Decision Points

missiles at Israel. My biggest fear was that he would use biological or chemical weapons against our troops, our allies, or Iraqi civilians.
    I asked the team to keep working on the plan. “We should remain optimistic that diplomacy and international pressure will succeed in disarming the regime,” I said at the end of the meeting. “But we cannot allow weapons of mass destruction to fall into the hands of terrorists. I will not allow that to happen.”

    Between December 2001 and August 2002, I met or spoke with Tommy more than a dozen times. The plan was getting better, but I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to make sure we had thought through as many contingencies as possible. I asked Don and Tommy a lot of questions that started with “What if Saddam decides to … ?” One scenario I brought up frequently was Saddam consolidating his forces in Baghdad and engaging our troops in bloody urban combat. I remembered the battle in Somalia in 1993 and did not want to see that repeated in Iraq. Tommy and his team didn’t have all the answers on the spot, and I didn’t expect them to. But they were working hard to refine the plan, and every iteration they brought me was an improvement on the previous version.
    The updated plan Tommy presented in the Situation Room on August 5, 2002, resolved several key concerns. We had lined up basing and overflight permission from leaders in the Gulf. Tommy had devised a plan for Special Operations to secure suspected WMD sites, Iraq’s southern oil fields, and Scud missile launchers. He had also designed a massive aerial bombardment that would make it costly for Saddam’s elite Republican Guard units to remain in the capital, reducing the chances of a Fortress Baghdad scenario. “Mr. President,” Tommy said in his Texas drawl, “this is going to be shock and awe.”
    There were plenty of issues left to resolve. We all worried about the possibility of Saddam launching a biological or chemical attack on ourtroops, so the military was in the process of procuring hazmat suits. We had gradually increased the level of troops and equipment in Kuwait under the guise of training and other routine exercises, which would make it possible to begin combat operations rapidly if I gave the order to launch. Joint Chiefs Chairman Dick Myers talked about the importance of persuading Turkey to open its territory so we could establish a northern front. George Tenet raised concern about a broader regional war in which Syria attacked Israel, or Iran directed its proxy terrorist group, Hezbollah, to foment instability. Don Rumsfeld pointed out that a war could destabilize Jordan and Saudi Arabia, that America could get stuck in a manhunt for Saddam, and that Iraq could fracture after liberation.
    Those potential scenarios were sobering. But so were the briefings we were receiving. A report in July read, “Iraq has managed to preserve and in some cases even enhance the infrastructure and expertise necessary for WMD production.” Another briefing warned that Saddam’s regime was “almost certainly working to produce the causative agent for anthrax along with botulinum toxin, aflatoxin, and ricin.” It continued: “Unmanned aerial vehicles give Baghdad a more lethal means to deliver biological … weapons.” It went on, ominously, “Experience shows that Saddam produces weapons of mass destruction to use, not just to deter.”
    In the summer of 2002, I received a startling piece of news. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an al Qaeda –affiliated terrorist who had experimented with biological weapons in Afghanistan, was operating a lab in northeastern Iraq. “Suspect facility in this area may be producing poisons and toxins for terrorist use,” the briefing read. “Al-Zarqawi is an active terrorist planner who has targeted U.S. and Israeli interests: Sensitive reporting from a [classified] service indicates that al-Zarqawi has been directing efforts to smuggle an unspecified chemical material originating in northern Iraq into the United States.”
    We couldn’t say for sure whether Saddam knew Zarqawi was in Iraq. We did have intelligence indicating that Zarqawi had spent two months in Baghdad receiving medical treatment and that other al Qaeda operatives had moved to Iraq. The CIA had worked with a major Arab intelligence service to get Saddam to find and extradite Zarqawi. He refused.
    The question was whether to bomb the poisons lab in the summer of2002. We held a series of NSC meetings on the