(2)
Commander-In-Chief
The classroom was silent for about thirty seconds. George W. Bush was in a most difficult position. Aware of the cameras around him, aware of the children in front of him, not wanting to show fear or anger and yet filled with emotions and questions, he was at once also aware of his own vulnerability. He was the Commander-in-Chief, the Leader of the Free World, his country was under attack, and he didn't know what to do. His eyes started to blink rapidly and his lips pursed. The political process doesn't prepare one for a moment like this. His own life hadn't prepared him for this. Should he stay or should he go? Ari Fleischer held up a sign from the back of the room that said, "GO NOW" as Secret Service agents entered the room.
If George W. Bush didn't exactly feel like a wartime president yet, he knew he had to start acting like one right away, not the least in front of his Cabinet and members of his National Security team. Convincing the public was relatively easy; winning the approval of his team would require him to project confidence and strong leadership at their meetings. He knew he didn't possess the impressive résumés of his advisors. He knew that most were skeptical of his abilities when put to this sort of crisis. And why shouldn't they be? Nothing in his life had prepared him for this. But a look at some of the biographies of the men and women under his command offered a hint at why these same people might feel underwhelmed at his experience and leadership ability.
Vice President Dick Cheney: White House Chief of Staff under President Gerald Ford; member of Congress from Wyoming for ten years, including being the House Minority Whip; Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush; Chairman of the Board and CEO of Fortune 500 company Halliburton, a leader in the energy sector.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: Served in the Navy as an aviator and flight instructor; member of Congress from Illinois for six years; Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity and Director of the Economic Stabilization Program in the Nixon administration; Ambassador to NATO; White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense under President Gerald Ford; Ronald Reagan's Special Envoy to the Middle East.
Secretary of State Colin Powell: Four-Star General in the US Army; National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan; 12th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush; best-selling author for his autobiography My American Journey; touted by many as a presidential shoo-in but declined to run.
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice: Professor of Political Science and later Provost at Stanford University; Senior Director of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council under President George H.W. Bush.
Against this experienced line-up George W. Bush's own accomplishments were meager. He had failed as the owner or chief executive officer of several oil companies, had run a major league baseball team, and served for five-plus years as the Governor of Texas. Trading Sammy Sosa to the Chicago White Sox in 1989 was not one of his better moves at the time, nor was it a particularly useful experience to fall back on in this time of war.
As President Bush was fairly shoved into the car, it seemed as though everyone except for him was on a phone, BlackBerry, or some sort of communication device. There is a tendency to believe that at the highest levels of government, operations flow smoothly in difficult moments such as these. Often, this is not the case. Here, at the epicenter of world's most powerful government, confusion reigned. The TV in the car was tuned to CNN, Andi Card was talking to Condi Rice, the driver was talking to the guys out at the airport, the Secret Service guys were all talking on their handhelds, Karl Rove was talking on the phone to somebody, and George W. Bush, for a few moments anyway, was left staring at the small television screen in the limo with his mouth open like so many millions of Americans all across the country. The most powerful man on earth was utterly helpless, and momentarily insignificant.
Dick Cheney played the President perfectly. He was the Boss without being bossy, at least at first. He was the true power behind the throne, the eminence grise, but didn't carry with himself the conceit of needing to be known for it. He understood that for the President's sake as much as the country's, George W. Bush needed to seem to be in charge. Cheney's soft-spoken confidence was the perfect tone to get his points across without seeming to usurp the power of the President. He didn't act the condescending know-it-all, like Henry Kissinger, or as a junkyard dog on a leash, like Al Haig. Therefore, from January, 2001, until just after 9/11, at Cabinet meetings and all other instances where the President and Cheney were both among others, Dick Cheney was very careful to defer to George W. Bush, to make the President feel like the decisions were his, when everyone in the room knew they were not. In this role, Cheney was brilliant.
His temporary trance was broken by Andi Card, who told him to pick up yet another phone. It was Vice President Dick Cheney.
"Dick? What's the story?" asked the President.
"Well, these were commercial airliners hijacked and flown by someone, we're not sure who; either the pilots themselves were forced, or, in fact, the hijackers did the flying," recounted Cheney.
"Uh-huh, what's the situation now?"
"Mr. President, we think there are more of them out there, possibly many more. We know of at least two planes whose transponders have been turned off, one of which seems to be on its way to Washington."
"My God," said the President.
