by Peter Baker
“Two to two with one abstention,” Bush said.
“Who abstained?” she asked.
“I did,” Bush answered peevishly. “That’s the way everybody is treating me.”
Hughes got on a plane.
Bush and Blair decided to meet one last time before the vote, but the question was where. With his government on the line, Blair could not be seen going to Washington, nor was it wise to invite Bush to London, where he would be met by angry protests. Bush’s aides suggested Bermuda, but it was too close to the American side of the Atlantic Ocean for Blair’s team; instead, they settled on the Azores, the Portuguese islands closer to Europe. Also invited was José María Aznar of Spain, another war supporter, while Prime Minister José Manuel Durão Barroso of Portugal would host.
Before Bush had even landed at Lajes Field, a Portuguese facility long used by the U.S. Air Force, on March 16, Jacques Chirac proposed giving inspectors another thirty days to work and then the Security Council would meet again before any military action. Bush saw it as another delaying tactic benefiting Hussein. Left unsaid was that he had already deployed 240,000 men and women to the region; it was untenable for them to sit in the desert as temperatures rose. The later the invasion started, the greater the chance that troops wearing heavy Kevlar vests and chemical suits would fight in unbearably hot conditions.
Bush huddled with Blair and the other two leaders, telling them that he would issue an ultimatum to Hussein the next day to leave Iraq within forty-eight hours or face war. They had given up hope of success at the Security Council, and to Blair’s side the whole exercise felt like just “going through motions.” Bush seemed calm but later described himself as “extremely frustrated.”
The real question, he believed, was the chance of terrorist groups getting hold of weapons of mass destruction. “I am just not going to be the president on whose watch it happens,” he told Blair.
The latest French proposal only exacerbated the aggravation. “If another country tried to introduce a new resolution for the sole purpose of delaying us, we’d have to regard that as a hostile act diplomatically,” Blair said.
Bush briefly considered the irony of blocking a French resolution. “I’d be glad to veto something of theirs,” he said with delight. “Really glad!”
His irritation with France spilled over into the media appearance that followed as he cast Chirac as little more than Hussein’s enabler and insisted that the Security Council vote the next day either way. “It’s an old Texas expression—show your cards—when you’re playing poker,” Bush told reporters. “France showed their cards.”
After a quick dinner, Bush prepared to head back to Washington. He asked Blair and his aides about the upcoming parliamentary vote and expressed confidence that the prime minister would survive. In a lighter moment, Alastair Campbell, Blair’s senior adviser, who shared Bush’s passion for running, asked the president if he would sponsor him for an upcoming marathon.
“If you win the vote in Parliament,” Bush replied, “I’ll kiss your ass.”
Campbell said he would prefer the sponsorship.
As Air Force One headed back out over the ocean, Bush worked on his ultimatum speech with Rice, Michael Gerson, Andy Card, Karen Hughes, and Dan Bartlett. At one point during the five-hour flight, they took a break to watch the movie Conspiracy Theory, starring Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts. Bush made fun of the plot.
BACK IN WASHINGTON, Cheney spent part of the day with Tim Russert on the set of Meet the Press, making the case for war.
“Do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly and bloody battle with significant American casualties?” Russert asked.
“Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim,” Cheney replied, “because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.”
He cited his meetings with Iraqi exiles: “The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.”
He added that he was not predicting “a cost-free operation” but said the cost would be far greater if Hussein ever provided al-Qaeda with unconventional weapons. He dismissed Eric Shinseki’s warning about force levels. “To suggest that we need several hundred thousand troops there after military operations cease, after the conflict ends, I don’t think is accurate. I think that’s an overstatement.”
Bush met the next day, March 17, with congressional leaders. Some in the room were struck that he turned the discussion over to Rice to explain. She seemed surprised, too, but gamely plowed ahead. Afterward, Senator John Warner of Virginia, the silver-haired patrician Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee who looked as if he came straight from central casting, pulled Stephen Hadley aside. “You sure better find these stocks of WMD,” he said, “or there is going to be hell to pay.”
Bush took his place behind the lectern in Cross Hall in the White House that evening to deliver the ultimatum in a nationally televised speech. As he waited for the cameras to go on, the room suddenly went quiet. He noticed Gerson studying the text. “How are you doing, Gerson?” Bush asked. Then he rolled up his own copy of the text and hit his speechwriter playfully on the head with it. Gerson had always been a nervous figure, regularly chewing pens to the point where he once bit through one in the Oval Office, staining a presidential couch with ink. Bush reassured Gerson by telling him the story about how he was so nervous during one of his father’s presidential debates that he went to the movies, only to keep sending his brother out to check on the progress. Whether he remembered or not, Bush had told Gerson that story before, but it succeeded in defusing the tension.
