the intelligence was a trap. What if it was not Saddam headed to Dora Farms, but a busload of kids? The first images of the war would show us killing innocent Iraqi children.

  The safest course was to stick with the plan. But one thought kept recurring: By killing the dictator we might be able to end the war before it began, and spare lives. I felt a responsibility to seize this opportunity. General Myers briefed me that the planes were gassed up and the Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles were programmed. I turned to the team gathered in the Oval Office and said, “Let’s go.” Just after the forty-eight-hour deadline expired, the bombing began.

  Condi called early the next morning. A witness had seen a man who resembled Saddam being carried out of the rubble at Dora Farms. But as the days passed, the reports changed. The operation was a harbinger of things to come. Our intent was right. The pilots performed bravely. But the intelligence was wrong.

  The day after the opening shot at Dora Farms, a flurry of military activity commenced. From Iraq’s southern border with Kuwait, the V Corps and First Marine Expeditionary Force started their parallel charge to Baghdad. Meanwhile, our air forces bombarded the capital. In the initial wave of the strike, more than three hundred cruise missiles—followed by stealth bombers—took out most of Saddam’s military command and government headquarters. Unlike the firebombing of Dresden, the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the use of napalm on Vietnam, our attack spared much of Baghdad’s civilian population and infrastructure. It was not only shock and awe, but one of the most precise air raids in history.

  In southern Iraq, Marines deployed to protect key oil fields. Polish Special Forces and U.S. Navy SEALs secured offshore oil infrastructure. A British armored division liberated the southern city of Basra and the vital port of Umm Qasr. The oil fires and sabotage we feared never materialized, and we had cleared a path for humanitarian aid to flow into Iraq.

  In northern Iraq, paratroopers seized key transit points and helped build an air bridge for supplies and humanitarian aid. With support from Kurdish forces, the Zarqawi camp was destroyed. In western Iraq, American, British, and Australian Special Forces patrolled the desert for Scud missiles and made sure Saddam never had the chance to attack Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, or other allies in the region.

  By the end of the second week, our troops had reached the outskirts of Baghdad. They had endured blinding sandstorms, searing heat, and heavy hazmat gear to protect against the biological or chemical attack we feared. They faced fierce resistance from Saddam’s most loyal forces, who attacked from civilian vehicles and hid behind human shields. Yet they completed the fastest armored advance in the history of warfare. Along the way, they handed out candy and medicine to children and risked their lives to protect Iraqi civilians.

  On April 4, Sergeant Paul Ray Smith and his men were securing a courtyard near the Baghdad airport. Saddam’s Republican Guards ambushed them, wounding several of Sergeant Smith’s men. Exposed to enemy fire, Sergeant Smith manned a machine gun and kept shooting until he suffered a mortal wound. The Army’s after-action report revealed that he had killed fifty enemy soldiers and saved as many as one hundred Americans. For his act of bravery, Paul Ray Smith became the first soldier in the war on terror to earn the Medal of Honor. In April 2005, I presented the medal to his widow, Birgit, and young son at the White House.

  The day after Sergeant Smith gave his life to secure the airport, the Third Infantry Division entered Baghdad. The First Marine Division arrived two days later. At the NSC meeting on the morning of April 9, Tommy Franks reported that the Iraqi capital could fall at any moment. My next meeting was with President Rudolf Schuster of Slovakia. His young democracy, one of forty-eight countries that had pledged military or logistical support in Iraq, had deployed a unit trained to manage the impact of a WMD attack. President Schuster had tears in his eyes as he described his nation’s pride in helping liberate Iraq. I kept that moment in mind when I heard critics allege that America acted unilaterally. The false charge denigrated our allies and pissed me off.

  When the meeting ended, Dan Bartlett told me I ought to take a look at the TV. I didn’t keep one in the Oval Office, so I went to the area outside where my personal assistants sat. I watched as a crowd of Iraqis in Baghdad’s Firdos Square cheered while a Marine vehicle dragged down a forty-foot-tall statue of Saddam.

  For twenty days I had been filled with anxiety. Now I was overwhelmed with relief and pride. I was also mindful of the challenges ahead. Saddam’s forces still controlled parts of northern Iraq, including his hometown of Tikrit. There were pockets of resistance from ruthless Baathist fighters called Fedayeen Saddam. And Saddam and his sons were on the run. As I told José Maria Aznar when I called to share the news, “You won’t see us doing any victory dances or anything.”

  I should have followed my own advice. Tommy Franks felt it was important to show that a new phase in the war had begun. As a way to do that, I decided to give a speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was returning home after ten months at sea. The five thousand sailors, airmen, and Marines aboard the carrier had supported operations in both the Afghan and Iraqi theaters.

  On May 1, 2003, I climbed into the seat of a military jet for the first time in more than thirty years. Navy pilot Scott Zellem, known by his call sign as Z-Man, briefed us on the safety procedures at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego.*** Commander John “Skip” Lussier, a fine pilot with more than five hundred carrier landings on his résumé, got our S-3B Viking off the ground. At one point, he handed the controls to me, and I flew the jet for a few minutes over the Pacific Ocean. I was rusty, but after a few porpoises I steadied out. The commander wisely took over as we approached the carrier. He guided the plane down to the deck and caught the final arresting wire.

  Aboard the Lincoln, I visited with the landing crew, marveled at takeoffs and landings in the catapult zone, and ate chow with the sailors and Marines. “My fellow Americans,” I said in my speech, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. … The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. Then we will leave, and we will leave behind a free Iraq.”

  Aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. White House/Paul Morse

  I hadn’t noticed the large banner my staff had placed on the bridge of the ship, positioned for TV. It read “Mission Accomplished.” It was intended as a tribute to the folks aboard the Lincoln, which had just completed the longest deployment for an aircraft carrier of its class. Instead, it looked like I was doing the victory dance I had warned
against. “Mission Accomplished” became a shorthand criticism for all that subsequently went wrong in Iraq. My speech made clear that our work was far from done. But all the explaining in the world could not reverse the perception. Our stagecraft had gone awry. It was a big mistake.

  With Saddam gone from power, our central objective became helping the Iraqis develop a democracy that could govern itself, sustain itself, defend itself, and serve as an ally in the war on terror. The objective was ambitious, but I was optimistic. Many of the dire contingencies we had planned for and worried about before the war had not come to pass. There had been no Fortress Baghdad, no massive oil field fires, no widespread starvation, no civilian massacre by Saddam, no WMD attack on our troops, and no terrorist attack on America or our allies.

  There was one important contingency for which we had not adequately prepared. In the weeks after liberation, Baghdad descended into a state of lawlessness. I was appalled to see looters carrying precious artifacts out of Iraq’s national museum and to read reports of kidnapping, murder, and rape. Part of the explanation was that Saddam had released tens of thousands of criminals shortly before the war. But the problem was deeper than that. Saddam had warped the psychology of Iraqis in a way we didn’t fully understand. The suspicion and fear that he had cultivated for decades were rising to the surface.

  “What the hell is happening?” I asked during an NSC meeting in late April. “Why isn’t anybody stopping these looters?”

  The short answer was that there was a manpower shortage in Baghdad. The Iraqi police force had collapsed when the regime fell. The Iraqi army had melted away. Because of Turkey’s decision, many of the American troops who liberated Baghdad had been required to continue north to free the rest of the country. The damage done in those early days created problems that would linger for years. The Iraqis were looking for someone to protect them. By failing to secure Baghdad, we missed our first chance to show that we could.