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Two days later, Friday, Aug. 16, the NSC met, with the president participating by secure video from Crawford. The sole purpose of the meeting was for Powell to make his pitch about going to the United Nations to seek support or a coalition in some form. Unilateral war would be tough, close to impossible, Powell said. At least they ought to try to reach out and ask other countries to join them.
The president went around the table asking for comments, and there was general support for giving the United Nations a shot -- even from Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Fine, Bush finally said. He approved of the approach -- a speech to the United Nations about Iraq. And it couldn't be too shrill, he cautioned them, or set so high a standard that they wouldn't seem serious. He wanted to give the United Nations a chance.
Powell walked out feeling they had a deal, and he went off for a vacation in the Hamptons.
'Let Me Think About Powell'
When I specifically asked about Powell's contributions during an interview on Aug. 20, four days later, the president offered a tepid response. "Powell is a diplomat," Bush responded. "And you've got to have a diplomat. I kind of picture myself as a pretty good diplomat, but nobody else does. You know, particularly, I wouldn't call me a diplomat. But, nevertheless, he is a diplomatic person who has got war experience."
Did Powell want private meetings? I asked.
"He doesn't pick up the phone and say, 'I need to come and see you,' " Bush said. He confirmed that he did have private meetings with Powell that Rice also attended. "Let me think about Powell. I got one. He was very good with [Pakistani President Pervez] Musharraf. He single-handedly got Musharraf on board. He was very good about that. He saw the notion of the need to put a coalition together" for the war in Afghanistan.
Vacationing in Long Island, Powell picked up the New York Times on Aug. 27 and was astonished by what he read. "Cheney Says Peril of a Nuclear Iraq Justifies Attack," said the headline of the lead story. The vice president had given a hard-line speech the day before, declaring that weapons inspections were basically futile. "A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of his compliance with U.N. resolutions," Cheney had said. "On the contrary, there is a great danger that it would provide false comfort that Saddam was somehow 'back in his box.' "
In the hands of a "murderous dictator," Cheney said, weapons of mass destruction are "as grave a threat as can be imagined. The risks of inaction are far greater than the risk of action." Cheney's speech was widely interpreted as administration policy. The tone was harsh and unforgiving. It mentioned consultations with allies but did not invite other countries to join a coalition.
To Powell, it seemed like a preemptive attack on what he thought had been agreed to 10 days earlier -- to give the United Nations a chance. In addition, the swipe at weapons inspections was contrary to Bush's yearlong assertions that the next step should be to let the weapons inspectors back into Iraq. That was what everyone -- the United Nations and the United States -- had been fighting with Hussein about since 1998, when he had kicked the inspectors out.
The day after Cheney's speech, Rumsfeld met with 3,000 Marines at Camp Pendleton in California. "I don't know how many countries will participate in the event the president does decide that the risks of not acting are greater than the risks of acting," Rumsfeld said. Powell could decode this: Cheney had asserted that the risks were in not acting, and Rumsfeld had said he didn't know how many countries would join if the president agreed with Cheney. Rumsfeld also said that doing the right thing "at the onset may seem lonesome" -- a new term for acting alone, in other words, unilateralism.
To make matters worse, the BBC began releasing excerpts of an earlier interview that Powell had done in which he had said it would be "useful" to restart the weapons inspections. "The president has been clear that he believes weapons inspectors should return," Powell had said. "Iraq has been in violation of many U.N. resolutions for most of the last 11 or so years. And so, as a first step, let's see what the inspectors find. Send them back in."
News stories appeared saying that Powell contradicted Cheney, or appeared to do so. Suddenly, Powell realized that the public impression of the administration's policy toward inspectors in Iraq was the opposite of what he knew it to be. Some editorial writers accused Powell of being disloyal. He counted seven editorials calling for his resignation or implying he should quit. From his perspective all hell was breaking loose. How could I be disloyal, he wondered, when I'm giving the president's stated position?
