Decision Points

by George W. Bush

  The security vacuum was accompanied by a political vacuum. I decided to name an American administrator to provide order while we worked to develop a legitimate government. The idea grew into the Coalition Provisional Authority, authorized by a United Nations resolution and led by a distinguished foreign service officer and counterterrorism expert, Ambassador L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer.

  Jerry impressed me from the start. He was an aggressive leader who shared my conviction that the Iraqis were capable of democracy. He knew it would take time for them to write a constitution and prepare for elections. In one of our first meetings, he told me he’d read a study of previous postwar operations and thought we needed more troops in Iraq.

  I raised the question of troop levels with Don Rumsfeld and the military leadership. They assured me we had enough. They anticipated the arrival of more forces from Coalition partners and believed we could train an Iraqi army and police force fairly quickly. They were also concerned about stirring up Iraqi nationalism and inciting violence by appearing to occupy the country.

  I accepted Don and the military’s judgment. The chaos and violence we witnessed was alarming, but it was still early. The situation reminded me of the difficult first days in Afghanistan. I refused to give up on our plan before it had a chance to work.

  Bremer arrived in Iraq on May 12, 2003. One of his first tasks was to assemble an Iraqi Governing Council that would take responsibility for key ministries and prepare for a formal return of sovereignty. Navigating Iraq’s tribal, religious, and ethnic politics was highly complicated. But Jerry and his team did a superb job. The Governing Council took office in July, just four months after liberation. It included twenty-five Iraqis from all backgrounds. Iraqis still had a long way to go, but they had taken their first step toward a representative government.

  Forming the Governing Council was an important way to demonstrate that Saddam’s tyranny was gone forever. With that in mind, Jerry issued two orders shortly after his arrival in Baghdad. One declared that certain members of Saddam’s Baath Party would not be eligible to serve in the new government of Iraq. The other formally disbanded the Iraqi army, which had largely disappeared on its own.

  In some ways, the orders achieved their objectives. Iraq’s Shia and Kurds—the majority of the population—welcomed the clean break from Saddam. But the orders had a psychological impact I did not foresee. Many Sunnis took them as a signal they would have no place in Iraq’s future. This was especially dangerous in the case of the army. Thousands of armed men had just been told they were not wanted. Instead of signing up for the new military, many joined the insurgency.

  In retrospect, I should have insisted on more debate on Jerry’s orders, especially on what message disbanding the army would send and how many Sunnis the de-Baathification would affect. Overseen by longtime exile Ahmed Chalabi, the de-Baathification program turned out to cut much deeper than we expected, including mid-level party members like teachers. It is possible we would have issued the orders anyway. They were tough calls, and any alternative would have created a separate set of problems. Had the Shia concluded that we were not serious about ending the era of the Baath Party, they may have turned against the coalition, rejected the goal of a unified Iraqi democracy, and aligned themselves with Iran. There is no way to know for sure what would have happened, but the discussion would have better prepared us for what followed.

  The security situation continued to deteriorate over the summer. Iraq was becoming a magnet for extremists—Baathist insurgents, Fedayeen Saddam, foreign terrorists affiliated with al Qaeda, and, later, militant Shia and agents of Iran. These groups had different ideologies, but they shared an immediate goal: to drive America out of Iraq. They knew they could never win a direct fight against our troops, so they deployed roadside bombs and attacked nonmilitary targets such as the Jordanian embassy and the UN complex in Baghdad. Another tactic was to kidnap reconstruction workers and execute them in grisly Internet videos. Their strategy was to present an image of Iraq as hopeless and unwinnable, swinging American public opinion against the war and forcing us to withdraw as we had in Vietnam.

  To an extent, they succeeded. It was difficult for the average American to differentiate the twisted terrorists from the millions of ordinary Iraqis who were grateful for liberation. We tried to get the good news out—the relative calm in the Kurdish north and Shia south, the rebuilding of schools and hospitals, and the training of a new Iraqi army. But in the eyes of the media—and, therefore, of the public—none of this quiet progress could compete with the bombings and the beheadings.

  In early July, a reporter asked me about attacks on our troops. “There are some who feel like that if they attack us that we may decide to leave prematurely,” I said. “… My answer is: Bring ’em on.”

  Anytime I spoke on Iraq, there were multiple audiences listening, each of which had a different perspective. I thought about four in particular.

  The first audience was the American people. Their support was essential to funding and fighting the war. I believed that most Americans wanted to win in Iraq. But if the cost seemed too high or victory too distant, they would grow weary. It was important for me to reinforce the importance of the cause and our determination to prevail.

  The second audience was our troops. They had volunteered to serve and were risking their lives far from home. They and their families needed to know I believed in them, stood firmly behind their mission, and would not make military decisions based on politics.

  The third audience was the Iraqi people. Some wanted us gone, but I was convinced that the vast majority of Iraqis wanted us to stay long enough to help a democratic society emerge. It was important that I communicate my resolve to complete the work we had begun. If Iraqis suspected we were going to abandon them, they would turn to other sources of protection.