"With your permission, Mr. President, I think we need to ground all aircraft except military ASAP–"
"Well I wanna come home. I need to come to Washington," interrupted the President.
"I really don't think you should do that at this point," Cheney advised. "As you are well aware, we don't have a clear idea of what we're facing–how many planes, what the end game is–you could even be a target where you are. Frankly, I think we need to get you up in the air as quickly as possible and take it from there. As you no doubt know, the air is probably the safest place for you to be right now."
"Well, geez, Dick, what am I gonna do, fly around all day? What are the American people gonna think?"
"First of all, they'll thank God you're alive, Mr. President. If that's the safest place for you, you might be up there for a while, but we'll get you to a safe location. To be honest, I'm not sure at the moment where that is."
Dick Cheney had a way of starting a sentence with, "Now, Mr. President, as you are well aware..." or, "Mr. President, as you no doubt already know..." when, in fact, George W. Bush was not well aware and did not already know. This was the President's cue to hone in on the conversation, as his mind had a tendency to wander. It also had the beneficial effect of making the President feel presidential, hitting just the right deferential note. Others in the inner circle recognized the tune and played it themselves, this having the combined effect of creating the illusion of an extremely well informed man sitting at the head of the table.
However, as time moved on and pressures mounted, Dick Cheney's real personality began to reveal itself. And that personality had apparently changed from his days as Defense Secretary. "He was never a particularly nice man," recalled Colin Powell of his former mentor, "but during the run-up to the Iraq War he began to be downright nasty. It was as though he had a permanent case of heartburn."
In most matters of policy, especially foreign, George W. Bush was in way over his head, and somewhere not too far back in his brain, he knew it. He tried to read the briefing books, but as per his request, the books got shorter and shorter. He had come to terms with it; obviously, a man doesn't come this far without gifts. Ronald Reagan wasn't the brightest bulb in the tool shed, either. But he was a communicator. He could communicate. I can take what all these so-called smart guys say, and translate it into regular-guy language that Americans can understand. That's my gift. Plus, God put me here for a reason. I'm sure of it.
This gift of plain speech had served him well in the week after the 11th of September. And now, he had no personal doubt whatsoever that God had put him in the office of the presidency for just this moment. He just had to start acting like the Commander-in-Chief.
During the week that followed the attacks, George W. Bush played the role of Comforter-In-Chief, Morale-Booster-In-Chief, and Reassurer-in-Chief to the wounded people of New York City and Washington, D.C., in particular, and to the nation in general. It was a job he handled with compassion, energy, and an uncompromising resolve. The tragedy had given his stuttering presidency a new purpose, one of those chance events that can define the legacy of the man to whom such a momentous experience fate chooses to deliver. If the President had seemed to his critics not quite up to the job before the attacks, by the end of the week he had silenced all but the most stubborn of them. President Bush was not a Rhodes Scholar like his predecessor, Bill Clinton. He did not have the impressive résumé of his father. He was not a spellbinding orator like Ronald Reagan. He had the quality, in spite of his privileged upbringing, of being a regular guy. He spoke in short sentences. He didn't use big words, and when he did, he sometimes got them wrong. He mangled syntax. Yet all of this, somehow, made George W. Bush just the right guy to be at the helm of the nation in the days following the attacks. It was also hard to imagine almost any other president in the last generation, with the possible exception of Clinton, who would have clambered up on top of a fire-truck, grabbed a cheap megaphone and given a rousing off-the-cuff speech to the rescue workers at Ground Zero in New York City.
September 13th was declared a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the victims of 9/11. The President, after touring a burn unit at Washington Hospital Center with his wife Laura, gave a stirring speech at the National Cathedral in front of former presidents, world leaders, the nation, and, indeed, the world. This is what he said:
"We are here in the middle hour of our grief. So many have suffered so great a loss, and today we express our nation's sorrow. We come before God to pray for the missing and the dead, and for those who loved them. On Tuesday, our country was attacked with deliberate and massive cruelty. We have seen the images of fire and ashes and bent steel.
Now come the names, the list of casualties we are only beginning to read:
They are the names of men and women who began their day at a desk or in an airport, busy with life.
They are the names of people who faced death and in their last moments called home to say, be brave and I love you.
They are the names of passengers who defied their murderers and prevented the murder of others on the ground.
They are the names of men and women who wore the uniform of the United States and died at their posts.
They are the names of rescuers–the ones whom death found running up the stairs and into the fires to help others.
