In My Time - Dick Cheney [209]
The president wanted a better presentation. What he envisioned, he said, was a case against Saddam that was like a closing argument in a trial. Thinking that lawyers might be best suited for the job, he directed Libby and Hadley to take the CIA material we had on Saddam and turn it into a brief that strongly presented the evidence against him.
After Christmas the president asked Colin Powell to make the public case against Saddam at the UN. The work Scooter and Steve had done, coordinating with a CIA officer detailed to the National Security Council and drawing from intelligence community reports, was forwarded to Powell for him to use as he prepared his remarks. I called Colin, told him the package he had received had good material in it, and encouraged him to take a look. Powell and members of his staff said later that they threw Steve’s and Scooter’s documents out and spent several days and nights at the CIA, where they personally confirmed with George Tenet every piece of information that went into his speech.
A few days later, Powell sat in the United States chair in the Security Council, with George Tenet behind him, and presented the case against Iraq. “My colleagues,” he said, “every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.”
Later, when it turned out that much of what Powell said about weapons of mass destruction was wrong, I think embarrassment caused him and those around him to lash out at others. Libby seemed to be a particular target of their ire. They excoriated the material that he and the National Security Council staff had provided, while at the same time boasting that they had thrown it in the garbage. As it happened much of what they discarded focused on Saddam’s ties to terror and human rights violations, charges that would stand the test of time.
ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 2003, at the president’s request, I invited Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, to my West Wing office for a briefing about our concept for military operations in Iraq. Thirteen years earlier Colin Powell and I had conducted a similar briefing for Bandar at the round table in my Pentagon office. This time it was Joint Chiefs Chairman Dick Myers and Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld who outlined our thinking and explained why we needed Saudi help. Being able to operate out of bases in the Kingdom would be crucial to us for an operation in Iraq.
I knew that Bandar was concerned about our commitment to see this thing through, and with the president’s approval, I intended to reassure him. I’d done that on the eve of Desert Storm, when I made two commitments to King Fahd. I had told him the United States would send sufficient forces to defend Saudi Arabia and liberate Kuwait, and I had assured him that when the job was done, we’d bring our troops home. And we’d kept our commitments.
But Saddam had survived, and he had managed simply by surviving to portray himself as the victor. None of his neighbors wanted to see that happen again. It might make him even more dangerous. If the United States was going to conduct a military operation, we needed to ensure that Saddam didn’t remain in power.
General Myers gave Bandar a good look at what we had in mind. Bandar, who had been a fighter pilot, understood the strategy and jargon, and there was no doubt he was impressed. But he wanted to know if there would be a way out for Saddam. Don assured him that Saddam would