Decision Points

friend. Her happiness contrasted with the heaviness in my heart.

    On the South Lawn after ordering troops into Iraq.
White House/Eric Draper
    There was one man who understood what I was feeling. I sat down at my desk in the Treaty Room and scrawled out a letter:
    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 word on the covert action that is taking place.
    I know what you went through.
    Love,
    George
    A few hours later, his reply came across the fax:
    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.
    Maybe it helps a tiny bit as you face the toughest bunch of problems any President since Lincoln has faced: You carry the burden with strength and grace. …
    Remember Robin’s words ‘I love you more than tongue can tell.’
    Well, I do.
    Devotedly,
    Dad

    The bombs that fell on Baghdad that night marked the opening phase in the liberation of Iraq. But that was not the first airstrike on Iraq to make news during my presidency.
    In February 2001, I visited President Vicente Fox in San Cristóbal, Mexico. My first foreign trip as president was designed to highlight our commitment to expanding democracy and trade in Latin America. Unfortunately, news out of Iraq intruded. As we admired the serene vistas of Vicente’s ranch, American bombers struck Iraq’s air defense system. It was a relatively routine mission to enforce the no-fly zones that had been created after Saddam massacred thousands of innocent Shia and Kurds following the Gulf War. *

    With Vicente Fox.
White House/Paul Morse
    Saddam fired off a barrage that lit up the Baghdad sky and grabbedthe attention of CNN. When Vicente and I stepped out of his home for a press conference, a Mexican reporter began, “I have a question for President Bush. … Is this the beginning of a new war?”
    The flare-up was a reminder of the deteriorating situation America faced in Iraq. More than a decade earlier, in August 1990, Saddam Hussein ’s tanks blasted across the border into Kuwait. Dad declared that Saddam’s unprovoked aggression would not stand and gave him an ultimatum to withdraw from Kuwait. When the dictator defied his demands, Dad rallied a coalition of thirty-four countries—including Arab nations—to enforce it.
    The decision to send American troops to Kuwait was agonizing for Dad—and frustrating to implement. The Senate voted to authorize military force by a slim margin, 52 to 47. A group of lawmakers presented Dad with a letter that predicted ten thousand to fifty thousand American deaths. Former President Jimmy Carter urged members of the Security Council to oppose the war. The UN voted to support it anyway.
    Operation Desert Storm proved a stunning success. Coalition forces drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait in fewer than 100 hours. Ultimately, 149 Americans were killed in action. I was proud of Dad’s decisiveness. I wondered if he would send troops all the way to Baghdad. He had a chance to rid the world of Saddam once and for all. But he stopped at the liberation of Kuwait. That was how he had defined the mission. That was what Congress had voted for and the coalition had signed up to do. I fully understood his rationale.

    As a condition for ending hostilities in the Gulf War, UN Resolution 687 required Saddam to destroy his weapons of mass destruction and missiles with a range of more than ninety miles. The resolution banned Iraq from possessing biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons or the means to produce them. To ensure compliance, Saddam was required to submit to a UN monitoring and verification system.
    At first, Saddam claimed he had only a limited stockpile of chemical weapons and Scud missiles. Over time, UN inspectors discovered a vast, haunting arsenal. Saddam had filled thousands of bombs, shells, andwarheads with chemical