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Chapter 11: Losing Ground on the Diplomatic Front

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338 didn’t take our military preparations seriously: Woods, et al., The Iraqi Perspectives Project, pp. vii–viii, 15–16.

 

343 the New York Times reported in some detail: Eric Schmitt and Julia Preston, “Threats and Responses: The Inspections,” New York Times, December 19, 2002, A16.

 

344 he offered an assessment of the Iraqi declaration’s inadequacies: The State Department supported Powell’s press conference presentation with a fact sheet listing “illustrative omissions” in eight categories. State Department, “Illustrative Examples of Omissions from the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council,” December 19, 2002.

 

344 “constitute another material breach”: Colin L. Powell, Press Conference on Iraq Declaration, December 16, 2002 (emphasis added).

 

345 in South Africa, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere: A White House summary offered three criteria that indicate good-faith disarmament:

• The decision to disarm is made at the highest political level.

• The regime puts in place national initiatives to dismantle weapons and infrastructure.

• The regime fully cooperates with international efforts to implement and verify disarmament; its behavior is transparent, not secretive.

The White House, “What Does Disarmament Look Like?” January 2003. See also the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s profiles of South Africa, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Libya’s weapons of mass destruction programs.

 

345 the strategic decision to rid itself of WMD: Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, “Read Ahead for Secretary Rumsfeld Dealing with Iraq’s WMD Declaration,” December 2, 2002.

 

349 Bush signed the charter for the office: See National Security Presidential Directive 24, January 20, 2003. Its key points can be summarized and paraphrased as follows:

 

• If the United States liberates Iraq, it will want to meet the humanitarian, reconstruction, and administration challenges. Immediate responsibility will fall on CENTCOM, but overall success will require a national effort.

 

• The Defense Department shall establish a Postwar Planning Office to conduct detailed planning on such issues as:

 

• Humanitarian relief

 

• Dismantling WMD

 

• Defeating and exploiting terrorist networks

• Protecting natural resources

• Reconstruction

• Key civilian services, such as food, water, electricity, and health care

• Reshaping the Iraqi military and other security institutions

• Supporting the transition to Iraqi-led authority over time

• The Planning Office will draw on the existing interagency work. It will receive policy guidance and direction from the Executive Steering Group, the Deputies Committee, and the Principals Committee, as appropriate.

• The Planning Office will build links to United Nations, nongovernmental organizations, and Free Iraqi forces. It will invite coalition partners to participate in its efforts.

• The Planning Office shall be deployed to Iraq to form the nucleus of the administrative apparatus that will assist in administering Iraq for a limited period of time.

• The Planning Office will require the full-time services of employees of a number of federal departments and agencies. The relevant agencies shall provide such employees as detailees to the Planning Office.

351 Iraq’s BW programs actually was: Silberman-Robb Commission, p. 93.

352 Hans Blix delivered his report: Hans Blix, Executive Chairman of UNMOVIC, “An Update on Inspection,” UN Security Council, January 27, 2003. That same day, Moham- med El Baradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, gave the Security Council his assessment of the nuclear-weapons-related portion of the Iraqi weapons declaration. He reported that the IAEA was “not able to reach any conclusion about Iraq’s compliance with its Security Council obligations in the nuclear field after December 1998,” when Saddam effectively expelled the IAEA inspectors. He said Iraq was cooperating to some extent with current inspections, but he noted that Iraq had an unmet burden of proof:

“The international community will not be satisfied when questions remain open with regard to weapons of mass destruction. The world is asking for a high level of assurance that Iraq is completely free from all such weapons, and is already impatient to receive it.” He called it “urgent and essential” that Iraq “on its own initiative, identify and provide any additional evidence that would assist the inspectors in carrying out their mandate.”

Mohammed El Baradei, “The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq,” UN Security Council, January 27, 2003.

352 “a grim 15-page catalogue”: Julia Preston, “Threats and Responses: Report to Council; U.N. Inspector Says Iraq Falls Short on Cooperation,” New York Times, January 28, 2003, p. A1.

353 “is fast coming to an end”: Colin L. Powell, “Briefing on the Iraq Weapons Inspectors’ 60-Day Report: Iraqi Non-cooperation and Defiance of the UN,” Washington, D.C., January 27, 2003.