We will read all these names. We will linger over them and learn their stories, and many Americans will weep.
To the children and parents and spouses and families and friends of the lost, we offer the deepest sympathy of the nation. And I assure you, you are not alone. Just three days removed from these events, Americans do not yet have the distance of history, but our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.
War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others; it will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing. Our purpose as a nation is firm, yet our wounds as a people are recent and unhealed and lead us to pray. In many of our prayers this week, there's a searching and an honesty. At St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, on Tuesday, a woman said, 'I pray to God to give us a sign that He's still here.'
Others have prayed for the same, searching hospital to hospital, carrying pictures of those still missing. God's signs are not always the ones we look for. We learn in tragedy that His purposes are not always our own, yet the prayers of private suffering, whether in our homes or in this great cathedral are known and heard and understood. There are prayers that help us last through the day or endure the night. There are prayers of friends and strangers that give us strength for the journey, and there are prayers that yield our will to a Will greater than our own.
This world He created is of moral design. Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance and love have no end, and the Lord of life holds all who die and all who mourn.
It is said that adversity introduces us to ourselves. This is true of a nation as well. In this trial, we have been reminded and the world has seen that our fellow Americans are generous and kind, resourceful and brave.
We see our national character in rescuers working past exhaustion, in long lines of blood donors, in thousands of citizens who have asked to work and serve in any way possible.
And we have seen our national character in eloquent acts of sacrifice:
Inside the World Trade Center, one man who could have saved himself stayed until the end and at the side of his quadriplegic friend.
A beloved priest died giving the last rites to a firefighter.
Two office workers, finding a disabled stranger, carried her down 68 floors to safety.
A group of men drove through the night from Dallas to Washington to bring skin grafts for burned victims.
In these acts and many others, Americans showed a deep commitment to one another and an abiding love for our country.
Today, we feel what Franklin Roosevelt called, 'the warm courage of national unity.' This is a unity of every faith and every background. It has joined together political parties and both houses of Congress. It is evident in services of prayer and candlelight vigils and American flags, which are displayed in pride and waved in defiance. Our unity is a kinship of grief and a steadfast resolve to prevail against our enemies. And this unity against terror is now extending across the world.
America is a nation full of good fortune, with so much to be grateful for, but we are not spared from suffering. In every generation, the world has produced enemies of human freedom. They have attacked America because we are freedom's home and defender, and the commitment of our Fathers is now the calling of our time.
On this national day of prayer and remembrance, we ask Almighty God to watch over our nation and grant us patience and resolve in all that is to come. We pray that He will comfort and console those who now walk in sorrow. We thank Him for each life we now must mourn, and the promise of a life to come.
As we've been assured, neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities, nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth can separate us from God's love. May He bless the souls of the departed. May He comfort our own. And may He always guide our country.
God bless America."
***
On Monday, September 17th, President Bush assembled his National Security Council in the Cabinet Room at the White House. This room, with its rich, oak-paneled walls, and heavy, deep-green drapes, had been the scene of many important high-level meetings over the past 100 years. Although it was the middle of September, there was a beautiful fire glowing in the stately hearth. As the leaders of the Bush administration somberly filed into the room, there was a palpable feeling that this was a watershed moment in American history. The mood was solemn; the talk was quiet, and serious. There was none of the usual light-hearted banter that might precede a more typical meeting. Along with the above-mentioned principles, present at the meeting was CIA Director George Tenet, a holdover from the Clinton administration, FBI Director Robert Mueller III, who had been on the job all of one week before September 11th, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton, and a group of high-level deputies and aides, who sat in chairs along the wall behind the principals.
Before the meeting, Vice President Cheney had stepped into the Oval Office for a brief one-on-one chat with the President. It was during these private sessions that their real relationship was clarified.
When George W. Bush was assured of his party's nomination for president, he assigned to a task force the job of helping him select a suitable running mate. The head of that task force was Richard B. Cheney. The presidential candidate was going to need a vice president who was strong on foreign policy and national security issues, had keen insight into the workings of Congress, and was well connected to the business world, notably the petroleum industry. The problems the next president was going to face were surely going to intersect in these areas. "Simply stated," said Cheney, "I was, in fact, the only man, in my mind, for the job." Dick Cheney, as a former Defense Secretary, Congressman, and current CEO of oil services giant Halliburton, was, frankly, not overstating the case.
"You ready for this?" asked Cheney.
