True Faith and Allegiance by Alberto R. Gonzales

Author:Alberto R. Gonzales
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2016-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

FOR THE SAKE OF PEACE AND SECURITY

The NSC met with the president at the White House at 9:00 a.m. on January 31, 2003. By the conclusion of this meeting, the president was committed, at least as far as he could be—he had chosen to initiate military action on February 22. Subject to a dramatic turn of events, the air war would begin on March 10, and the ground troops would move into Iraq on March 15. Certainly the plan could change, but we now had a roadmap to follow.

Vice President Cheney reminded everyone that we needed to prepare for all contingencies. Saddam could do anything. There were still off-ramps on the road to war. On February 5, Colin Powell was scheduled to present the case for action in Iraq to the UN, to let them know that time was running out. The president would speak to the nation about Iraq the following day. A second resolution might be presented to the UN on February 7, but that was still very much up in the air.

The president contended, “The military plan should not be geared for diplomacy; it will be geared to win militarily.”

General Franks noted we needed to figure out how we wanted to give advance notice to civilians in Iraq, warning them about the ensuing war. Tommy Franks was a realist. “Ten percent of our munitions might be off,” he said. “There will be civilian casualties.”

On February 3, the principals met to discuss the content of Powell’s upcoming speech to the UN. Colin Powell was a man of great pride in his reputation, and he would never say anything to a government body that he did not believe to be absolutely true. He had only one caveat: “There will be no smoking gun.”

Otherwise, he intended to say straightforwardly that Iraq’s most recent weapons declarations were false and inaccurate. Saddam had not cooperated or complied with the UN requests.

Second, he intended to present a thorough review of Iraq’s weapons programs, including biological, chemical, and nuclear.

Third, he intended to discuss Saddam’s ties to terrorism.

And fourth, he intended to cover Hussein’s human rights violations imposed upon his own people.

I sensed that Secretary Powell was comfortable making the case; he had been screening the intelligence reports and removing any questionable assertions from his presentation. He had even gone out to CIA headquarters at Langley, along with several speechwriters and senior aides, checking and double-checking his facts against the most up-to-date information. The CIA assigned a number of senior intelligence professionals to help check the accuracy of what Powell and his writers were including, but as CIA director George Tenet later acknowledged, “Despite our efforts, a lot of flawed information still made its way into the speech.”1

As planned, on the morning of February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell made the case for war to the United Nations. Sitting behind him on the platform were John Negroponte, the US ambassador to the UN, and George Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

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