I knew the cost would be high. But inaction had a cost, too. Given everything we knew, allowing Saddam to stay in power would have amounted to an enormous gamble. I would have had to bet that either every major intelligence agency was wrong or that Saddam would have a change of heart. After seeing the horror of 9/11, that was not a chance I was willing to take. Military action was my last resort. But I believed it was necessary.
The next day, Monday, March 17, 2003, Ambassador John Negroponte withdrew the second resolution at the UN. That night, I addressed the nation from the Cross Hall of the White House. “The United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities, so we will rise to ours,” I said, “… Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within forty-eight hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing.”
The next two days felt like a week. We did get some good news on Tuesday: Tony Blair had won his vote in parliament by a solid margin. Great Britain would be at our side.
George Tenet and Colin Powell kept me updated on the latest developments with Iraq. Our last-ditch hope was that Saddam would agree to go into exile. At one point, an offer from a Middle Eastern government to send Saddam to Belarus with $1 to $2 billion looked like it might gain traction. Instead, in one of his last acts, Saddam ordered the tongue of a dissident slashed out and left the man to bleed to death. The dictator of Iraq had made his decision. He chose war.
On Wednesday morning, I convened the entire National Security Council in the Situation Room, where I gave the order to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom. Six hours later, I got an unexpected call from Don Rumsfeld. He said that he had something major to discuss. He and George Tenet were on their way to the Oval Office.
“What’s going on?” I asked when they arrived.
“Mr. President,” George said, “we think we have a chance to kill Saddam Hussein.”
What followed was one of the most extraordinary meetings of my presidency. With the full national security team gathered in the Oval Office, advisers scrambled in and out providing the latest updates from the field. A network of intelligence sources in Iraq reported that Saddam and some of his family were likely to spend the night at a complex outside Baghdad called Dora Farms. If we bombed the site, we might be able to decapitate the regime.
I was skeptical. If I ordered the airstrike, we would be departing from our well-conceived plan, which called for two days of covert operations before the air war commenced. I pictured all that could go wrong. Two F-117 bombers would have to fly unescorted over a heavily fortified city. My biggest concern was that the intelligence was a trap. What if it was not Saddam headed to Dora Farms, but a busload of kids? The first images of the war would show us killing innocent Iraqi children.
The safest course was to stick with the plan. But one thought kept recurring: By killing the dictator we might be able to end the war before it began, and spare lives. I felt a responsibility to seize this opportunity. General Myers briefed me that the planes were gassed up and the Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles were programmed. I turned to the team gathered in the Oval Office and said, “Let’s go.” Just after the forty-eight-hour deadline expired, the bombing began.
Condi called early the next morning. A witness had seen a man who resembled Saddam being carried out of the rubble at Dora Farms. But as the days passed, the reports changed. The operation was a harbinger of things to come. Our intent was right. The pilots performed bravely. But the intelligence was wrong.
The day after the opening shot at Dora Farms, a flurry of military activity commenced. From Iraq’s southern border with Kuwait, the V Corps and First Marine Expeditionary Force started their parallel charge to Baghdad. Meanwhile, our air forces bombarded the capital. In the initial wave of the strike, more than three hundred cruise missiles—followed by stealth bombers—took out most of Saddam’s military command and government headquarters. Unlike the firebombing of Dresden, the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the use of napalm on Vietnam, our attack spared much of Baghdad’s civilian population and infrastructure. It was not only shock and awe, but one of the most precise air raids in history.
In southern Iraq, Marines deployed to protect key oil fields. Polish Special Forces and U.S. Navy SEALs secured offshore oil infrastructure. A British armored division liberated the southern city of Basra and the vital port of Umm Qasr. The oil fires and sabotage we feared never materialized, and we had cleared a path for humanitarian aid to flow into Iraq.
In northern Iraq, paratroopers seized key transit points and helped build an air bridge for supplies and humanitarian aid. With support from Kurdish forces, the Zarqawi camp was destroyed. In western Iraq, American, British, and Australian Special Forces patrolled the desert for Scud missiles and made sure Saddam never had the chance to attack Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, or other allies in the region.
By the end of the second week, our troops had reached the outskirts of Baghdad. They had endured blinding sandstorms, searing heat, and heavy hazmat gear to protect against the biological or chemical attack we feared. They faced fierce resistance from Saddam’s most loyal forces, who attacked from civilian vehicles and hid behind human shields. Yet they completed the fastest armored advance in the history of warfare. Along the way, they handed out candy and medicine to children and risked their lives to protect Iraqi civilians.
On April 4, Sergeant Paul Ray Smith and his men were securing a courtyard near the Baghdad airport. Saddam’s Republican Guards ambushed them, wounding several of Sergeant Smith’s men. Exposed to enemy fire, Sergeant Smith manned a machine gun and kept shooting until he suffered a mortal wound. The Army’s after-action report revealed that he had killed fifty enemy soldiers and saved as many as one hundred Americans. For his act of bravery, Paul Ray Smith became the first soldier in the war on terror to earn the Medal of Honor. In April 2005, I presented the medal to his widow, Birgit, and young son at the White House.
The day after Sergeant Smith gave his life to secure the airport, the Third Infantry Division entered Baghdad. The First Marine Division arrived two days later. At the NSC meeting on the morning of April 9, Tommy Franks reported that the Iraqi capital could fall at any moment. My next meeting was with President Rudolf Schuster of Slovakia. His young democracy, one of forty-eight countries that had pledged military or logistical support in Iraq, had deployed a unit trained to manage the impact of a WMD attack. President Schuster had tears in his eyes as he described his nation’s pride in helping liberate Iraq. I kept that moment in mind when I heard critics allege that America acted unilaterally. The false charge denigrated our allies and pissed me off.
When the meeting ended, Dan Bartlett told me I ought to take a look at the TV. I didn’t keep one in the Oval Office, so I went to the area outside where my personal assistants sat. I watched as a crowd of Iraqis in Baghdad’s Firdos Square cheered while a Marine vehicle dragged down a forty-foot-tall statue of Saddam.
For twenty days I had been filled with anxiety. Now I was overwhelmed with relief and pride. I was also mindful of the challenges ahead. Saddam’s forces still controlled parts of northern Iraq, including his hometown of Tikrit. There were pockets of resistance from ruthless Baathist fighters called Fedayeen Saddam. And Saddam and his sons were on the run. As I told Jose Maria Aznar when I called to share the news, “You won’t see us doing any victory dances or anything.”
I should have followed my own advice. Tommy Franks felt it was important to show that a new phase in the war had begun. As a way to do that, I decided to give a speech aboard the USS
On May 1, 2003, I climbed into the seat of a military jet for the first time in more than thirty years. Navy pilot Scott Zellem, known by his call sign as Z-Man, briefed us on the safety procedures at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego.*** Commander John “Skip” Lussier, a fine pilot with more than five hundred carrier landings on his resume, got our S-3B Viking off the ground. At one point, he handed the controls to me, and I flew the jet for a few minutes over the Pacific Ocean. I was rusty, but after a few porpoises I steadied out. The commander wisely took over as we approached the carrier. He guided the plane down to the deck and caught the final arresting wire.
Aboard the