"Sure. Why wouldn't I be?" The President was always a little defensive around the VP, alternately trying to assert his authority and acting like a son in front of an abusive father.
"Listen, no need for a tone here. This is heady stuff, and I just need to know if you're ready. Nothing in your life, if you will, has even remotely prepared you for this, and frankly, I need to make sure you know what you're doing, what to say, and what not to say."
"Gee, thanks for the support, Dick. I've been president for eight months. I can handle an NSC meeting."
"Yeah, well, just remember who you're talking to in there. Every single person at that table shits more foreign policy than you'll probably ever know."
"With friends like you, Dick–"
There was a knock on the door and Condoleezza Rice alerted the two men that the meeting was starting.
"Alright, people, listen up." The President called the meeting to order. George W. Bush literally would puff himself up at moments like this by sticking his chest out a bit, pursing his lips, and blinking uncontrollably. "The events of September the 11th weren't a terrorist attack. It was a declaration of war. We're at war, people. This is a War Cabinet. I'm a War President. Anyone who doesn't feel up to the challenge of the long, hard struggle we have ahead of us is free to tender their resignation right now with no questions asked." The President looked around the table but found no takers. "Behind me? Anyone?" None of the aides or deputies quit, either. "Good. You're all here for a reason. We've been called to the highest purpose that those in government service are capable of: to defend the United States of America in a time of war. But we're going to do more than defend; we're gonna take this fight to the enemy. No more namby-pamby cruise missile launches at a couple of Afghan tents. We're gonna take this bastard out and destroy his organization. And after that, we're gonna go get the other bad guys that hate America and destroy them, too. Any questions?" The President looked around the room again. "Okay, let's get some reports. Don?"
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, at sixty-four, was a handsome and trim man with a Socratic intellect and piercing eyes behind large, wire-rimmed glasses. He also carried a William Holden-like sex appeal for women of a certain age. "Mr. President, these are the things we are dealing with right now. Some are known; some are unknown. Who did this? If it's bin Laden and al-Qaeda, which we are assuming it is, where are they? How do we get to them? How much force do we use? Who will help us? Can we authorize the use of deadly force to take him out? How much is it going to cost? Will we have the full support of Congress? What about Pakistan? Friend, or foe? Or both? What about the Saudis? Can we use their airbases? Are we following the money trail? Are we ready for Americans coming home in body bags? Does the country have the stomach for a long war?"
Colin Powell always hated when Don Rumsfeld talked in questions. It seemed to absolve him of giving any answers and transferred the problems to other people. Meanwhile, President Bush had stopped scribbling at "How much force?"
Rumsfeld continued. "What if the Chinese or the Russians are involved? How far do we take this thing? What do we know? What don't we know that we need to know? How will we know when something we know is worth knowing?" The Defense Secretary scrunched his face muscles tightly as he adjusted his glasses, took a deep breath, and appeared to be ready to ask even more rhetorical questions.
Secretary Powell had heard enough. "Don, if there's an answer or a solution in there, I'll be darned if I heard it."
"Dammit, Colin, we have to identify the problems before we can attack the solutions. I've got to know the parameters of what I'm dealing with here."
Dick Cheney broke in. "Do you have any useful information for us, Don? Anything in the 'known' column?"
The President, looking over his glasses, seemed confused. "What was the question after... uhh, lemme see, 'Who will help us'? I kinda lost you after that. I've got 'How much force can we use'..." After stealing a glance at Dick Cheney's eyebrows, the President had second thoughts. "Never mind, Don. I'll get the list from you later. Let's move on. Let's hear from CIA. George?"
"Thanks, Mr. President." George Tenet was a large, burly man with a penchant for gyros and hummus and an intense dislike of the FBI. He was also about to fire the first shot in a desperate rear-guard action to save his own bacon. "Mr. President, as you know, there was a great deal of 'chatter' leading up to September 11th—chatter that National Security Advisor Rice was made well aware of—and by the chatter that we've picked up in the last few days we have little or no doubt that this is the work of bin Laden and al-Qaeda. If you will recall, I made al-Qaeda the top National Security priority when you came to visit me before the inaug–"
"Yeah, we got that, what else?" said Cheney.
"Anyway, almost all of the hijackers were known to us, and kept track of by the CIA throughout their travels in and out of the many countries that they did their business in. It turns out that fifteen of the nineteen were Saudis. It was only when they entered into the United States, at which point the responsibility for surveillance is turned over to the FBI," said Tenet, pointing his thumb and looking at FBI Director Mueller, "that the trail of these terrorists went completely cold."
