Part of the explanation came after Saddam’s capture, when he was debriefed by the FBI. He told agents that he was more worried about looking weak to Iran than being removed by the coalition. He never thought the United States would follow through on our promises to disarm him by force. I’m not sure what more I could have done to show Saddam I meant what I said. I named him part of an axis of evil in my State of the Union address. I spoke to a packed chamber of the United Nations and promised to disarm him by force if diplomacy failed. We presented him with a unanimous Security Council resolution. We sought and received strong bipartisan backing from the U.S. Congress. We deployed 150,000 troops to his border. I gave him a final forty-eight-hours’ notice that we were about to invade his country. How much clearer could I have been?
It’s true that Saddam was getting mixed signals from France, Germany, and Russia—and from antiwar demonstrators around the world. That didn’t help. But the war is not their fault. There was one person with the power to avoid war, and he chose not to use it. For all his deception of the world, the person Saddam ultimately deceived the most was himself.
I decided early on that I would not criticize the hardworking patriots at the CIA for the faulty intelligence on Iraq. I did not want to repeat the nasty finger-pointing investigations that devastated the morale of the intelligence community in the 1970s. But I did want to know why the information I received was wrong and how we could prevent a similar mistake in the future. I appointed a nonpartisan commission co-chaired by Judge Larry Silberman and former Democratic Senator Chuck Robb to study the question. Their investigation produced valuable recommendations—such as increasing coordination between agencies and publishing more dissenting opinions— that will make intelligence more reliable for future presidents, without undermining our intelligence community’s ability to do its job.
The nature of history is that we know the consequences only of the action we took. But inaction would have had consequences, too. Imagine what the world would look like today with Saddam Hussein still ruling Iraq. He would still be threatening his neighbors, sponsoring terror, and piling bodies into mass graves. The rising price of oil—which jumped from just over $30 a barrel in 2003 to almost $140 five years later—would have left Saddam awash in wealth. The sanctions, already falling apart, almost certainly would have crumbled. Saddam still had the infrastructure and know-how to make WMD. And as the final weapons inspections report by Charles Duelfer concluded, “Saddam wanted to re-create Iraq’s WMD capability … after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized.”
Had Saddam followed through on that intention, the world would likely have witnessed a nuclear arms race between Iraq and Iran. Saddam could have turned to Sunni terrorist groups like al Qaeda—a marriage of convenience, not ideology—as surrogates in an attempt to match Iran’s use of Shia terrorist groups like Hezbollah. The chance of biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists would have increased. The pressure on our friends in the region—especially Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates— would have been intense. And the American people would be much less secure today.
Instead, as a result of our actions in Iraq, one of America’s most committed and dangerous enemies stopped threatening us forever. The most volatile region in the world lost one of its greatest sources of violence and mayhem. Hostile nations around the world saw the cost of supporting terror and pursuing WMD. And in the space of nine months, twenty-five million Iraqis went from living under a dictatorship of fear to seeing the prospect of a peaceful, functioning democracy. In December 2003, the Iraqis were still a long way from that dream. But they had a chance, and that was a lot more than they’d had before.
The hardest days of the war were still ahead. In January 2004, our troops intercepted a letter from Zarqawi to senior al Qaeda leaders. He wrote about the growing pressure he was feeling and laid out his plan for survival. “We need to bring the Shia into the battle,” he wrote, “because it is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us.” He set a new goal for the jihadists in Iraq—igniting “a sectarian war.”
*The Shia, a Muslim sect, make up about 60 percent of Iraq’s population. Kurds, who are mostly Muslim but identify primarily by their ethnic group, comprise about 20 percent. Sunni Arabs, the Muslim sect that enjoyed privileged status under Saddam, account for 15 percent. Christians, Yezidis, Mandaeans, Jews, and others make up the rest.
**At the same ceremony, I presented the Medal of Freedom to Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, who I called a “man of steel,” and to President Alvaro Uribe, the courageous leader of Colombia.
***Tragically, Lieutenant Commander Zellem died in a training accident in 2004.
onight in this hall, we resolve to be the party not of repose but of reform. We will write not footnotes but chapters in the American story. We will add the work of our hands to the inheritance of our fathers and mothers and leave this nation greater than we found it. … If you give me your trust, I will honor it. Grant me a mandate, I will use it. Give me the opportunity to lead this nation, and I will lead.”
I meant the words I spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2000. When I entered politics, I made a decision: I would confront problems, not pass them on to future generations. I admired presidents who used their time in office to enact transformative change. I had studied Theodore Roosevelt, who served in the White House almost exactly a century before me. He had taken on the financial trusts, built a powerful Navy, and launched the conservation movement. I also learned from Ronald Reagan, who combined an optimistic demeanor with the moral clarity and conviction to cut taxes, strengthen the military, and face down the Soviet Union despite withering criticism throughout his presidency.
One of the lessons I took from Roosevelt and Reagan was to lead the public, not chase the opinion polls. I decided to push for sweeping reforms, not tinker with the status quo. As I told my advisers, “I didn’t take this job to play small ball.”
Two weeks after we moved into the White House, Laura and I held our first movie night in the Family Theater. Situated on the ground floor of the White House, the theater features forty-six comfortable chairs and a ninety-three-square-foot projection screen. The Motion Picture Association of America, led for years by a fascinating Texan, Jack Valenti, generously made movies available to the first family. We never had to sit through coming attractions.
For our first screening, Laura and I chose
On the surface, Ted and I didn’t have a whole lot in common. He was liberal; I was conservative. He grew up on Cape Cod; I was raised in West Texas. He had spent almost forty years on Capitol Hill; I was relatively new to town.
With Senator Ted Kennedy in early 2001.
Ted and I did share what Laura called the family business. My grandfather Prescott Bush had represented Connecticut in the Senate at the same time John F. Kennedy had represented Massachusetts. Laura and I enjoyed meeting Ted’s wife, Vicki; son Patrick, a congressman from Rhode Island; and niece Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the lieutenant governor of Maryland, along with her daughter Kate.
Ted was friendly, gracious, and full of life. He had the trademark Kennedy accent and a great Irish glow. His smile came easily and often gave way to a big, warm laugh. I felt a connection to history as we watched a movie about how his brothers had defused a crisis from the West Wing.
The movie hadn’t been my only purpose for inviting Ted. He was the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee that drafted education legislation. He had sent signals that he was interested in my school reform proposal, No Child Left Behind.
Ted and I were both appalled by the results coming from our public schools. In the competitive global economy, good jobs demanded knowledge and skills. But American students routinely trailed their peers in key subjects. On an international math test comparing twenty-one countries, America’s high school seniors placed ahead of only Cyprus and South Africa.
Part of the problem was that millions of children were shuffled from one grade to the next without anybody asking what they had learned. Many came from poor and minority backgrounds. In 2000, nearly 70 percent of
