500 Days (60 page)

•  •  •  

Reassurances to the British were delivered in a phone call from Rice to David Manning, one of the Blair’s chief foreign policy advisors.

Just ignore Cheney’s comments, Rice said. Nothing had changed, and the president was eager to hear what the prime minister had to say about seeking a U.N. resolution in a speech he was scheduled to deliver on September 12. There had been no final decisions, regardless of how Cheney made it sound.

The damage control continued through the week. Powell gave an interview with the BBC, attesting to America’s respect and faith in U.N. weapons inspectors. The message to Number 10 Downing Street was clear: Blair would gain political cover. Cheney would not be allowed to engage in diplomatic freelancing again.

•  •  •  

At the British embassy in Washington, Ambassador Christopher Meyer was preparing for a meeting between Bush and Blair that was scheduled for the next morning at Camp David. It was the evening of September 6, and once again
Blair was traveling to America to press Bush about seeking a new U.N. resolution on Iraq before launching a military invasion.

The Cheney speech—or, as one of Blair’s advisors called it, “the train wreck”—had provided the prime minister with a taste of the political heat he would face if the United States stiff-armed the U.N. Already suspicious of the American designs on Iraq, the British press and public greeted Cheney’s comments with a mixture of hostility and disdain. With his staff, Blair was steadfast, almost belligerent, in insisting that taking on Iraq was the right thing to do. But after the Cheney debacle, he returned to his role of coaxing the Bush administration into an internationalist frame of mind.

Meyer had high hopes for the Camp David meeting. While the militarists like Cheney and Rumsfeld were reckless in their go-it-alone arrogance, Bush was much more of a statesman. The president might be hawkish, but he was not a fool; his instincts were balanced with a strong dose of realpolitik. The world should thank God that it was Bush—and not Cheney—sitting in the Oval Office, Meyer thought.

The phone rang in his study. On the line was one of the most talented foreign policy experts from the Clinton administration, someone whom Meyer had long ago grown to trust.

“Just to let you know,” the caller said, “Dick Cheney is going to be present throughout the prime minister’s discussions with the president.”

A
Clinton
official was conveying confidential information from the
Bush
administration?

“How the hell do you know?” Meyer asked.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” came the reply. “But Blair had better watch out.”

•  •  •  

The next morning at Camp David, a line of soldiers stood at attention as Tony Blair and his entourage of advisors passed. Bush greeted them warmly, then escorted the group into the main building.

A few of the aides for both men took seats while Bush brought Blair and Manning to his study. The two had assumed that only Rice would be joining the meeting—they hadn’t heard yet from Meyer about the warning that Cheney would be attending.

Then the vice president appeared. The assemblage suggested that this meeting was about far more than persuading Bush—Blair’s job was to pull him away from the voices in his own administration clamoring for war. The prime minister, in essence, had to beat Cheney.

•  •  •  

Over the next two hours, Blair was unshakable.

He marshaled all of the usual arguments about the need to seek a U.N. resolution on Iraq—military action would shatter global alliances, Middle Eastern allies would be forced by the demands of their own people to turn against the West, the peace process would be crippled, the motivations for the attack would be distrusted.

There were questions that still hadn’t been answered to the public’s satisfaction: Why Saddam? Why now? What was the commitment of America and Britain to the Middle East? A new U.N. resolution would help provide answers. It would demonstrate that the recognition of the danger posed by Saddam was multinational, and not just something being pushed by the United States. Iraq’s refusal to comply with a renewed U.N. effort toward disarmament would prove that it was time to force Saddam’s hand. And, with both the United States and Britain strongly advancing the notion that this was part of a broader Middle East policy, they could not only win more allies and support throughout the region but also advance the peace process.

Occasionally, Cheney came in with a counterpoint, and Blair parried the vice president’s objection—and at times slammed it down, diplomatically. At one point Cheney argued that bringing in the U.N. for more inspections could well upend the effort for regime change.

“The British government’s aim is for disarmament,” Blair countered. “It is not for regime change. If the result of disarming Saddam was regime change, that would be positive, but it is not our primary goal.”

“Well,” Cheney countered, “we want regime change in order to disarm Saddam Hussein, not the other way around.”

That approach, while understandable, would be disastrous, Blair said. The Americans and the British couldn’t tell the world that they didn’t care whether Saddam was armed, they just wanted him out. Justifying that position would be next to impossible. They would be back struggling with the question: Why Saddam? There were other armed enemies, so why attack one that could be neutralized without war?

“Now, you may have objections to a U.N. resolution, but actually, I believe we might need two,” Blair said. “One to set the conditions and one to take action if those conditions weren’t meet.”