  The final audience was the enemy. They believed their acts of savagery could affect our decisions. I had to make clear they never would.

  My “bring ’em on” comment was intended to show confidence in our troops and signal that the enemy could never shake our will. But the firestorm of criticism showed that I had left a wrong impression with other audiences. I learned from the experience and paid closer attention to how I communicated with each audience in the years ahead.

  By the fall of 2003, the international coalition in Iraq was comprised of ground forces from thirty countries, including two multinational divisions led by Great Britain and Poland, and logistical support from many others. Coalition forces had discovered torture chambers, rape rooms, and mass graves containing thousands of bodies. They found a facility containing state-of-the-art hazmat suits and syringes with the antidote for VX nerve agent. But they had not found the stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons that virtually every major intelligence agency in the world believed Saddam had.

  When Saddam didn’t use WMD on our troops, I was relieved. When we didn’t discover the stockpile soon after the fall of Baghdad, I was surprised. When the whole summer passed without finding any, I was alarmed. The press corps constantly raised the question, “Where are the WMD?”

  I was asking the same thing. The military and intelligence teams assured me they were looking constantly. They examined hidden sites Saddam had used during the Gulf War. They collected intelligence and responded to tips. At one point, the CIA heard that large canisters had been spotted from a bridge over the Euphrates River. Navy frogmen deployed to the scene. They found nothing. A high-ranking official from the United Arab Emirates brought drawings of tunnels he believed Saddam had used to hide weapons. We dug up the ground. Nothing materialized.

  George Tenet recruited David Kay, the UN’s chief weapons inspector in Iraq in 1991, to lead a new inspections team. Kay conducted a thorough search of Iraq and found irrefutable evidence that Saddam had lied to the world and violated Resolution 1441. “Iraq’s WMD programs spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars, and were elaborately shielded by secur
ity and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom,” he told Congress in October 2003. But there was one thing Kay did not find: the WMD stockpiles everyone expected.

  The left trotted out a new mantra: “Bush Lied, People Died.” The charge was illogical. If I wanted to mislead the country into war, why would I pick an allegation that was certain to be disproven publicly shortly after we invaded the country? The charge was also dishonest. Members of the previous administration, John Kerry, John Edwards, and the vast majority of Congress had all read the same intelligence that I had and concluded Iraq had WMD. So had intelligence agencies around the world. Nobody was lying. We were all wrong. The absence of WMD stockpiles did not change the fact that Saddam was a threat. In January 2004, David Kay said, “It was reasonable to conclude that Iraq posed an imminent threat. … What we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place potentially than in fact we thought it was even before the war.”

  Still, I knew the failure to find WMD would transform public perception of the war. While the world was undoubtedly safer with Saddam gone, the reality was that I had sent American troops into combat based in large part on intelligence that proved false. That was a massive blow to our credibility—my credibility—that would shake the confidence of the American people.

  No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn’t find the weapons. I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do.

  While the fight in Iraq was more difficult than I expected, I remained optimistic. I was inspired by the courage of the one hundred thousand Iraqis who volunteered to join their security forces, by leaders who stepped forward to replace members of the Governing Council who had been assassinated, and by ordinary people who longed for freedom.

  Nothing gave me more confidence than our troops. Thanks to them, most of the senior members of Saddam’s regime had been captured or killed by the end of 2003. In July, we got an intelligence tip that Saddam’s two sons were in the Mosul area of northern Iraq. Joined by Special Forces, troops from the 101st Airborne under the command of General David Petraeus laid siege to the building where Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay, were hiding. After a six-hour firefight, both were dead. We later received intelligence that Saddam had ordered the killing of Barbara and Jenna in return for the death of his sons.

  Two days after the fall of Baghdad, Laura and I visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. We met with almost a hundred wounded service members and their families. Some were from Afghanistan; many were from Iraq. It was a heart-wrenching experience to look into a hospital bed and see the consequences of sending Americans into combat. One comfort was that I knew they would receive superb medical care from the skilled and compassionate professionals of the military health-care system.

  Visiting the wounded was both the toughest and most inspiring part of my job. Here, with Sergeant Patrick Hagood at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. White House/Paul Morse

  At Walter Reed, I met a member of the Delta Team, one of our elite Special Forces units. For classification reasons, I cannot give his name. He had lost the lower half of his leg. “I appreciate your service,” I said as I shook his hand. “I’m sorry you got hurt.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for me, Mr. President,” he replied. “Just get me another leg so I can go back in.”

  At the National Naval Medical Center, I met forty-two-year-old Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant Guadalupe Denogean. He had been wounded a few weeks earlier, when a rocket-propelled grenade struck his vehicle. The explosion blew off part of his skull and his right hand; shrapnel penetrated his upper back and legs, and his eardrums burst.

  When asked if he had any requests, Guadalupe said he had two. He asked for a promotion for the corporal who had saved his life. And he wanted to become an American citizen. After 9/11, I had issued an executive order making all foreign nationals serving in the military eligible for immediate citizenship.

