In My Time - Dick Cheney [208]
On October 10, the House passed the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq by a vote of 296–133, forty-six more votes in favor than had been the case for Desert Storm in 1991. Shortly after midnight the Senate approved the resolution 77–23, a much larger margin than for the Gulf War.
ON NOVEMBER 8, 2002, the Security Council unanimously approved Resolution 1441. It gave Iraq “a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations,” demanded immediate and unrestricted access for UN inspectors, and required that Iraq provide a “complete declaration of all aspects” of its weapons of mass destruction programs and delivery systems. On December 7 Iraq submitted a twelve-thousand-page declaration, which, a few weeks later, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called “an obvious falsehood.” Hans Blix of Sweden, the head of the UN inspection effort, reinforced that idea when he reported to the Security Council in January. He said that the Iraqi declaration was mostly “a reprint of earlier documents” and that among the items it failed to account for were 6,500 chemical bombs, containing some one thousand tons of chemical agent. He noted that inspectors had indications that Iraq had weaponized VX, a deadly nerve gas, which conflicted with the account Iraq had given. He observed that “there are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared” and no convincing evidence that any of it had been destroyed. Missiles declared by Iraq had been “tested to a range in excess of the permitted range of 150 kilometers,” Blix said, and he noted that inspectors had discovered unarmed chemical warheads that Iraq had failed to declare. They were in a bunker that was relatively new and had probably been placed there within the past few years.
EVEN WHEN WAR AND peace are on the table, other matters have to be dealt with, and at the end of 2002, it was the Treasury Department. The president had decided he wanted to make a change. Paul O’Neill wasn’t working out. I felt somewhat responsible since I had recommended him for the job. I had gotten to know O’Neill during the Ford administration when he was the senior civil servant at OMB. He had been a superb budget analyst, a real star of the Ford administration, and after that, he had entered the business world, where he eventually became the well-regarded CEO of Alcoa. My friend Alan Greenspan was also a great fan of O’Neill and had thought he’d be a superb Treasury secretary.
In retrospect the problems were evident early on. When we were trying to reform tax policy and get the economy moving again, O’Neill often seemed more concerned with the accident record at Treasury. He also dedicated himself to the problem of bringing clean water to Africa—an important goal to be sure—but one better suited for the portfolio of the director of the Agency for International Development than for that of the Treasury secretary.
And there were some structural problems. Economic policy was being run out of the White House, and meetings to make big decisions often did not include the Treasury secretary. O’Neill should have demanded—as Hank Paulson would later demand—to be included in any White House meeting about economic policy. On the other hand, either the president or I could have said, “Where’s O’Neill? We should not be having this meeting without the Treasury secretary.”
On December 6 I called O’Neill. “Paul, the president has decided to make a change in his economic team,” I said, “and he wants you to come over so he can talk to you in person.” After initially agreeing to come to the White House, Paul called me back and canceled. He had someone drop off his resignation letter and left town.
ON DECEMBER 21, WITH the White House decorated for Christmas, a group including George Tenet, Condi Rice, Scooter Libby, Andy Card, and me met in the Oval Office with the president to review a briefing prepared by the CIA on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the threat posed by Saddam. Although we had already