ahead.
By the fall of 2003, the international coalition in Iraq was comprised of ground forces from thirty countries, including two multinational divisions led by Great Britain and Poland, and logistical support from many others. Coalition forces had discovered torture chambers, rape rooms, and mass graves containing thousands of bodies. They found a facility containing state-of-the-art hazmat suits and syringes with the antidote for VX nerve agent. But they had not found the stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons that virtually every major intelligence agency in the world believed Saddam had.
When Saddam didn’t use WMD on our troops, I was relieved. When we didn’t discover the stockpile soon after the fall of Baghdad, I was surprised. When the whole summer passed without finding any, I was alarmed. The press corps constantly raised the question, “Where are the WMD?”
I was asking the same thing. The military and intelligence teams assured me they were looking constantly. They examined hidden sites Saddam had used during the Gulf War. They collected intelligence and responded to tips. At one point, the CIA heard that large canisters had been spotted from a bridge over the Euphrates River. Navy frogmen deployed to the scene. They found nothing. A high-ranking official from the United Arab Emirates brought drawings of tunnels he believed Saddam had used to hide weapons. We dug up the ground. Nothing materialized.
George Tenet recruited David Kay, the UN’s chief weapons inspector in Iraq in 1991, to lead a new inspections team. Kay conducted a thorough search of Iraq and found irrefutable evidence that Saddam had lied to the world and violated Resolution 1441. “Iraq’s WMD programs spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars, and were elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom,” he told Congress in October 2003. But there was one thing Kay did not find: the WMD stockpiles everyone expected.
The left trotted out a new mantra: “Bush Lied, People Died.” The charge was illogical. If I wanted to mislead the country into war, why would I pick an allegation that was certain to be disproven publicly shortly after we invaded the country? The charge was also dishonest. Members of the previous administration, John Kerry, John Edwards, and the vast majority of Congress had all read the same intelligence that I had and concluded Iraq had WMD. So had intelligence agencies around the world. Nobody was lying. We were all wrong. The absence of WMD stockpiles did not change the fact that Saddam was a threat. In January 2004, David Kay said, “It was reasonable to conclude that Iraq posed an imminent threat. … What we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place potentially than in fact we thought it was even before the war.”
Still, I knew the failure to find WMD would transform public perception of the war. While the world was undoubtedly safer with Saddam gone, the reality was that I had sent American troops into combat based in large part on intelligence that proved false. That was a massive blow to our credibility—my credibility—that would shake the confidence of the American people.
No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn’t find the weapons. I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do.
While the fight in Iraq was more difficult than I expected, I remained optimistic. I was inspired by the courage of the one hundred thousand Iraqis who volunteered to join their security forces, by leaders who stepped forward to replace members of the Governing Council who had been assassinated, and by ordinary people who longed for freedom.
Nothing gave me more confidence than our troops. Thanks to them, most of the senior members of Saddam’s regime had been captured or killed by the end of 2003. In July, we got an intelligence tip that Saddam’s two sons were in the Mosul area of northern Iraq. Joined by Special Forces, troops from the 101st Airborne under the command of General David Petraeus laid siege to the building where Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay, were hiding. After a six-hour firefight, both were dead. We later received intelligence that Saddam had ordered the killing of Barbara and Jenna in return for the death of his sons.
Two days after the fall of Baghdad, Laura and I visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. We met with almost a hundred wounded service members and their families. Some were from Afghanistan; many were from Iraq. It was a heart-wrenching experience to look into a hospital bed and see the consequences of sending Americans into combat. One comfort was that I knew they would receive superb medical care from the skilled and compassionate professionals of the military health-care system.
Visiting the wounded was both the toughest and most inspiring part of my job. Here, with Sergeant Patrick Hagood at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
At Walter Reed, I met a member of the Delta Team, one of our elite Special Forces units. For classification reasons, I cannot give his name. He had lost the lower half of his leg. “I appreciate your service,” I said as I shook his hand. “I’m sorry you got hurt.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me, Mr. President,” he replied. “Just get me another leg so I can go back in.”
At the National Naval Medical Center, I met forty-two-year-old Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant Guadalupe Denogean. He had been wounded a few weeks earlier, when a rocket-propelled grenade struck his vehicle. The explosion blew off part of his skull and his right hand; shrapnel penetrated his upper back and legs, and his eardrums burst.
When asked if he had any requests, Guadalupe said he had two. He asked for a promotion for the corporal who had saved his life. And he wanted to become an American citizen. After 9/11, I had issued an executive order making all foreign nationals serving in the military eligible for immediate citizenship.
Guadalupe had come to the United States from Mexico as a boy. He picked fruit to help his family make a living until he joined the Marines at age seventeen. After serving for twenty-five years—and deploying for two wars with Iraq—he wanted the flag on his uniform to be his own. That day in the hospital, Laura and I attended his naturalization ceremony, conducted by Director Eduardo Aguirre of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. Guadalupe raised his right hand, covered in bandages, and swore the oath of citizenship.
Witnessing Master Gunnery Sergeant Guadalupe Denogean become an an American citizen.
A few moments later, he was followed by Marine Lance Corporal O.J. Santamaria, a native of the Philippines. He was twenty-one years old and had suffered a serious wound in Iraq. He was hooked up to an intravenous blood transfusion. About halfway through the ceremony, he broke down in tears. He powered through to the end of the oath. I was proud to respond, “My fellow American.”
In the fall of 2003, Andy Card came to me with an idea. Was I interested in making a trip to Iraq to thank the troops? You bet I was.
The risk was high. But Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin, working with the Secret Service and White House Military Office, came up with a way to pull it off. The week of Thanksgiving, I would travel to Crawford and tell the press I was staying for the full holiday. Then, on Wednesday night, I would slip out of the ranch and fly to Baghdad.
I told Laura several weeks ahead of the trip. She was reassured when I told her we would abort the trip if news of it leaked. I told Barbara and Jenna about thirty minutes before I left. “I’m scared, Dad,” Barbara said. “Be safe. Come home.”
Condi and I climbed into an unmarked Suburban, our baseball caps pulled low, and headed for the airport. To maintain secrecy, there was no motorcade. I had nearly forgotten what a traffic jam felt like, but riding on I-35 the day before Thanksgiving brought the memories back. We crept along, passing an occasional car full of counterassault agents, and made it to Air Force One on schedule. Timeliness was important. We needed to land as the sun was setting in Baghdad.
We flew from Texas to Andrews Air Force Base, where we switched to the twin version of Air Force One and took off for Iraq. The plane carried a skeleton crew of staff, military and Secret Service personnel, and a press contingent sworn to secrecy. I slept little on the ten-and-a-half-hour flight. As we neared Baghdad, I showered, shaved, and headed to the cockpit to watch the landing. Colonel Mark Tillman manned the controls. I trusted him