He looked at Bush. “Our message should be either the regime must change in response to U.N. pressure and to U.N. resolutions,” Blair said, “or it would be changed by military action.”

Bush suppressed a smile. Blair’s performance was impressive. Cheney could be an intimidating figure, but Blair wasn’t taking any guff. He was knocking the vice president back, without batting an eye.

Boy, Blair has cojones,
Bush thought.

He could see the virtues of Blair’s position, Bush said. There could be victory without war.

“If, by chance, Saddam accepted and implemented the terms of a new resolution,” he said, “we would have succeeded in changing the very nature of the regime.”

His smile broke through. “We would have cratered the guy,” he said.

•  •  •  

The aides waiting in the other room were summoned to the president’s study. Bush asked the British officials for a briefing about the staff’s discussions.

Alastair Campbell, a senior Blair aide, spoke directly to Bush. The administration, Campbell said, had to consider the importance of sending out a clear message of its benevolent intent.

“I feel like you really have to
get
the anti-Americanism in Europe and the Middle East,” he said. “A lot of it is jealousy and some of it resentment that they felt obliged to feel sympathy and solidarity post-9/11.”

But there were other important factors feeding into anti-Americanism that could not be shunted aside. Some of the disdain for the United States, Campbell said, came from a fear of its power. That was why the British officials were worried about the language that members of the Bush administration were using in their public statements.

A look of anger flashed across Cheney’s face. “You mean we shouldn’t talk about democracy?” he snapped.

Campbell faced the vice president. “Not if what people take out of it is not a message about democracy, but a message about Americanization,” he said.

Bush nodded. Whatever Cheney’s thoughts, Bush, it seemed, got it. There was a break in the discussion and Blair headed to the restroom.

“Hey, big guy!” Bush called out to Campbell.

Campbell walked over. A few of Bush’s aides were beside him.

He looked at Campbell, an amused look on his face. “I’ll say this,” Bush said, “and I don’t want it on the record, and with apologies to the mixed audience, but your guy’s got balls.”

•  •  •  

The meeting resumed, and Bush took control.

“I’ve decided to go down to the U.N. and put down a new Security Council resolution,” he said. “But I can’t stand by. At that point we’ve got to say to Saddam, ‘Okay, what will you do?’ ”

Blair and his aides breathed a sigh of relief. They had won the day. When Bush gave his speech on Iraq to the U.N. in four days, he would be declaring his preference for diplomacy before military action. Cheney had been checked.

•  •  •  

Dinner than night was anticlimactic. The vice president ate his meal in near silence, and Blair, suffering from severe stomach cramps, barely ate at all.

Bush held forth, filling the group in on a dispute unfolding at the Augusta National Golf Club about whether women could be admitted as members. It was a silly battle, Bush said. The club was going to have to let women in at some point, so why not just accept the inevitable?

A member of the British contingent commented that, while the rest of the world wanted the Iraq issue to be resolved a step at a time, Americans would probably question why Bush was seeking a diplomatic solution at the U.N., rather than just sending in the troops. Cheney smiled across the table. Without saying a word, everyone understood—that was his question.

As dinner wrapped up, Blair excused himself and headed to his cabin. Bush accompanied Campbell out the door. “I suppose you can tell the story of how Tony flew in and pulled the crazed unilateralist back from the brink,” he joked.

•  •  •  

After 9:30 the next morning, Rumsfeld was in his Pentagon office reviewing an intelligence report. He had asked a few weeks earlier for an assessment by the Directorate of Intelligence Joint Staff of what the United States did and did not know about an Iraqi program for weapons of mass destruction. Although the analysis had been completed four days earlier, this was the first time Rumsfeld had laid eyes on it.

The findings were disconcerting. The opening page cautioned that all of the assessments of Iraq’s arsenal were based heavily on analytic assumptions. There was very little hard evidence.

“Our knowledge of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program is based largely—perhaps 90%—on analysis of imprecise intelligence,” the report said.

As for biological weapons, the intelligence officers could not confirm the identity of any Iraqi facilities that produced, tested, or stored them. And while
they believed that Iraq had seven mobile production plants for such weapons, they could not locate them.

In every category, the information was sketchy. The analysts didn’t know if Iraq had the processes in place to produce chemical devices, and they couldn’t confirm the identity of any Iraqi sites used to produce the final agents needed for a weapon. While Saddam had short-range ballistic missiles, they doubted that he could produce longer-range weapons. Information about staging and storage sites for ballistic missiles was “significantly lacking,” the report said.

Rumsfeld decided that General Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, needed to see this report immediately. Just after 9:45, he addressed an e-mail to Myers, attaching a copy of the report.

“Please take a look at this material as to what we don’t know about WMD,” he typed. “It’s big.”

THE THREAT