At 8:01 p.m., the red light on the camera flashed brightly. “All the decades of deceit and cruelty have now reached an end,” Bush declared. “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.” There was still hope Hussein might actually leave; Egypt was pushing the idea of giving him $1 billion to leave, and Bush had authorized considerable sums of money, a small price to avoid a bloody war. Still, even then, American forces might have invaded. A team led by Hadley in the weeks leading up to the deadline had run through contingencies and concluded that even if Hussein were deposed or left voluntarily, American troops should still go in temporarily to take control of suspected weapons.
The red light went off. As Bush stood there, he understood he had just passed a point of no return. Barring the unlikely, the country was going to war, and this time, unlike the largely forgotten conflict in Afghanistan, it would be a full-fledged fight, with tens of thousands of ground troops heading into the teeth of what once had been one of the world’s largest armies.
PART THREE
14
“Maybe we’ll get lucky”
President Bush was unusually formal as he met with his war team one final time on March 19 to give the order setting in motion the start of the war in just two days. He was seated in the Situation Room, surrounded by advisers and facing multiple screens on the wall with the images of his commanders.
“Tommy,” he said to General Franks, “I would like to address your team.”
Then he turned to the generals one at a time and asked each the same thing. “You have everything you need? Everything you need to accomplish the mission?”
Each answered the same. “Yes, sir.”
“Good,” he would say, turning to the next one.
Satisfied that he had asked the question, Bush turned to Donald Rumsfeld. He had scripted out what he wanted to say, fully aware of the historic import of the moment.
“Mr. Secretary,” he 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 God bless the troops.”
On the video screen, Franks saluted. “Mr. President, may God bless America,” he r
esponded.
Bush, still in his seat, saluted back. Everyone sat quietly for a moment, and Colin Powell wordlessly reached out and touched Bush’s hand. The president then got up and left. As he strode out of the Situation Room, Eric Draper, the White House photographer standing outside the door, could see Bush’s eyes were red and tearing up. Even though he had known this was coming, emotion washed over the president in a way he had not expected. This was it; this was war. He marched upstairs and into the Oval Office without speaking to anyone, headed outside to the South Lawn to collect himself by taking his dog Spot for a walk. Aides could see his feelings were churning and did not follow. When he finally returned to the building, “you could see the weight on his face,” recalled Draper.
Bush headed upstairs to the Treaty Room and sat down to write a letter to his father by hand.
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, the world will be safer. The emotion of the moment has passed and now I wait on the covert action that is taking place.
I know what you went through.
Love,
George
His father replied by fax a few hours later.
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 compassion. 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.…
Remember Robin’s words “I love you more than tongue can tell.”
Well, I do.
Devotedly,
Dad
Bush later told Dan Bartlett that it just hit him as he gave the formal order launching the war. “All of that comes home to roost at that moment,” Bartlett reflected. “But not in the form of doubts. It is almost a release. It is almost, finally, exhaled. ‘I have made the decision.’ You kind of exhale almost.”
For a president, the beginning of a war was, in a way, like Election Day. After months of intense work, once he had given the order to go, there was little for Bush himself to actually do but wait and worry. Cheney busied himself with phone calls to the leaders of Egypt, Israel, Hungary, South Korea, and other countries.
But then around 3:40 p.m., Bush received a call from Rumsfeld. “I need your permission to change the plans,” he said. “Can I come over?”
Bush summoned Cheney and the rest of his national security team. When Rumsfeld arrived, he had with him George Tenet and Richard Myers. The group retired to the dining room off the Oval Office.
The CIA had heard from its network of Iraqi agents, code-named Rockstar, where Saddam Hussein and his sons, Uday and Qusay, might be that night. Tenet laid out maps on the table showing an estate on the banks of the Tigris River in southern Baghdad owned by Hussein’s wife and known as Dora Farms. Aerial reconnaissance of the site showed heavy vehicles, suggesting a large security contingent. While not guaranteed, Tenet felt the information was solid and presented “too good a scenario to pass up.” The deadline for Hussein to leave Iraq was not until later that night, and Bush had just approved a carefully laid-out plan to soften up Iraqi defenses with air strikes for two days to start the war. But now it looked as if they had a chance to take out the Iraqi president and, potentially, avert a bloodbath.
Bush was nervous. What if it was a trick? What if they were just plain wrong? The last thing he wanted was a baby-milk-factory situation like his father had faced in the first Gulf War when an errant bomb hit a civilian target. “I was hesitant at first, to be frank with you,” he recalled later, “because I was worried that the first pictures coming out of Iraq would be a wounded grandchild of Saddam Hussein.” Moreover, they might jeopardize international support with a mistaken strike and potentially even endanger special operations forces that had already snuck into Iraq.
Bush kept pressing Tenet. “How solid are your sources on this?”