Following the United Nations Security Council's unanimous approval of a new resolution ordering Iraq to submit to weapons inspections, President Bush praised Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. (Associated Press)
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When Powell returned from his vacation, he asked for another private meeting with the president. Rice joined them over lunch on Sept. 2, Labor Day, as Powell reviewed the confusion of August. Was it not the president's position that the weapons inspectors should go back into Iraq?
Bush said it was, though he was skeptical that it would work. He reaffirmed that he was committed to going to the United Nations to ask for support on Iraq. In a practical sense that meant asking for a new resolution. Powell was satisfied as he left for South Africa to attend a conference.
By Friday evening, Sept. 6, Powell was back, and he joined the principals at Camp David without the president.
Cheney argued that to ask for a new resolution would put them back in the soup of the United Nations process -- hopeless, endless and irresolute. All the president should say is that Hussein is bad, has willfully violated, ignored and stomped on the U.N. resolutions of the past, and the United States reserves its right to act unilaterally.
But that isn't asking for U.N. support, Powell replied. The United Nations would not just roll over, declare Hussein evil, and authorize the United States to strike militarily. The United Nations would not buy that. The idea was not saleable, Powell said. The president had already decided to give the United Nations a chance, and the only way to do that was to ask for a resolution.
Cheney was beyond hell-bent for action against Hussein. It was as if nothing else existed.
Powell attempted to summarize the consequences of unilateral action. He would have to close American embassies around the world if they went alone.
That was not the issue, Cheney said. Hussein and the blatant threat were the issue.
Maybe it would not turn out as the vice president thought, Powell said. War could trigger all kinds of unanticipated and unintended consequences.
Not the issue, Cheney said.
The conversation exploded into a tough debate, dancing on the edge of civility but not departing from the formal propriety that Cheney and Powell generally showed each other.
The next morning the principals had an NSC meeting with the president. They did a rerun of the arguments, and Bush seemed comfortable asking the United Nations for a resolution.
But during the speech-drafting process, Cheney and Rumsfeld continued to press. Asking for a new resolution would snag them in a morass of U.N. debate and hesitation, they said, opening the door for Hussein to negotiate with the United Nations. He would say the words of offering to comply but then, as always, stiff everyone.
So the request for a resolution came out of the speech. Meetings on the drafting continued for days. The speech assailed the United Nations for not enforcing the weapons inspections in Iraq, specifically for the four years since Hussein had kicked them out.
"You can't say all of this," Powell argued, "without asking them to do something. There's no action in this speech.
"It says, 'Here's what he's done wrong; here's what he has to do to fix himself,' and then it stops?" Powell asked in some wonderment. "You've got to ask for something."
So the principals then had a fight about what to ask for. They finally agreed that Bush should ask the United Nations to act.
Powell accepted that, since the only way the United Nations really acted was through resolutions. So that was the implied action. Calling for a new resolution would have really nailed it, but the call to "act" was sufficient for Powell.
Bush's Words to the U.N.
Two days before the president was to go to the United Nations, Powell reviewed Draft No. 21 of the speech text the White House had sent him with EYES ONLY and URGENT stamped all over it. On Page 8, Bush promised to work with the United Nations "to meet our common challenge." There was no call for the United Nations to act.
At a principals' committee meeting without the president just before Bush left for New York, Cheney voiced his opposition to having the president ask specifically for new resolutions. It was a matter of tactics and of presidential credibility, the vice president argued. Suppose the president asked and the Security Council refused? Hussein was a master bluffer. He'd cheat and retreat, find a way to delay what was required. What was necessary was getting Hussein out of power. If he attacked the United States or anyone with the weapons of mass destruction available to him -- especially on a large scale -- the world would never forgive them for inaction and giving in to the impulse to engage in semantic debates in U.N. resolutions.
Vice President Cheney joined President Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice for an Oval Office briefing by Colin L. Powell. (Frank Johnson - The Post)
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Rumsfeld said they needed to stand on principle, but he then posed a series of rhetorical questions, and did not come down hard about the language.