353 Powell made his memorable presentation to the UN Security Council: Colin L. Powell, “Remarks to the United Nations Security Council,” New York City, February 5, 2003.

353 “as set out in UNSCR 1441”: Straw presented his own list of key omissions and violations, based on Blix’s report to the UN:

• Why is Iraq refusing to allow UNMOVIC to use a U-2 plane to conduct aerial imagery and surveillance operations?

• When will Iraq account for the 6,500 bombs which could carry up to 1,000 tonnes of chemical agent?

• How will Iraq justify having a prohibited chemical precursor for mustard gas?

• And how will Iraq explain the concealment of nuclear documents and the development of a missile programme in clear contravention of UN resolutions?

“Straw’s Response: Full Text,” February 5, 2003.

355 a problem President Clinton had called attention to: President Bill Clinton, statement at the Pentagon, February 17, 1998, reported in “Standoff with Iraq: In Clinton’s Words: Containing the ‘Predators of the 21st Century,’” New York Times, February 18, 1998, p. A9.

356 through defiance of the Security Council: Administration officials knew there were important things they did not know about Iraq’s WMD capabilities. In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on September 18, 2002, Rumsfeld discussed his thoughts on how to deal with the gaps in our information:

"If someone is waiting for a so-called smoking gun, it’s certain that we will have waited too long. But the question raises another issue that’s useful to discuss, and that’s what kind of evidence ought we to consider is appropriate to act in the 21st century? In our country, it’s been customary to seek evidence that would prove guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. That approach, of course, is appropriate when the objective is to protect the rights of the accused, but in the age of weapons of mass destruction, the objective is not to protect the rights of a Saddam Hussein. It is to protect the lives of the American people and our friends and allies, and when there is that risk and we are trying to defend against closed societies and shadowy terrorist networks, expecting to find that standard of evidence before such a weapon has been used is really not realistic, and after such a weapon has been used it is too late.

"I suggest that any who insist on perfect evidence really are thinking back in the 20th century in a pre-9/11 context. . . .

"We will not have, we do not have and cannot know everything that is going on in the world at any time. Over the years, despite the very best efforts of enormously expensive and talented intelligence capabilities, we have repeatedly underestimated the weapons capabilities in a variety of countries of major concern to us. We have had numerous gaps of two, four, six, eight, ten—and in one case more—years between the time a country developed the capability and the time that the United States of America became aware of it."

 

Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, “United States Policy Toward Iraq,” Statement before the House Committee on Armed Services, September 18, 2002.

356 “and alone if we must”: Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Floor Statement: “Iraq,” Congressional Record, U.S. Senate, January 28, 2003, pp. S1506–S1509 (emphasis added).

356 “it is the world’s problem”: At a January 30, 2003, Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Biden elaborated on his distinction between law enforcement and preemption:

"I am so frustrated by some other parts of this Administration of injecting into this debate a notion relating to preemption that has not a damn thing to do with whether or not we move against Saddam Hussein. . . . We are not acting as if we act preemptively. We are enforcing a surrender document.

"Saddam Hussein invaded another country. The world responded. If this were 1930 he would have signed a peace agreement. It’s not. We have a United Nations. [I]n return for his ability to stay in power, he made a commitment to the world, several commitments. Enforcing that if necessary is not preemption—is not preemption—whatever the hell that doctrine is supposed to mean.

"And so, I would respectively suggest that when you talk about this, do not further confuse the devil out of the rest of the world and make us sound like a bunch of cowboys that we’re going to be out there preemptively imposing our view. This is an enforcement of a binding international legal commitment that a man made to save his skin and stay in power."

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., “Senate Foreign Relations Committee Holds Hearing on UN Weapons Inspectors’ Report,” U.S. Senate, January 30, 2003.

357 Administration officials who advocated war against Saddam: Senator John Kerry asserted: “The very worst that Members of Congress can be accused of is trusting the intelligence we were selectively given by this Administration, and taking the President at his word. But unlike this Administration, there is absolutely no suggestion that we intentionally went beyond what we were told were the facts.” Office of Senator John Kerry, “Kerry Responds to Bush Attacks: White House Misleading Public on Prewar Iraq Intelligence,” Press Release, November 14, 2005. See also Office of Senator Carl Levin, “The CIA Director Misled Congress,” Press Release, February 23, 2004; Office of Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, “Administration Capitalized on Fear of Americans Misled Congress and the American People,” Press Release, June 12, 2003.

