Decision Points

resolution. He talked about giving Saddam an additional two or three weeks. I told him a few more weeks would make no difference. Saddam had already had years to comply. “It is sad it has come down to this,” I said. I asked one last time how he planned to vote. He said no.
    As the diplomatic process drifted along, the pressure for action had been mounting. In early 2003, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told me the uncertainty was hurting the economy. Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia , the kingdom’s longtime ambassador to Washington and a friend of mine since Dad’s presidency, came to the Oval Office and told me our allies in the Middle East wanted a decision.
    Whenever I heard someone claim that we had rushed to war, I thought back to this period. It had been more than a decade since the Gulf War resolutions had demanded that Saddam disarm, over four years since he had kicked out the weapons inspectors, six months since I had issued my ultimatum at the UN, four months since Resolution 1441 had given Saddam his “final opportunity,” and three months past the deadline to fully disclose his WMD. Diplomacy did not feel rushed. It felt like it was taking forever.
    Meanwhile, the threats continued. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt had told Tommy Franks that Iraq had biological weapons and was certain to use them on our troops. He refused to make the allegation in public for fear of inciting the Arab Street. But the intelligence from a Middle Eastern leader who knew Saddam well had an impact on my thinking. Just as there were risks to action, there were risks to inaction as well: Saddam with a biological weapon was a serious threat to us all.

    In the winter of 2003, I sought opinions on Iraq from a variety of sources. I asked for advice from scholars, Iraqi dissidents in exile, and others outside the administration. One of the most fascinating people I met with was Elie Wiesel , the author, Holocaust survivor, and deserving Nobel Peace Prize recipient. Elie is a sober and gentle man. But there was passion in his seventy-four-year-old eyes when he compared Saddam Hussein’s brutality to the Nazi genocide. “Mr. President,” he said, “you have amoral obligation to act against evil.” The force of his conviction affected me deeply. Here was a man who had devoted his life to peace urging me to intervene in Iraq. As he later explained in an op-ed: “Though I oppose war, I am in favor of intervention when, as in this case because of Hussein’s equivocations and procrastinations, no other option remains.”

    With Elie Wiesel.
White House/Paul Draper
    I’ve always wondered why many critics of the war did not acknowledge the moral argument made by people like Elie Wiesel. Many of those who demonstrated against military action in Iraq were devoted advocates of human rights. Yet they condemned me for using force to remove the man who had gassed the Kurds, mowed down the Shia by helicopter gunship, massacred the Marsh Arabs, and sent tens of thousands to mass graves. I understood why people might disagree on the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the United States. But I didn’t see how anyone could deny that liberating Iraq advanced the cause of human rights.

    With diplomacy faltering, our military planning sessions had increasingly focused on what would happen after the removal of Saddam. In later years, some critics would charge that we failed to prepare for the postwar period. That sure isn’t how I remember it.
    Starting in the fall of 2002, a group led by Deputy National Security Adviser Steve Hadley produced in-depth plans for post-Saddam Iraq. Two of our biggest concerns were starvation and refugees. Sixty percent of Iraqis were dependent on the government as a source of food. An estimated two million Iraqis could be displaced from their homes during war.
    On January 15, Elliott Abrams , a senior NSC staffer, delivered a detailed briefing on our preparations. We planned to prestation food, blankets, medicine, tents, and other relief supplies. We produced maps of where refugees could be sheltered. We deployed experienced humanitarian relief experts to enter Iraq alongside our troops. We had pinpointed the locations of most of Iraq’s fifty-five thousand food distribution points and made arrangements with international organizations—including the World Food Programme—to make sure plenty of food was available.
    We also developed plans for long-term reconstruction. We focusedon ten areas: education,