Decision Points

obstetrician was beheaded on charges of prostitution. The woman’s true crime was speaking out about corruption in the Iraqi health ministry.
    Saddam Hussein didn’t just pursue weapons of mass destruction. He had used them. He deployed mustard gas and nerve agents against the Iranians and massacred more than five thousand innocent civilians in a 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja. Nobody knew what Saddam had done with his biological and chemical stockpiles, especially after he booted inspectors out of the country. But after reviewing the information, virtually every major intelligence agency in the world had reached the same conclusion: Saddam had WMD in his arsenal and the capacity to produce more. One intelligence report summarized the problem: “Since the end of inspections in 1998, Saddam has maintained the chemical weapons effort, energized the missile program, made a bigger investment in biological weapons, and has begun to try to move forward in the nuclear area.”
    Before 9/11, Saddam was a problem America might have been able to manage. Through the lens of the post-9/11 world, my view changed. I had just witnessed the damage inflicted by nineteen fanatics armed with box cutters. I could only imagine the destruction possible if an enemy dictator passed his WMD to terrorists. With threats flowing into the Oval Office daily—many of them about chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons—that seemed like a frighteningly real possibility. The stakes were too high to trust the dictator’s word against the weight of the evidence and the consensus of the world. The lesson of 9/11 was that if we waited for a danger to fully materialize, we would have waited too long. I reached a decision: We would confront the threat from Iraq, one way or another.

    My first choice was to use diplomacy. Unfortunately, our track record with Iraq was not encouraging. We maintained a bilateral relationship with Baghdad in the 1980s. We obtained UN Security Council resolutions in the 1990s. Despite our engagement, Saddam grew only more belligerent.
    If diplomacy was going to succeed, we needed a fundamentally different approach. We believed Saddam’s weakness was that he loved power and would do anything to keep it. If we could convince him we were serious about removing his regime, there was a chance he would give up his WMD, end his support for terror, stop threatening his neighbors, and, over time, respect the human rights of his people. The odds of success were long. But given the alternative, it was worth the effort. The approach was called coercive diplomacy.
    Coercive diplomacy with Iraq consisted of two tracks: One was to rally a coalition of nations to make clear that Saddam’s defiance of his international obligations was unacceptable. The other was to develop a credible military option that could be used if he failed to comply. These tracks would run parallel at first. As the military option grew more visible and more advanced, the tracks would converge. Our maximum leverage would come just before they intersected. That would be the moment of decision. And ultimately, it would be Saddam Hussein’s decision to make.

    In February 2001, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie , came to visit Laura and me at Camp David. Tony was the first foreign leader we invited, a tribute to the special relationship between the United States and Great Britain.
    I wasn’t sure what to expect from Tony. I knew he was a left-of-center Labour Party prime minister and a close friend of Bill Clinton’s. I quickly found he was candid, friendly, and engaging. There was no stuffiness about Tony and Cherie. After dinner, we decided to watch a movie. When they agreed on
Meet the Parents
, a comedy starring Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller, Laura and I knew the Bushes and Blairs would get along.

    Laura and me with Cherie and Tony Blair.
White House/Eric Draper
    Tony and I talked through the major issues of the day. He gave me a briefing on the politics of Europe. We discussed our common goals to expand free trade, relieve suffering in Africa, and address the violence in the Holy Land. We didn’t spend much time on the social issues. That was left for Cherie and me.
    In the summer of 2001, the Blairs invited Laura and me to Chequers, the storied country estate of the British prime minister. Chequers is a large, creaky house filled with rustic, comfortable furniture and portraits of former prime ministers.