357 essential points in the CIA’s threat assessments: A 1998 CIA report on “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction” included these assessments:

"Without effective UN monitoring, Baghdad could probably begin production [of BW] within a few days. For example, Iraq can convert production of biopesticides to anthrax simply by changing seed material. . . . In the absence of UNSCOM inspectors, Iraq could restart limited mustard agent production within a few weeks, full-scale production of sarin within a few months, and pre-Gulf war production levels—including [nerve agent] VX—within two or three years."

 

CIA, Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs, February 13, 1998, pp. 5, 7.

357 Al Gore warned: Gore called attention to the danger of Iraq’s pursuit of WMD, saying that the United States needed to assemble a coalition of countries to stop Saddam’s WMD programs, but he did not call for war. He did not explain why he thought we could succeed in stopping those programs without war when the United Nations had tried to do so unsuccessfully for nearly a dozen years. Al Gore, Speech at Commonwealth Club, September 23, 2002.

357 John Kerry asserted: Statement of Senator John Kerry on the Senate Floor on the Iraq Resolution, October 9, 2002, Congressional Record, 107th Congress, 2nd Session, Vol. 148, No. 132, S10170–S10175 (October 10, 2002.

357 Senator Jay Rockefeller: Rockefeller’s remarks are worth quoting more fully, given his position at the time as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee:

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources—something that is not that difficult in the current world. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.

"Americans will return to a situation like that we faced in the Cold War, waking each morning knowing we are at risk from nuclear blackmail by a dictatorship that has declared itself to be our enemy.  

"The global community—in the form of the United Nations—has declared repeatedly, through multiple resolutions, that the frightening prospect of a nuclear-armed Saddam cannot come to pass. But the UN has been unable to enforce those resolutions. We must eliminate that threat now, before it is too late.

"But this isn’t just a future threat. Saddam’s existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq’s enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East.  

"And he could make those weapons available to many terrorist groups which have contact with his government, and those groups could bring those weapons into the U.S. and unleash a devastating attack against our citizens.

"I fear that greatly. Saddam has misjudged what he can get away with, and how the United States and the world will respond, many times before. At the end of the day, we cannot let the security of American citizens rest in the hands of someone whose track record gives us every reason to fear that he is prepared to use the weapons he has against his enemies.  

"As the attacks of September 11 demonstrated, the immense destructiveness of modern technology means we can no longer afford to wait around for a smoking gun. September 11 demonstrated that the fact that an attack on our homeland has not yet occurred cannot give us any false sense of security that one will not occur in the future. We no longer have that luxury."

 

Statement of Senator John D. Rockefeller IV on the Senate Floor on the Iraq Resolution, October 10, 2002, Congressional Record, 107th Congress, 2nd Session, Vol. 148, No. 133, pp. S10306 - S10308 (October 10, 2002.

 

357 “there was, you know, an imminent threat”: Senator John D. Rockefeller, quoted in James Risen and Judith Miller, “The Struggle for Iraq: The Search; No Illicit Arms Found in Iraq, U.S. Inspector Tells Congress,” New York Times, October 3, 2003, p. A1.

358 “you want everything to be accounted for”: Bill Clinton, “His Side of the Story,” Time, June 28, 2004.

358 Bush had won a vote in Congress: Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, Public Law 107–243 (October 16, 2002), 116 Statute 1498, H.J. Res. 114. For House and Senate votes, see http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:HJ00114:@@@R.

359 focused narrowly on the issues of WMD stockpiles and inspections: The resolution of Congress authorizing military force, while it emphasized the danger of WMD production and use, also set forth the full range of considerations, including: the development of weapons of mass destruction and refusal or obstruction of United Nations weapons inspections in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 (1991), repression of its civilian population in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 (1991), and threatening its neighbors or United Nations operations in Iraq in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 949 (1994). Public Law 107–243. 

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