Good, Tenet said, but they would never know for sure.
After ninety minutes of deliberation, Bush seemed ready to order a Tomahawk cruise missile strike. “Okay, all right,” he said.
But then, as his aides headed for the door, he called them back. “No, wait a minute,” he said. He still was not comfortable.
As the discussion moved into the Oval Office itself, officials kept ducking in and out to take or make secure telephone calls seeking more information. Dusk was beginning to settle on the nation’s capital, and out the window Myers could see headlights from cars just beginning the evening rush-hour trip home.
The latest report indicated Dora Farms had a bunker, which meant that Tomahawks would not be enough; they would need manned warplanes to drop bunker-busting bombs, which only enhanced the risk since Iraqi air defenses had not yet been neutralized. While Bush absorbed this, the generals ordered a pair of F-117 Nighthawk stealth bombers in Qatar to prepare to take off. Finally, Tenet reported that Hussein had just arrived at the site in a taxicab, a common subterfuge he used.
Bush went around the room, polling his advisers. Everyone agreed he should order the strike. He had to make a decision by 7:15 p.m., or 3:15 a.m. Iraqi time, so the bombers would have enough time to reach the target and get back out by daylight. At 7:00 p.m., the president cleared the room to talk with Cheney alone. For that most fateful decision, he was turning to his trusted vice president.
“Dick, what do you think we ought to do?” Bush asked.
Launch, Cheney said. If the intelligence was right, they had the chance to shorten the war. It was worth the risk.
Bush agreed and called the others back into the office.
“Let’s go,” he said at 7:12 p.m., beating the deadline by three minutes.
THE STEPPED-UP TIMETABLE disrupted the White House communications plan. Bush was to address the nation at noon on March 21. Cheney briefly argued they should say nothing even after Dora Farms was struck, but Bush concluded that was untenable and decided to go on television that night to announce the start of hostilities. Andy Card, Joe Hagin, the president’s assistant Blake Gottesman, and a couple others personally moved the Oval Office couches to make room for cameras rather than summoning the usual workers and potentially letting the secret out.
While the staff prepared, Bush went over to the residence to find Laura, who was with her childhood friend Pamela Hudson Nelson. When he told them he had just ordered the start of war, the two women were as overwhelmed as he had been. They sat down for a quick dinner of chicken potpie as Bush fortified himself for his address. Bush seemed somber, and he expressed hope that the early strike against Dora Farms would prove decisive. “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” he said. “But it’s not going to be easy like the last one.” Hussein, he knew, had far more wherewithal than the Taliban. Bush and the two women held hands as the president said a prayer “asking for strength and wisdom.”
Bush went to the Treaty Room to go over the speech with Gerson and Hughes. Sitting at his desk, he read through the text one more time. Just after 8:00 p.m., the telephone rang. He picked it up, listened for a moment, and then put it down again. It was Card telling him the deadline for Hussein to leave had passed, with no sign he had complied. Bush said nothing. It was not as if he expected otherwise, but it sank in. It was “the only time I can remember at the White House he looked pale,” Gerson said. “I hadn’t seen him that way.”
At 9:30 p.m. Washington time, just ninety minutes after the deadline passed, two F-117 bombers released four EGBU-27 two-thousand-pound bunker-busting bombs, and thirty-nine Tomahawks smashed into the compound as well. As a makeup artist applied powder to Bush’s face for his address, he watched television images of th
e bombing. Then, at 10:15 p.m., dressed in a dark suit with a red tie and an American flag pin in his lapel, he took his seat behind the Resolute desk with pictures of his daughters visible behind him, folded his hands in front of him, and looked at the camera.
“On my orders,” he said in an unusually soft, solemn voice, “coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein’s ability to wage war. These are the opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign.” He made no mention of Dora Farms. But he linked his new war to the attacks of September 11, making the case that by removing Hussein, he was preventing a threat on American soil. “The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder,” he said. “We will meet that threat now, with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of firefighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.”
Four minutes later, he was done. He headed to the residence to rest. As he and Laura watched the television coverage, they noticed the crawl line at the bottom of the screen reporting that the president and first lady had gone to bed. “Whoops,” Laura said, “we’d better go to bed.”
Bush woke the next morning, March 20, to disappointing news. Rice called to say that one of the CIA’s agents had reported spotting someone resembling Hussein being pulled out of the wreckage at Dora Farms and spirited away in an ambulance. Later reports confirmed it was not him. Whether the attack just missed him or he was never there to begin with was unclear. Either way, the war would proceed.
“We tried everything possible to solve this through peace,” Bush told his cabinet that day, justifying his decision to himself as much as anyone. “It was the absolute right decision to commit troops.” Recounting some of the abuses of Hussein’s regime, Bush added, “Of all things we stand for are human liberty and freedom.”