"Now just a minute, Mr. President," interrupted Mueller. "Although I wasn't here at the time, and wouldn't be responsible in any event were the charges eventually proved true, I resent the attempt to impugn the Bureau and my predecessor, Director Freeh, although it was on his watch that the hijackers roamed the country. This is just a shoddy attempt to deflect blame. The CIA had every piece of information about those hijackers except what they were going to order for breakfast on the 11th and chose to keep it to themselv–"
"That's horseshit and you know it, Mueller! What about the flight schools? Did it not seem odd to any of the curiosity-challenged yahoos you have 'working' over there at the Federal Bullshit Institute that there was a sudden interest to learn how to fly large commercial jets by dozens of Arab Muslims?!?"
"Well it wasn't dozens, and in any case Director Freeh would have to answer these charges as I cert–"
"Now, fellas. It's an emotional time for all of us here, " said the President. "Let's concentrate on fighting the common enemy and not each other, okay? Now why don't you two shake hands and start over. C'mon... who's gonna be first?" The two men looked sheepishly at each other and tentatively stuck out their right hands and briefly touched palms. "That's better. This kind of stuff has been going on since the Founding Fathers. You know, I read somewhere that Raymond Burr once killed Al Hamilton over a woman–"
Condoleezza Rice leaned over and whispered something into the President's ear.
"Well, anyway, we need the two of you working together on this, and I expect results from that cooperation. Attorney General Ashcroft?"
A priestly looking man, John Ashcroft often looked as if he had just been woken up. "Mr. President, our team of lawyers is studying the legal ambiguities of the Geneva Convention accords and the US Constitution. You know, Mr. President, those documents were never drawn up or agreed to with a crisis like September the 11th in mind. In fact, I'm relatively sure that the American men who negotiated the Geneva Conventions couldn't have imagined a tragedy like this, especially happening to us, here, on United States soil, and if they had, they never would have been foolish enough to put their names on such a document." Ashcroft stifled a yawn. "No, Mr. President, this wicked act of malevolence demands a new legal paradigm. Just like you don't want to lob cruise missiles at these murderers, neither do we at Justice want to lob old-fashioned legalese at this new form of evil. We want to take the legal gloves off, so to speak, sir. It has been said that our enemies in the past have preferred to surrender to us because we are known for treating prisoners humanely and fairly. I think we really need to look at that, sir."
Once again Colin Powell had heard enough. "Mr. President, with all due respect, do you hear what he's saying? Do you grasp the ramifications of a shift like this? Our soldiers and enlisted men all over the world will be at risk when they are captured if we treat our prisoners of war the way that the Attorney General would have us do."
"Who said anything about prisoners of war?" The Attorney General was ready for this objection. "These are not soldiers. They don't wear uniforms. They don't belong to the country they're fighting in. They are murderous criminals."
"Then this is a law enforcement problem," countered Powell. "What are we discussing military action for if we're talking about going after criminals? If we're going to use the Armed Forces, then the rules of war apply."
"Not necessarily, Colin," said the Vice President. "As Attorney General Ashcroft has alluded to, we all need to undergo a paradigm shift in the way we look at the world. The world changed on September the 11th, make no mistake about that–"
"Yes it did, Dick," affirmed the President.
The Vice President shot a quick stern look in the President's direction. "... and we need to adjust to it."
Colin Powell still wasn't convinced. "Mr. President, there is an awful lot of goodwill out there in the world for the United States right now, even from places that traditionally have been less than friendly. If we disregard the rule of law in pursuing the bad guys we will in fact lose the support we have right now. We don't want to turn into those we are hunting, sir."
"Now Colin, that's just stinkin' thinkin'," replied the President. "You know we're not gonna do anything un-American or illegal...are we, Dick?"
"Of course not Mr. President. Laws are being re-examined and re-interpreted, if you will, in light of the current situation, and adjustments will be made accordingly."
The President turned his attention to the military. "General Shelton, what have you got for us?"
General Hugh Shelton had been Chairman of the Joint Chiefs since 1997 and was about to retire. "I think we need to bomb al-Qaeda back to the Stone Age, Mr. President."
"Respectfully, General, they already are in the Stone Age," said Condoleezza Rice.
"Might be an upgrade," offered Donald Rumsfeld.
