Examining the Bush legacy in 'The Decider'

MATTHEWS ON HARDBALL, MAY 25, 2004: Why did this president and this vice president decide to go to war with Iraq?

GENERAL ANTHONY ZINNI: Well, I believe the president was hit hard with 9/11 as we all were.

It's a question I've been asking on "Hardball" for years: Why did President Bush decide to invade Iraq? A pre-emptive war against a country that had not attacked us; a concept that seemed almost un-American. 

ROBINSON: Why did George W. Bush decide to invade Iraq?  If I knew the answer to that question definitively, I would write a book.

There have been books written on Iraq but no single answer. 

DOUGLAS FEITH, FORMER UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR POLICY: The president had a sense that we had a Saddam Hussein problem.  And something had to be done about the problem.

Video   Bush’s questionable war with Iraq Dec. 29: After declaring a global War on terror and attacking Afghanistan, President Bush then seemed to focus all his energy on Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Hardball’s Chris Matthews and political panelists look at the roles Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney played in the ongoing war in Iraq. Hardball

The FBI and National Security Agency quickly linked al-Qaida to the 9/11 attacks.  But according to former counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke, the president was determined to link Iraq to 9/11.

CLARKE: I understood that this was an instruction to find evidence—and to circle that evidence—and say that Iraq and Saddam had a role in 9/11.

ROBINSON: His instinctive reaction after 9/11 was not just to, "Let's go get al-Qaida and the Taliban  in Afghanistan.”  But, "Saddam Hussein.  Let's go after Saddam Hussein.”  And I think that was from the gut rather than from the head.

In fact, the president prided himself on making decisions ‘from his gut.'

WOODWARD: I went down to his ranch in Crawford in August of 2002, interviewed him for hours about the first book in the war in Afghanistan and it looked like we might be heading to an Iraq war. 

(Bush/Woodward audiotape played on "Meet the Press" on November 24, 2002.)

BUSH: I just think it's instinctive. I think it's—I believe—I'm not a textbook player, I'm a gut player.

WOODWARD: It was so evident that he consults the inner George W. Bush for these things.  And sometimes, you gotta go to the textbook.

FRUM: He would often make decisions on the basis of less information than other people would feel comfortable making a decision.  That the decisions were often made in very immediate ways, often driven very much by emotion.  And that could serve him well, But it could get him in a lot of trouble.

As his war cabinet put plans for an invasion in motion, Bush used the bully pulpit to rally public support.

BUSH GIVES STATE OF THE UNION ON JANUARY 30, 2002: States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.

But this speech at West Point was the shot truly heard round the world as Bush proclaimed the need for wars of pre-emption  to protect the American homeland in an age of terror.

BUSH WEST POINT SPEECH: Our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.

It would become known as ‘the Bush Doctrine.'

FEITH: The president decided that it would be just too dangerous to leave Saddam Hussein in place and allow Saddam with whom a confrontation down the road with us seemed inevitable—to pick the time and place of that confrontation.

It marked a tectonic shift for American foreign policy designed in part by a group of advisors both inside and outside the White House. They were known as  the neoconservatives.

MCCLELLAN: The neoconservative influence was certainly very strong inside the White House, of Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz to people like Richard Perle, to Secretary Rumsfeld , the Vice President.  Now, I don't want to paint it in a black and white situation, where it was all these neoconservatives pushin' the President.  ‘Cause the President did have this heartfelt belief in—spreading freedom and democracy but they played right into those instincts.

But the lofty rhetoric of democracy was not enough to rally the american people behind a pre-emptive war.

COLIN POWELL AT THE U.N.:  Why should any of us give Iraq the benefit of the doubt?  I don't.

That's where weapons of mass destruction came in.

BUSH SPEECH IN OHIO ON OCTOBER 7, 2002:  Wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

The CIA and Defense Department, British and German intelligence compiled dossiers of intelligence on Saddam's weapons—much of it from highly unreliable sources.  Yet this is what the president would use to make his case for a new kind of war.

BUSH GIVES STATE OF THE UNION ON JANUARY 28, 2003:  The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

MCCLELLAN: It became about, "How do we make the strongest case?”  And in the process, we dropped or ignored some of the uncertainties with the intelligence.  

In meetings the president's advisers deferred to their decider, but maintain there was rigorous internal discussion.

MATALIN: He really encouraged debate, dissension. And when he felt that he had exhausted all of the available data, and all the available opinions, he would make his decision.

But working with the White House from the outside, 9/11 commission Chairman Tom Kean encountered an attitude that gave him pause.

KEAN: There was in this presidency, also, very much an us and them mentality and decisions were made by a small group of people.  And when you do that, you make mistakes. 

The chief of that ‘small group,' of course, was the vice president.

WOODWARD: Cheney was a steamroller.  He pressured for the invasion of Iraq. 

CHENEY/VETERAN OF FOREIGN WARS SPEECH  ON AUGUST 26, 2002: Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

After war council meetings Cheney would usually have the last word with the president.

FRUM: The vice president's sitting beside the president's chair.  But, the vice president would not speak.  Then the meeting would end; everybody would leave.  The Vice President would be left alone and that's when he would speak.  Now, what did he say in that room?  Really, there are only two people who know.

Some now view the Cheney relationship as one of the key flaws in the Decider's decision-making process.

WOODWARD: All of Cheney's evaluations never got really tested by other people. This idea of whispering in the ear, I think, in any large institution is a disaster.

And their close relationship may explain why one meeting in the White House apparently never took place.

JAMES PFIFFNER, PROFESSOR OF POLICY, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY: It seemed that President Bush never brought together all of his top advisors--in making a decision and letting them discuss the pros and cons of whether to go into Iraq before him and—and make a decision.

(Hardball discussion on April 29, 2004)

MATTHEWS: Did you advise the president to go to war?

RUMSFELD: Yeah. He did not ask me, is—is the question, and to my knowledge, there are any number of people he did not ask.

MATTHEWS:  Did that surprise you as Secretary of Defense?

RUMSFELD:  Well I thought it was interesting.

WOODWARD: Didn't ask Colin Powell, didn't ask George Tenet, the CIA Director.  And I asked him, I said, "How did you not ask these key people?”

And he literally said, "I know what they felt.  I know what they thought.”

By March 2003 Bush had clearly made his final decision.

BUSH ADDRESS TO NATION ON MARCH 19, 2003: At this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.

The initial days of the invasion were a success. 'Shock and awe' seemed to do the job.  American military might had toppled Saddam.

And after six weeks of fighting, Bush declared victory. ‘Mission accomplished.'

BUSH ABROAD ABRAHAM LINCOLN ON MAY 1, 2003: My fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.

ROBINSON: If you declare mission accomplished, that's the moment when you're supposed to say, you know, "and we're going home."

Yet, it was clear that the American forces did not have Iraq's civilian population under control. Looting was rampant.  And sectarian violence broke out between Shiites and Sunnis.

HAYES: The question was, "How did we go from that point, where we were greeted as liberators, where there was jubilation in the streets of Iraq, to a point six months later where it was close to chaos?”

RUMSFELD PRESSER ON APRIL 11, 2003: Stuff happens! And it's untidy, and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.

PRIEST: He was just saying, "Oh, they're they're dead-enders.  And there are a couple people looting.”  And no, this was the start of something really bad. 

The reality of Bush's decision to invade Iraq became all too clear a year later, with these shocking images of four American contractors killed in Fallujah, this would not be a quick and painless war.

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