by Dick Cheney
As Dick Cheney, one of the authors of this book, recalls:
I realized how much had changed when I visited the Soviet Union in October 1990 as secretary of defense. I toured Soviet military installations, including the Moscow Air Defense Center—the heavily fortified bunker from which the Soviets would have coordinated portions of their operations if there had been a nuclear war between our two nations. No American had seen it before. When I met with the Soviet minister of defense and with Soviet leader Gorbachev, we discussed Soviet efforts at military and economic reform. I had another agenda item, as well. We needed to find out, as we prepared to take military action to liberate Kuwait, whether the Soviets had provided Saddam with any weapons we didn’t know about. A few years earlier, we could not have dreamed of having such a conversation with our Cold War adversary, but now Gorbachev, Shevardnadze, and defense minister Dmitri Yazov were open with me, and assured me we wouldn’t be surprised.
Once Operation Desert Storm was under way a few months later, the Soviets attempted unsuccessfully to negotiate a cease-fire that would have paused the fighting based on a promise from Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait. We did not accept it. We knew Saddam’s “promises” were meaningless, and we made clear Saddam had actually to withdraw. The Soviets, who had lost much of their influence in the Middle East beginning when Anwar Sadat expelled Soviet advisors from Egypt in 1972, were still trying to be relevant in the region and on the world stage. I suspect they also were trying to avoid an embarrassing military defeat for their client state, Iraq.
President Bush launched the air war on January 16, 1991. A few weeks later, on February 23, 1991, the ground war began. Within one hundred hours, U.S. forces had defeated the Iraqis. In the years since, the decision to stop the fighting and not to go all the way to Baghdad has been a target of criticism. Some say if the United States had toppled Saddam in 1991, we would not have had to go back to Iraq in 2003. On the other hand, some argue that we were right not to remove him in 1991, and we shouldn’t have removed him in 2003, either. The truth is that our mission in 1991 was to liberate Kuwait. We had built an extensive coalition, including with other Arab states, to do that. The coalition would not have held together had we pushed on to Baghdad.
In 2003, the world was a very different place. Terrorists had killed three thousand people in the worst attack on our homeland in history. We had evidence that al Qaeda was planning additional attacks and that they were seeking the world’s deadliest weapons. We knew, for example, that they were trying to manufacture anthrax and that Osama bin Laden had met with Pakistani nuclear scientists in an effort to procure nuclear weapons. We had to do everything necessary to ensure al Qaeda was unable to launch another, far more lethal attack.
Saddam’s Iraq was the most likely nexus between the terrorists and the devastating weapons they sought. Twelve years, sixteen UN Security Council resolutions, international sanctions, and no-fly zones had failed to diminish the threat Saddam posed. As the sanctions regime began to crumble, the calculation about the nature of Iraq’s threat to the United States and the need for military action to defeat Saddam was very different in 2003 than it was in 1991. We did the right thing in 1991 and in 2003.
THROUGHOUT THE COLD WAR, the size and structure of America’s military had largely been determined by the need to defend the United States and our allies against the Soviet Union. For example, we had to maintain the ability to deploy ten divisions to Europe within ten days of a decision to mobilize in response to a Soviet conventional invasion of Western Europe. As the Cold War came to an end, that requirement and others like it were no longer relevant. Planners in the Defense Department began thinking through what kind of force posture was needed now that the nation’s most significant enemy had essentially imploded.
The United States was able to make significant reductions in our conventional forces in Europe as well as in our strategic nuclear forces. But it was clear that the dissolution of the Soviet Union did not mean the end of global threats to the United States. We needed to ensure our force was structured and sized based on our new security needs and strategy. As the George H. W. Bush administration came to an end in January 1993, the Defense Department published the Regional Defense Strategy, laying out what the United States must do to maintain the victory we had won. The strategy identified four key goals for America’s defense efforts:
• to deter or defeat any attack against the United States and to honor our historic and treaty commitments;
• to strengthen and extend mutual defense alliances;
• to preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests; and
• to preclude conflict by reducing sources of regional instability and to limit the violence should conflict occur.
With respect to the Middle East, this meant:
We must be prepared to act decisively in the Middle East/Persian Gulf region as we did in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm if our vital interests are threatened anew. We must also be prepared to counter the terrorism, insurgency, and subversion that adversaries may use to threaten governments supportive of U.S. security interests. . . . To discourage the rise of a challenger hostile to our interests in the region, we must maintain a level of forward military presence adequate to reassure our friends and deter aggressors and present a credible crisis response capability.
The guidance made clear there should be no diminution of American strength, power, or involvement in the world. “Only a nation that is strong enough to act decisively,” the strategy document said, “can provide the leadership needed to encourage others to resist aggression.” Weakness and indecisiveness on the part of the United States have always been, and will always be, provocative to our adversaries.
