Decision Points

margins were larger than those of the votes for the Gulf War. The resolution garnered votes from prominent Democrats, including House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt , Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle , and Senators Hillary Clinton , Joe Biden , John Kerry, John Edwards , and Harry Reid .
    Some members of Congress would later claim they were not voting to authorize war but only to continue diplomacy. They must not have read the resolution. Its language was unmistakable: “The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.”

    The decisive vote at the UN came on November 8. Colin had been horse-trading on minor issues, but he stayed tough on the provisions holding Saddam to account. The question was whether the resolution would have the votes. We needed nine of the fifteen Security Council members, without a veto from France, Russia, or China. We had been burning up the phone lines, trying to get everyone on board. Shortly after the Security Council vote, the phone in the Oval Office rang. “Hey, Boss,” Colin said. “We got it done.”
    The vote was unanimous, 15 to 0. Not only had France voted for the resolution, but so had Russia, China, and Syria. The world was now on record: Saddam had a “final opportunity to comply” with his obligation to disclose and disarm. If he did not, he would face “serious consequences.”
    Under the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 1441, Iraq had thirty days to submit a “currently accurate, full, and complete declaration” of all WMD-related programs. The resolution made clear the burden of proof rested with Saddam. The inspectors did not have to prove that he had weapons. He had to prove that he did not.
    When the deadline arrived on December 7, Saddam submitted his report. I viewed it as a key test. If he came forward with honest admissions, it would send a signal that he understood the message the world was sending. Instead, he submitted reams of irrelevant paperwork clearly designed to deceive. Hans Blix , the mild-mannered Swedish diplomat who led the UN inspections team, later called it “rich in volume but poor in information.” Joe Lieberman was more succinct. He said the declaration was a “twelve-thousand-page, one-hundred-pound lie.”
    If Saddam continued his pattern of deception, the only way to keep the pressure on Iraq would be to present some of the evidence ourselves. I asked George Tenet and his capable deputy, John McLaughlin , to brief me on what intelligence we could declassify to explain Iraq’s WMD programs.
    A few days before Christmas, John walked me through their first effort. It was not very convincing. I thought back to CIA briefings I had received, the NIE that concluded Saddam had biological and chemical weapons, and the data the CIA had provided for my UN speech in September. “Surely we can do a better job of explaining the evidence against Saddam,” I said. George Tenet agreed.
    “It’s a slam dunk,” he said.
    I believed him. I had been receiving intelligence briefings on Iraq for nearly two years. The conclusion that Saddam had WMD was nearly a universal consensus. My predecessor believed it. Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill believed it. Intelligence agencies in Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia, China, and Egypt believed it. As the German ambassador to the United States, not a supporter of war, later put it, “I think all of our governments believe that Iraq has produced weapons of mass destruction and that we have to assume that they still have … weapons of mass destruction.” If anything, we worried that the CIA was underestimating Saddam, as it had before the Gulf War.
    In retrospect, of course, we all should have pushed harder on the intelligence and revisited our assumptions. But at the time, the evidence and the logic pointed in the other direction.
If Saddam doesn’t actually have WMD
, I asked myself,
why on earth would he subject himself to a war he will almost certainly lose?

    Every Christmas during my presidency, Laura and I invited our extended family to join us at Camp David. We were happy to continue the tradition started by Mother and Dad. We cherished the opportunity to relax with them, Laura’s mom, Barbara and Jenna , and my