"These people are living in caves right now," added George Tenet.
"We don't want our million-dollar missiles hitting five-dollar tents. Now look, everyone," said the President, "we're not stopping with Afghanistan. I want all options on the table for our next move after that, and I want them soon."
President-elect Bush had initially been briefed about Iraq on January 10th, 2001, ten days before his inauguration, first by outgoing Secretary of Defense William Cohen, and then in a second meeting, with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Since 1998, the standing policy of the Clinton administration concerning Iraq had been "regime change." The emphasis on Iraq at these two meetings was made at the specific request of Vice President-elect Dick Cheney. At a meeting three days later, when CIA Director George Tenet outlined the three major threats to United States security, Iraq wasn't included. There was, however, a personal reason for George W. Bush's interest in Iraq: in 1993, the Clinton administration uncovered a plot by agents in the employ of the Iraqi government to assassinate his father, George H.W. Bush, who was on a trip to Kuwait at the time. George Bush the Younger was just the kind of guy to take something like that personally.
"What the President is saying is," bellowed Cheney, "after Afghanistan, we're doing Iraq. And this time, we finish the job. And after that, Syria, maybe Iran, Libya, who knows?"
Eyes moved back and forth around the table, crossing paths with raised eyebrows. Dick Cheney had just said the United States was going to war with Iraq. Again.
"Excuse me, Dick," said Secretary Powell. "Unless you have some new information that I'm not aware of, what does Iraq have to do with September 11th?
"Mr. President, if I may?"
"Go right ahead, Dick," replied the President. You were going to, anyway.
As the Vice President rose from his chair, the light caught his shadow in such a way that it suddenly made him appear ten feet tall. At that moment, there wasn't a single person in the room who didn't know exactly who held the reins of the United States government.
"The United States of America, frankly, has been gifted with an historic opportunity, right here, right now, to remake the world in her glorious image. Those fanatics who did this to our country don't know what they've unleashed. Just like Pearl Harbor, our enemies will think we are too soft, that the American people won't accept casualties, and that we will throw some expensive missiles at an Afghan mountain and then get back to football and the latest celebrity mishap. In my mind, those days are over. Just like Pearl Harbor, America will respond in ways her enemies never figured on. But unlike Pearl Harbor, we have to take the gloves off for this one, get our hands a little dirty." Cheney paused for a moment to let that sink in. "Simply stated, we're going to fight fire with fire. These bastards don't think we have it in us. Oh, but we do, and we will."
Several people who were in the room that afternoon have sworn that at that moment, the fire leaped and crackled like it had never done before. "Frankly," continued the Vice President, "Afghanistan doesn't offer much in the way of competition. There are no discernible targets, not much left to bomb that isn't in ruins already. The American people will want more, and they deserve a better war. So after we throw our weight around some in Afghanistan and take out the Taliban and bin Laden in a couple of weeks, then what? In my mind, we need to show the world that we mean business by taking on a real country with a real army. Iraq offers us the perfect scenario: a brutal dictator, a large but seriously depleted military, the fact that no one really knows whether Sadaam has WMDs or not, and, listen to me very clearly, they're sitting on the world's largest untapped reserves of oil. Fact is, unlike their neighbors, most of Iraq's oil is still in the ground. We have to get control of those oilfields before the Chinese or the Russians do. And we have to do this quickly, while we still have American public opinion on our side. The American people will tolerate a hell of a lot more war now than they would have a week ago, or that they might in a year from now. And that's why, frankly, this is such an opportunity for us."
After candidate Bush became President-elect Bush, his Vice President-elect Dick Cheney convened an Energy Task Force composed of the most powerful men in the various energy industries to undertake a comprehensive review of the nation's energy policy and prepare the way for the future. As events would subsequently reveal, this secretive gathering was to prove extremely important. The consensus among oil executives and their experts was that US energy consumption was at a dangerous tipping point. World oil supplies were diminishing at a rate faster then new discoveries were being made. Almost all the easy-to-get-at oil had been extracted. The emerging industrial giants China and India were using incredible amounts of energy in their rush to modernize their nations and compete economically with the West. Alternative fuel solutions in any mass quantities were decades away. The prognosis was that a momentous crisis loomed somewhere between 2010 and 2020.