  Guadalupe had come to the United States from Mexico as a boy. He picked fruit to help his family make a living until he joined the Marines at age seventeen. After serving for twenty-five years—and deploying for two wars with Iraq—he wanted the flag on his uniform to be his own. That day in the hospital, Laura and I attended his naturalization ceremony, conducted by Director Eduardo Aguirre of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. Guadalupe raised his right hand, covered in bandages, and swore the oath of citizenship.

  Witnessing Master Gunnery Sergeant Guadalupe Denogean become an an American citizen. White House/Eric Draper

  A few moments later, he was followed by Marine Lance Corporal O.J. Santamaria, a native of the Philippines. He was twenty-one years old and had suffered a serious wound in Iraq. He was hooked up to an intravenous blood transfusion. About halfway through the ceremony, he broke down in tears. He powered through to the end of the oath. I was proud to respond, “My fellow American.”

  In the fall of 2003, Andy Card came to me with an idea. Was I interested in making a trip to Iraq to thank the troops? You bet I was.

  The risk was high. But Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin, working with the Secret Service and White House Military Office, came up with a way to pull it off. The week of Thanksgiving, I would travel to Crawford and tell the press I was staying for the full holiday. Then, on Wednesday night, I would slip out of the ranch and fly to Baghdad.

  I told Laura several weeks ahead of the trip. She was reassured when I told her we would abort the trip if news of it leaked. I told Barbara and Jenna about thirty minutes before I left. “I’m scared, Dad,” Barbara said. “Be safe. Come home.”

  Condi and I climbed into an unmarked Suburban, our baseball caps pulled low, and headed for the airport. To maintain secrecy, there was no motorcade. I had nearly forgotten what a traffic jam felt like, but riding on I-35 the day before Thanksgiving brought the memories back. We crept along, passing an occasional car full of counterassault agents, and made it to Air Force One on schedule. Timeliness was important. We needed to land as the sun was setting in Baghdad.

  We flew from Texas to Andrews Air Force Base, where we switched to the twin version of Air Force One and took off for Iraq. The plane carried a skeleton crew of staff, military and Secret Service personnel, and a press contingent sworn to secrecy. I slept little on the ten-and-a-half-hour flight. As we neared Baghdad, I showered, shaved, and headed to the cockpit to watch the landing. Colonel Mark Tillman manned the controls. I trusted him completely. As Laura always put it, “That Mark can sure land this plane.”

  Sitting in the cockpit of Air Force One on the approach to Baghdad. White House/Tina Hager

  With the sun dropping on the horizon, I could make out the minarets of the Baghdad skyline. The city seemed so serene from above. But we were concerned about surface-to-air missiles on the ground. While Joe Hagin assured us the military had cleared a wide perimeter around Baghdad International Airport, the mood aboard the plane was anxious. As we descended in a corkscrew pattern with the shades drawn, some staffers joined together in a prayer session. At the last moment, Colonel Tillman leveled out the plane and kissed the runway, no sweat.

  Waiting for me at the airport were Jerry Bremer and General Ricardo Sanchez, the senior ground commander in Iraq. “Welcome to a free Iraq,” Jerry said.

  We went to the mess hall, where six hundred troops had gathered for a Thanksgiving meal. Jerry was supposed to be the guest of honor. He told the troops he had a holiday message from the president. “Let’s see if we’ve got anybody more senior here …,” he said.

  That was my cue. I walked out from behind a curtain and onto the stage of the packed hall. Many of the stunned troops hesitated for a split second, then let out deafening whoops and hooahs. Some had tears running down their faces. I was swept up by the emotion. These were the souls who just eight months earlier had liberated Iraq on my orders. Many had seen combat. Some had seen friends perish. I took a deep breath and said, �
��I bring a message on behalf of America. We thank you for your service, we’re proud of you, and America stands solidly behind you.”

  After the speech, I had dinner with the troops and moved to a side room to meet with four members of the Governing Council, the mayor of Baghdad, and members of the city council. One woman, the director of a maternity hospital, told me how women had more opportunities now than they had ever dreamed about under Saddam. I knew Iraq still faced big problems, but the trip reinforced my faith that they could be overcome.

  The most dangerous part left was the takeoff from Baghdad. We were told to keep all lights out and maintain total telephone silence until we hit ten thousand feet. I was still on an emotional high. But the exhilaration of the moment was replaced by an eerie feeling of uncertainty as we blasted off the ground and climbed silently through the night.

  After a few tense minutes, we reached a safe altitude. I called one of the operators on the plane and asked him to connect me with Laura. “Where are you?” she asked. “I am on the way home,” I said. “Tell the girls all is well.”

  She sounded relieved. It turns out she’d had a little mix-up with the timing. She couldn’t remember whether I said I would be in the air at 10:00 a.m. or noon. At 10:15, she had called a Secret Service agent at the ranch and asked if he had heard from President Bush. “Let me check,” the agent said.

  A few seconds passed. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “They are ninety minutes away.”

  She realized he was talking about Mother and Dad, who were on their way to spend Thanksgiving with us. “No, I mean my George,” she said. The agent paused. “Well, ma’am,” he said, “we show he is in the ranch house.”