Excerpt: ‘War of Necessity, War of Choice’

For two weeks, the U.S. intelligence community had monitored the gradual buildup of Iraq’s armed forces along its southern border with Kuwait. The prevailing view within the administration of George H.W. Bush was that Iraqi military activity constituted a crude attempt to bludgeon Kuwait—oil rich, loaded with cash, and widely resented for the arrogance often displayed by its leaders—into lowering its oil output and dropping its objection to a higher price for the precious commodity. It was a view that I shared, much to the consternation of Charlie Allen, the crusty, veteran national intelligence officer for warning, who was convinced before anyone else that the Iraqis were not bluffing.

By August 1, 1990, however, it had become clear to all of us working on the issue that what we were seeing unfold was a good deal more than simply another act in the long-running theater of Arab diplomacy. Iraq had amassed too many troops and was doing too many of the things it would have to do if it were actually going to attack Kuwait rather than just threaten it. The Central Intelligence Agency issued an alert that predicted an attack was imminent. A special meeting of the “deputies” (the subcabinet group of senior officials representing the principal departments and agencies most involved in foreign and defense policy) was convened in one of the seventh-floor conference rooms at the State Department to discuss what was known and what the United States might do about it. It being August, many of the most senior people were away, escaping Washington’s notorious heat and humidity. Secretary of State James Baker was off meeting in Siberia with his Soviet counterpart and was scheduled to go to Mongolia; Larry Eagleburger, his deputy, was taking the day off. Bob Kimmitt, normally the number three person at State but that day the acting secretary, chaired the session, as Bob Gates, the deputy national security advisor and the normal chair of the deputies, was on vacation. Besides others from various bureaus at State, there were representatives of several of the intelligence agencies and from both the civilian and military sides of the Defense Department. As the senior director for the Near East and South Asia on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) and special assistant to the president, I was the principal person in attendance from the White House.

The meeting dragged on for most of the day as intelligence reports, ever more alarming, dribbled in. Saddam Hussein was up to something, although what that “something” was no one in the room knew. By late afternoon, a consensus had formed that we ought to make one last effort at dissuading the Iraqis from doing anything military. Given that Iraq was essentially a one-man show and that our ambassador was out of the country, this meant getting President Bush to contact Saddam. I was called upon to persuade the president to do so.

Normally I walked the half mile or so between the State Department and the White House, as time for exercise was hard to find given the long hours inevitably required by jobs such as mine. But with Iraq poised to attack Kuwait, the day was hardly one for a leisurely stroll. I got into the first cab I could find and rushed over to the West Wing office of my boss, Brent Scowcroft, formally the assistant to the president for national security affairs, commonly known as the national security advisor. I quickly laid it all out for him. He agreed that while it as a long shot—it was the middle of the night in Baghdad and it would be next to impossible to reach Saddam, much less affect his thinking—it made sense at least to present the option to the president.

By then, it was early evening in Washington. Brent picked up the phone, got the president on the line, and asked if the two of us could come to see him. Bush instantly agreed. We walked over to the sick bay on the ground floor of the residence, where the president was lying facedown on a doctor’s examination table, having heat applied by the White House nurse to several joints sore from hitting a bucket of golf balls. I summarized the situation as best we knew it. An Iraqi attack of unknown scope and purpose seemed imminent, and the interagency group concluded we had nothing to lose by trying to reach Saddam and get him to call it off. The president shared our wonder that Saddam would actually do such a brazen thing as well as our skepticism that we could accomplish anything at this hour. But he agreed to try. The three of us then began to discuss just how to reach Saddam—whether it was best to go through our embassy in Baghdad (headed up at the time by Deputy Chief of Mission Joe Wilson, who years later would find himself a political target of the second Bush presidency when he questioned that administration’s claim that Iraq was seeking to buy the raw material for a nuclear bomb) or through their embassy in Washington—when the phone rang. It was Bob Kimmitt on the line. He gave us the news that our embassy in Kuwait was reporting that firing had been heard in the streets. Iraq had invaded, although little else was clear. Our plan to phone Saddam had just become OBE—overtaken by events. Promising to stay in close touch with the president as we learned more, Brent and I returned to his office to discuss what steps needed taking right away. We then walked down to the Situation Room in the basement and convened a senior-level interagency meeting over the secure, closed-circuit television system that had been installed not too long before. The Gulf crisis, what would become the first major test of the post-Cold War world, was under way.

Nearly twelve years later, in early July 2002, I again found myself going from the State Department to the same West Wing office, now inhabited by President George W. Bush’s national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice. It was one of my regular meetings with Condi, whom I had gotten to know well when we both worked on the NSC staff for Brent Scowcroft and with whom I’d stayed in close touch.

I was seeing Condi in my capacity as director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, a position I had accepted with Colin Powell, whom I had also gotten to know well when we worked with each other in the previous Bush administration. Most of my job involved being an all-purpose advisor and counselor to the secretary of state as well as the person who oversaw his in-house think tank. I also drew special assignments in my other role as a roving ambassador for the United States, something that made me the U.S. envoy to the Northern Ireland peace talks and, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. coordinator for the future of Afghanistan. My meetings with Condi were not part of any formal interagency process but rather something informal, reflecting more than anything else our personal relationship.

As usual, I prepared on a yellow pad a list of the half-dozen or so issues I wanted to discuss during what normally was a thirty- to forty-five-minute meeting. At the top of my list was Iraq. For several weeks, those on my staff who dealt with Iraq and other Middle East issues had been reporting back that they sensed a shift, namely, that those at their level working at the Pentagon, the NSC, and the vice president’s office who favored going to war with Iraq were sending signals that things were going their way. I did not share this enthusiasm for going to war, believing that we had other viable options and fearing that going to war would be much tougher than the advocates predicted. My related concern was that it would take an enormous toll on the rest of American foreign policy at the precise moment in history that the United States enjoyed a rare opportunity to exert extraordinary influence.

I began my meeting with Condi by noting that the administration seemed to be building momentum toward going to war with Iraq and that I harbored serious doubts about the wisdom of doing so. I reminded her that I knew something about this issue given my role in the previous Bush administration and my background in and with the Middle East. So I asked her directly, “Are you really sure you want to make Iraq the centerpiece of the administration’s foreign policy?”

I was about to follow up with other questions when Condi cut me off. “You can save your breath, Richard. The president has already made up his mind on Iraq.” The way she said it made clear that he had decided to go to war.

I was taken aback by the blunt substance and tone of her answer. Policy had gone much further than I had realized—and feared. I did not argue at that moment, for several reasons. As in previous conversations when I had voiced my views on Iraq, Condi’s response made it clear that any more conversation at that point would be a waste of time. It is always important to pick your moments to make an unwelcome case, and this did not appear to be a promising one. I figured as well that there would be additional opportunities to argue my stance, if not with Condi, then with others in a position to make a difference.

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