Cheney and Powell went at each other in a blistering argument. It was Powell's internationalism versus Cheney's unilateralism.
"I don't know if we got it or not," Powell told Armitage later.
The night before the speech, Bush spoke with Powell and Rice. He had decided he was going to ask for new resolutions. At first he thought he would authorize Powell and Rice to say after his speech that the United States would work on them with the United Nations. But he had concluded he might as well say it himself in the speech. He liked the policy headline to come directly from him. He ordered that a sentence be inserted near the top of Page 8, saying he would work with the U.N. Security Council for the necessary "resolutions." It was added to the next and final draft, No. 24.
"He's going to have it in there," Powell reported to Armitage.
At the podium in the famous General Assembly hall, Bush reached the portion of the speech where he was to say he would seek resolutions. But the change hadn't made it into the copy that was put into the TelePrompTer. So Bush read the old line, "My nation will work with the U.N. Security Council to meet our common challenge."
Powell was reading along with Draft No. 24, penciling in any ad-libs that the president made. His heart almost stopped. The sentence about resolutions was gone! He hadn't said it! It was the punch line!
But as Bush read the old sentence, he realized that the part about resolutions was missing. With only mild awkwardness he ad-libbed it, saying later, "We will work with the U.N. Security Council for the necessary resolutions."
Powell breathed again.
The president's speech was generally a big hit. It was widely praised for its toughness, its willingness to seek international support for his Iraq policy, and its effective challenge to the United Nations to enforce its own resolutions. It was a big boost for Powell, who stayed behind in New York to rally support for the policy, especially from Russia and France, who as permanent members of the Security Council could veto any resolution.
The next day Iraq announced that it would admit new weapons inspectors. Few believed it was sincere. See, Cheney argued, the United States and the United Nations were being toyed with, played for fools.
Bush believed a preemption strategy might be the only alternative if he were serious about not waiting for events. The realities at the beginning of the 21st century were two: the possibility of another massive, surprise terrorist attack similar to Sept. 11, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction -- biological, chemical or nuclear. Should the two converge in the hands of terrorists or a rogue state, the United States could be attacked, and tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people could be killed.
In addition, the president and his team had found that protecting and sealing the U.S. homeland was basically impossible. Even with heightened security and the national terrorist alerts, the country was only marginally safer. The United States had absorbed Pearl Harbor and gone on to win World War II. For the moment, the country had absorbed Sept. 11 and gone on to win the first phase of the war in Afghanistan. What would happen if there were a nuclear attack, killing tens or hundreds of thousands? A free country could become a police state. What would the citizens or history think of a president who had not acted in absolutely the most aggressive way? When did a defense require an active offense?
Bush's troubleshooter, Condi Rice, felt the administration had little choice with Hussein.
"The lesson of September 11: Take care of threats early," she said.
But the president proceeded as if he were willing to give the United Nations a chance, and his public rhetoric softened. Instead of speaking only about regime change, he said his policy was to get Iraq to give up its weapons of mass destruction. "A military option is not the first choice," Bush told reporters on Oct. 1, "but disarming this man is."
In a speech to the nation Monday, Oct. 7, the one-year anniversary of the commencement of the military strikes in Afghanistan, the president said that Hussein posed an immediate threat to the United States. As Congress debated whether to pass its own resolution authorizing the use of force against Hussein, Bush said war was avoidable and not imminent. "I hope this will not require military action," he said.
This was all a victory for Powell, but perhaps only a momentary one. The scaled-down rhetoric did mean that the president could say no to Cheney and Rumsfeld, but it did not mean a lessening of Bush's fierce determination. As always, it was an ongoing struggle for the president's heart and mind.
On Nov. 8, the U.N. Security Council approved a new resolution, 15 to 0, ordering Iraq to admit weapons inspectors. In a Rose Garden statement, the president praised Powell "for his leadership, his good work and his determination over the past two months."
Mark Malseed contributed to this report.