ON FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1993, Islamic terrorists drove a van containing a 1,400-pound bomb into the garage of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. They detonated the explosive shortly after noon, blowing a crater six stories deep. The attack killed six people and injured more than a thousand. In response to this act of war, the U.S. government issued an indictment. One of the lead prosecutors on the case, Andrew McCarthy, put it this way: “Our response was to call in not the Marines, but the prosecutors.” While the enemy continued to plot, plan, and launch attacks over the next few years, McCarthy notes, our strategy didn’t change:
The enemy’s declaration of war would be complemented by a campaign of murder and mayhem, culminating in the same place, eight years later when the first strike would be dwarfed. In the interim, the United States would respond with the law. And so, while the enemy prosecuted the war, we prosecuted the enemy—er, the defendants.
Undeterred by the criminal charges we were filing against them, the terrorists continued to attack. On November 13, 1995, Islamic terrorists detonated a truck bomb outside a Saudi National Guard building in Riyadh used by the United States, killing five Americans. On June 25, 1996, another truck bomb was detonated at the U.S. military barracks at Khobar Towers near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing nineteen U.S. servicemen and wounding hundreds more.
On August 23, 1996, Osama bin Laden issued his first fatwa declaring war on the United States. He mocked America’s response to the attacks in Riyadh and at Khobar Towers, and to previous attacks, as well:
A few days ago the news agencies communicated a declaration issued by the American Defense Secretary, a crusader and an occupier, in which he said he had learned only one lesson from the bombings in Riyadh and Khobar: not to retreat before the cowardly terrorists. Well, we would like to tell the secretary that his words are funny enough to make even a mother grieving for the loss of her child burst out laughing, because they show the fear that grips him. Where was this supposed bravery in Beirut, after the attack of [1983]? . . . Where was this bravery in Aden, which you fled twenty-four hours after two attacks had taken place?
He saved his greatest scorn for America’s withdrawal from Somalia. On October 3, 1993, two American Black Hawk helicopters on a m
ission to capture Somali warlord Mohammed Aidid and his key lieutenants were shot down in Mogadishu. A massive firefight ensued in which the U.S. Army Rangers and American special operators displayed tremendous heroism and courage. Eighteen Americans were killed and seventy-five were wounded. Pictures flashed across the world of Somalis dragging the body of a dead American through the streets.
U.S. commanders on the ground had requested tanks and AC-130 gunships for the mission. AC-130s are devastatingly accurate and have massive firepower. American commanders in Somalia reported the AC-130 had been very effective in earlier missions. Low-flying and armed with a powerful array of weapons, they struck fear into the hearts of the Somali militias.
According to a Senate Armed Services Committee report compiled after the Mogadishu operation, General Wayne Downing, commander of the U.S. Special Forces Command, requested the AC-130s for the battle in Mogadishu in a discussion with Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Colin Powell and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) commander General Joseph Hoar. “I advised that we’d like to have the AC-130s. General Powell advised that we needed to keep the numbers down,” General Downing said. Powell told the committee he didn’t recall the conversation, but the damage done by the planes in earlier operations, he said, “wasn’t the greatest imagery on CNN.” The AC-130s were not deployed. The request for the tanks was also denied, in an apparent effort not to increase America’s presence in Somalia. As a result, our forces on the ground did not have the weapons they needed.
On October 7, 1993, four days after the battle, President Bill Clinton announced that all American troops would leave Somalia by March 31, 1994. In his 1996 declaration of war on the United States, bin Laden pointed to the withdrawal as the ultimate sign of American weakness:
Your most disgraceful case was Somalia, where, after vigorous propaganda about the power of the USA and its post Cold War leadership of the new world order you moved [American soldiers in]. However when tens of your soldiers were killed in battle . . . you left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you. Clinton appeared in front of the whole world threatening and promising revenge, but these threats were merely a preparation for withdrawal. You were disgraced by Allah and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear.
Bin Laden used the stories of America’s retreat to encourage his followers. His message was that the United States was not as strong as it seemed, or claimed. He had watched our responses in the wake of attacks in Beirut, Riyadh, and Somalia and took one deadly lesson from this history: when attacked, America didn’t strike back, she retreated.
On Friday, August 7, 1998, simultaneous truck bombs were detonated at the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Two hundred twenty-four people, including twelve Americans, were killed. More than five thousand were wounded in this al Qaeda operation. In response, the CIA and the Department of Defense drew up a list of targets connected to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. The list included al Qaeda training camps in Khost, Afghanistan, and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. U.S. intelligence showed the pharmaceutical factory, al Shifa, to be the site of a chemical weapons program with which Osama bin Laden was involved. American intelligence also suspected Iraqi involvement with the plant’s chemical weapons program.
