Plan of Attack, Part 6
The morning of Colin Powell's presentation to the UN, 5 February 2003, Bush and Rice met with 20 members of Congress, including several important Democrats. The Democrats were concerned. They thought Powell's forthcoming case was strong but saw no immediate threat to the US. They were worried about the inconsistency of American policies in Iraq and North Korea. They wondered how long American troops would have to remain in Iraq should war come, and they wanted, in particular, to be assured that WMD would be found in Iraq after an invasion. On the whole, though, Rice was able to convince them of the necessity of war, due to Saddam's continuing inspection-site shenanigans and Blix's unreliability.
Powell's presentation itself was a success. He used every scrap of intelligence that he found at all reliable, and he added his personal interpretations, making the potential danger underlying every intercept and photograph obvious to the audience. He was extremely persuasive; the presentation convinced most Americans that Saddam was a menace. Opinion on the world stage, of course, was not so favorable; on February 10,
Jacques Chirac,
Vladimir Putin, and
Gerhard Schroeder issued a statement calling for continuing inspections. Furthermore, Blix's report of February 14 was, in part, a rebuke to Powell and to the US. Blix admitted that there were many remaining Iraqi accounting discrepancies, but he took pains to point out that the Iraqis by and large had been cooperative, and that there was no hard intelligence that they were playing games. He still believed that Iraq could be disarmed through inspections. Of course, the Bush Administration, by this point, was already committed to war.
The delays caused by the diplomatic situation were not without benefit to the Administration. Although the Iraq war plan update had been complete since late January, postwar planning was continuing in the
Office of Special Plans headed by Douglas Feith. The postwar planning was done without significant input from other portions of the Defense Department, because communication between different parts of DoD was nonexistent. The budget office, the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Office of Special Plans, and
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) all acted as independent entities with no coordination. The Joint Chiefs, in particular, were left out in the cold. Franks and the rest of CENTCOM had little respect for them, and they were afraid of Rumsfeld and Feith. Rumsfeld was unable or unwilling to do anything about the problem; instead an NSC official, Frank Miller, uncovered communications issues and escalated them to Condoleeza Rice, who in turn would talk to Rumsfeld.
On March 4, Douglas Feith briefed Bush and the NSC on postwar objectives. These are the bullet points from his PowerPoint presentation (I quote
Plan of Attack directly for these):
- Iraq's territorial integrity is maintained and the quality of life in Iraq is improved visibly.
- Iraq is seen to be moving towards democratic institutions and serves as a model for the region.
- The U.S. and coalition maintain freedom of action to carry out the global war on terrorism and WMD capture and destruction activities.
- Obtain international participation in the reconstruction effort.
- Obtain the support of the Iraqi people.
- Obtain the political support of the international community, including the regional states, preferably through a U.N. Security Council resolution.
- Place as many Iraqi faces in positions of physical authority as quickly as possible.
- Accomplish the above urgently.
As of today, well over a year after the end of major combat operations, none of these bullet points have been unambiguously achieved.
Read about the final days before war in Part 7.
