Decision Points

bomber attacks. This would allow us to hit more targets, while exposing our pilots to limited risk.
    The third and most aggressive option was to employ cruise missiles, bombers, and boots on the ground. This was mostly a theoretical option; the military would have to develop the details from scratch.
    General Shelton stressed that it would take time and delicate diplomacy to insert our forces into a mountainous, landlocked country. We would need basing rights, overflight permission, and search-and-rescue capability—not to mention good weather and good luck.
    A wide-ranging discussion followed. George Tenet warned that a retaliatory strike on our homeland was likely. “We can’t deter them if they’ve already planned a second round,” he said. “I expect they have some chemical and biological weapons,” he added ominously.
    Dick Cheney worried that the war could spill over into Pakistan, causing the government to lose control of the country and potentially its nuclear arsenal. As Deputy National Security Adviser Steve Hadley rightly put it, that would be “the nightmare scenario.”
    At one point, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz suggested that we consider confronting Iraq as well as the Taliban. Before 9/11, Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship was widely considered the most dangerous country in the world. The regime had a long record of supporting terrorism, including paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Saddam’s forces fired routinely at American and British pilots patrolling the no-fly zones imposed by the United Nations. And Iraq had defied more than a decade’s worth of UN resolutions demanding that it prove it had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction.
    “Dealing with Iraq would show a major commitment to antiterrorism,” Don Rumsfeld said.
    Colin cautioned against it. “Going after Iraq now would be viewed as a bait and switch,” he said. “We would lose the UN, the Islamic countries, and NATO. If we want to do Iraq, we should do it at a time of our choosing. But we should not do it now, because we don’t have linkage to this event.”
    George Tenet agreed. “Don’t hit now. It would be a mistake,” he said. “The first target needs to be al Qaeda.”
    Dick Cheney understood the threat of Saddam Hussein and believed we had to address it. “But now is not a good time to do it,” he said. “We would lose our momentum. Right now people have to choose between the United States and the bad guys.”
    I welcomed the vigorous debate. Listening to the discussion and divergent views helped clarify my options. I wasn’t going to make a decision on the spot. That would come the next day.

    Sunday, September 16, was a day of reflection. Laura and I went to services at Camp David’s beautiful Evergreen Chapel. Started during the Reagan administration and finished during Dad’s, the chapel was a special place for my family. The first wedding performed there was between my sister Doro and her fine husband, Bobby Koch.
    At 10:00 a.m. that first Sunday after 9/11, late summer light streamed through the serene woods and into the chapel. Navy and Marine Corps personnel and family members joined us in worship, as did members of the national security team who had stayed over from the meetings the day before.
    Camp David was blessed to have a fine pastor, Navy Chaplain Bob Williams. His sermon that Sunday was touching and comforting. He asked the questions so many of us had struggled with: “Why? … How could this happen, God?”
    Bob said the answer was beyond our power to know. “Life is sometimes a maze of contradictions and incongruities,” he acknowledged. Yet we could take comfort in knowing that God’s plan would prevail. He quoted a passage from St. Ignatius of Loyola: “Pray as if it all depends upon God, for it does. But work as if it all depends upon us, for it does.”
    After the service, Laura and I boarded Marine One for the flight back to Washington. By that afternoon I had reached one of the defining decision points in my presidency: We would fight the war on terror on the offense, and the first battlefront would be Afghanistan.
    My decision was a departure from America’s policies over the past two decades. After Hezbollah terrorists bombed our Marine barracks and embassy in Lebanon in 1983, President Reagan withdrew our forces. Whenterrorist warlords in Somalia shot down an American Black Hawk helicopter in 1993, President Clinton pulled our troops