Dick Cheney seemed to take the measure of every man and woman in the room before settling his gaze on the Secretary of State. "Colin, to answer your question–no, I don't have any new information tying Sadaam to September the 11th. Not yet, anyway. But we have the entire intelligence community working on this, don't we George," said the Vice President, dipping an eyebrow Tenet's way, causing the CIA Director to squirm in his seat, "and all we need is one little thread, a stray hair, if you will, to tie Hussein to bin Laden and we'll make the connection stick with the help of our patriotic friends in the media." Here Cheney shot a look back at Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who spat coffee down his shirt. "Mark my words–whether it's true or not, within three months the majority of the American people are going to believe that Sadaam Hussein was in a control tower somewhere in the Iraqi desert guiding those airplanes right into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. And when that happens, we'll have all the political cover we need to march straight into Baghdad. We have a group of Iraqi exiles in London in place ready to assume power when we get there, the Iraqi National Congress, headed by a man many of you know, Ahmed Chalabi. A fine man, ready to do business with the United States, and with Israel. And make no mistake; once we move into Iraq, we're going to be there for a long time. This will be the forward operating base in the Middle East that many of us have coveted for a long time. Screw the Saudis, frankly. They can have their desert back."
The neo-cons in the room were all nodding in sycophantic rhythm.
"So, summing up, Afghanistan is what we're doing now, because we have to, because America and the world expect us to. But it's just priming the pump, if you will, for the main event: Iraq. Mr. President."
Even in the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia in particular, it was feared that the major oilfields were slowly becoming exhausted. Some of them had been pumping almost nonstop for over sixty years. There was one enormous exception to this bleak scenario, and that was in Iraq. For a number of different reasons, Iraq had had only one serious decade of oil extraction, the 1970s. Its gigantic reserves of oil and gas lay largely undisturbed under the desert floor. It has been estimated by some geologists that Iraq has more easily recoverable oil left unextracted than the rest of the world combined.
"Thanks, Dick. So while we're concentrating for the next few weeks on Afghanistan, everyone needs to spend some time thinking about Iraq. That's all for now. Class dismissed. Dick, Condi, I need to see the two of you in my office."
As the various members of the Bush administration stood up and shuffled out into the hallway, opinion was fairly divided between those who couldn't wait to get their mitts on Iraq, and those who thought it was a monumentally stupid idea. It was to prove an ominous division.
"What is exactly meant by 'taking the gloves off,' Dick?" The President seemed agitated as he worked on a fingernail while sitting on the front edge of his desk.
The Vice President, standing with his hands gripping the back of a chair, was careful to observe propriety even though he knew that Condoleezza Rice "knew."
"Mr. President, we simply have to make the bad guys afraid of us; they have to get the message that this isn't the Clintons they're dealing with anymore. These are people who would just as soon kill their own mothers as tell our people the truth. The only way we're going to get any useful information out of these fanatics is by using timeworn techniques designed to make people talk. We have to beat these bastards at their own game."
"Dick, are you talkin' about torture? I mean, I want to get these guys as bad as anyone else, but–"
"We're talking about sending these people to friendly nations whose methods of interrogation, frankly, may be somewhat outside our own legal boundaries," replied Cheney. "We also have to speed up the process of enhancing the powers of the presidency. There is much that needs to be accomplished, and Congress has tied the Executive's hands for the past twenty-five years. You have important decisions to make as Commander-in-Chief, and you can't be going around with your hat in your hand begging for the authority to catch the bad guys. The world moves too fast these days."
"Well, I defer to your experience in this, Dick, but as a Christian, I still have to think long and hard about some of this. As Colin said, we don't want to turn into the guys we are trying to catch."
"Mr. President, it was Leo Durocher, I believe, who said, 'Nice guys finish last.' Do you want to win, or do you want to be nice? Because at this point, no disrespect to General Powell, I'm afraid you can't afford both. I'm confident that you'll come to the right conclusion."
Condoleezza Rice handed the President a three-page printout. "Mr. President, I've taken the liberty to pull some appropriate Bible verses for you, mainly from the Old Testament, that might help you reconcile some of those reservations you might be having. I've been looking at them as well, and this should help."
"Frankly, Mr. President," said Cheney with a scholarly tone, "I think God would be disappointed if you didn't have the courage of your convictions to wipe out this scourge while you have the power to. God gave the Jews the green light, in fact, to slaughter the Canaanites. As you well know, that was some bloody business. My job is going to be to get us, uh, you that power."
George W. Bush flipped through the printout and sighed. "Do what you have to do, Dick." He tossed the papers on his desk.
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