A soil sample collected clandestinely at the plant showed high levels of a precursor for VX nerve gas known as EMPTA. Journalist Stephen Hayes has reported that a senior intelligence official briefing reporters said at the time, “Iraq is the only country we’re aware of” that made VX using EMPTA. Intelligence also showed top Iraqi chemical weapons specialists had attended the plant’s opening. In addition, the National Security Agency had intercepted phone calls between the plant’s general manager and Iraqi chemical weapons experts.
The cruise missile strikes ordered by President Clinton destroyed the pharmaceutical plant but had no discernible impact on al Qaeda operations. In subsequent years, debate arose in the intelligence community about the accuracy of the reports on the pharmaceutical plant. Reports that bin Laden himself might be in the Khost terrorist training camps turned out not to be true.
Once again, the Clinton administration turned to the legal system. In November 1998, the Justice Department indicted Osama bin Laden for the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and for conspiring to kill Americans overseas. Less than two years later bin Laden struck again. On October 12, 2000, a small boat loaded with explosives rammed into the side of the USS Cole in the harbor of Aden, Yemen. Seventeen American sailors were killed. Although it was clear al Qaeda was responsible for the attack, President Clinton took no action in response.
Throughout the 1990s, the United States tended to treat attacks as law enforcement problems, with the result that neither the terrorists responsible for the attacks nor the countries that provided them sanctuary paid a price. Striking us appeared to be a way for the terrorists to achieve their objectives since the attacks were often followed by the withdrawal of U.S. forces, as in Beirut and Somalia.
Al Qaeda launched its most devastating attack on the morning of September 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people. Two terrorist-hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center in New York. Less than an hour later, a third plane was flown into the Pentagon. Passengers on a fourth hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 93, heard that other planes had been used as weapons and decided to take action. With tremendous courage, they stormed the cockpit and overwhelmed the hijackers. Flight 93 crashed in a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing all those on board. Based on its flight path, it is clear Flight 93 was headed for Washington, likely with the intention of targeting either the U.S. Capitol or the White House. The actions of the brave passengers on board saved many others.
The attacks on that day changed everything. This was a clear act of war, deadlier than Pearl Harbor, targeting civilians in the economic and political centers of American power.
On the night of 9/11, our family was evacuated to an undisclosed location—Camp David—where we would spend many days and nights over the months to come. “I spent much of that night thinking about what needed to be done,” recalls Dick Cheney:
We had to go after those who attacked us and killed three thousand of our fellow citizens. We had to defeat any further attempts to launch mass casualty attacks against the United States, which meant, first and foremost, recognizing that we were at war and beginning to operate accordingly. Having just suffered the most devastating attack in our history, we had a duty to use all the means at our command to go after and destroy al Qaeda.
In an interview with Tim Russert the Sunday after the attacks, I said we would have to “work the dark side,” using intelligence to learn all we could about the enemy, who they were, how there were organized and financed, so we could disrupt any plans for future attacks. I was also convinced by the events of that day that we had to focus our efforts on those who sponsored terrorism and provided safe harbor to the terrorists.
Holding state sponsors of terror accountable was a key element of what would become known as the Bush Doctrine. Another important component was the principle of preemption. The United States could not wait for the terrorists to launch an attack and then respond. We had to disrupt and prevent attacks before they occurred. As President Bush explained in March 2003, “Terrorists and terror states do not reveal these threats with fair notice, in formal declarations—and responding only to such enemies after they have struck first is not self-defense, it’s suicide.” This was particularly true because of the devastating possibility of a terrorist attack on the homeland involving chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.
This possibility was a subject that one of the authors of this book, Dick Cheney, then vice president, discussed in an interview in April 2001:
I think we have to be more concerned than we ever have about so-called homeland defense, the vulnerability of our system to different kinds of attacks. Some . . . homegrown, like Oklah
oma City. Some inspired by terrorists external to the United States—the World Trade Towers bombing, in New York. The threat of a terrorist attack against the U.S., eventually, potentially with weapons of mass destruction—bugs or gas, biological or chemical agents, potentially even, someday, nuclear weapons.
To reduce the likelihood of one of these threats materializing, the United States needed a robust intelligence capability, one that enabled us to uncover the threats and thwart the terrorists’ plans. Intelligence had to be our first line of defense.
Nine days after the attacks of 9/11, in a speech to a joint session of Congress, President Bush delivered an ultimatum to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that was harboring Osama bin Laden:
Deliver to the United States authorities all the leaders of al Qaeda who hide in your land. Release all foreign nationals, including American citizens you have unjustly imprisoned. Protect foreign journalists, diplomats, and aid workers in your country. Close immediately and permanently, every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and hand over every terrorist, and every person in their support structure, to appropriate authorities. Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating. These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The Taliban must act, and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists or they will share their fate.
President Bush also explained to the American people the challenge of the war in which we were now engaged:
This will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. . . . Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success.
