[NYTr] Bush Has the Nerve to Say He Found Inner Peace on Iraq/Crawford Transcript

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[See "The Crawford Transcript" itself as the last item below. See also
earlier reports about the Aznar-Blair-Bush conspiratorial discussions.
The original story was broken by El Pais in Spain on Sept 26, then
publicized by Fidel Castro and the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina, and
then picked up by Juan Cole and The Independent.  The "Transcript" has
already been published in Spanish and English, but now The NY Review
of Books has also published it. So there is some duplication in the NY
Review with what we have already distributed. - NY Transfer]

EARLIER COVERAGE on NY Transfer:

Revealed: Saddam 'ready to walk away for $1bn' (Independent 9/30)
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070924/069264.html

Fidel Castro on Bush-Aznar Meeting: One More Argument for the UN (9/28)
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070924/069199.html

Bush-Blair-Aznar-Berlusonci Conspired Against UN, Iraq (PL, 9/27)
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070924/069134.html

Juan Cole: Bush-Aznar Trasncript Reveals Impeachable Offenses (9/27)
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070924/069183.html

Bush told Aznar Saddam Could Be Chased Out of Iraq (9/26)
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070924/069107.html

Aznar 2003 Connivance w/Bush on Iraq Big News in Spain (PL, 9/26)
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070924/069100.html

                            ***

NY Review of Books & TomDispatch via Alternet - Oct 18, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/65479/

Bush Has the Nerve to Say He Found Inner Peace on Iraq

By Mark Danner
The New York Review of Books


Introduction by Tom Engelhardt
Editor, TomDispatch

"I made my arguments and went down in flames. History will prove me
right."

Yes, that was George W. Bush. No, he wasn't talking about Iraq. The
date was September 1993 and Bush, then managing general partner of the
Texas Rangers, had voted against "realignment and a new wild-card
system" at a Major League Baseball owners meeting. "Bush," writes Jerry
Crasnick of ESPN.com, "was the lone dissenter in a 27-1 vote."

Skip a few years to February 2003, when Bush found himself involved in
another owners' meeting involving "realignment" -- in this case, of the
Middle East -- and what was certainly an attempt to install a new
"wild-card system." Again, he cast his lone vote. At stake was the fate
of the planet and, unlike in 1993, it didn't matter, in the end, how
the other owners, then gathering at the United Nations, voted.

The catastrophic results of this realignment effort, we now know well;
that Bush again believes history will prove him "right," we also know.
Whatever documentation may exist for that 1993 baseball meeting,
recently we received a striking document from February 22, 2003 -- a
transcript, published in the Spanish newspaper El País, of a
conversation at the President's "ranch" in Crawford, Texas, between
Bush and Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar. This was less than a
month before the President launched his invasion of Iraq. As recorded,
his was a remarkable performance, a window into the Presidential mind
-- and, as with the famed Downing Street Memo when no one else in the
mainstream was willing to publish it, the New York Review of Books is
publishing this transcript, newly translated, in its upcoming issue.
(It can now be read at the Review's website.- SEE LAST ITEM Below]

The invaluable Mark Danner, who has covered the Iraq War and the Bush
administration for the New York Review of Books, has written an
illuminating piece on what we can now see of a President, at the edge
of an invasion, and eerily "at peace with himself." More than
four-and-a-half years and the same President later, it remains a
chilling vision of the man the Supreme Court put in charge of what his
followers once loved to hail as the planet's "lone superpower," its New
Rome. Thanks to the kindness of the editors of the Review, it is posted
below. -Tom 

                            ***

[This essay appears in the November 8, 2007 issue of the New York
Review of Books and is posted here with the kind permission of the
editors of that magazine.]


"The Moment Has Come to Get Rid of Saddam" 

Bush's Faith Run Over by History 

By Mark Danner

"The only thing that worries me about you is your optimism." -Spanish
Prime Minister José María Aznar to President Bush, from the "Crawford
Transcript" of February 22, 2003

Surely one of the agonizing attributes of our post-September 11 age is
the unending need to reaffirm realities that have been proved, and
proved again, but just as doggedly denied by those in power, forcing us
to live trapped between two narratives of present history, the one
gaining life and color and vigor as more facts become known, the other
growing ever paler, brittler, more desiccated, barely sustained by the
life support of official power.

At the center of our national life stands the master narrative of this
bifurcated politics: the Iraq war, fought to eliminate the threat of
weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist, brought to a
quick and glorious conclusion on a sunlit aircraft carrier deck whose
victory celebration almost instantly became a national embarrassment.
That was four and a half years ago; the war's ending and indeed its
beginning, so clearly defined for that single trembling instant, have
long since vanished into contested history.

The latest entry in that history appeared on September 26, when the
Spanish daily El País published a transcript of a discussion held on
February 22, 2003 -- nearly a month before the war began -- between
President Bush and José María Aznar, then prime minister of Spain.
Though the leaders met at Mr. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, some
quickly dubbed the transcript Downing Street Memo II, and indeed the
document does share some themes with that critical British memorandum,
mostly in its clear demonstration of the gap between what President
Bush and members of his administration were saying publicly during the
run-up to the war and what they were saying, and doing, in more private
settings. Though Hans Blix, the UN chief inspector whose teams were
then scouring Iraq for the elusive weapons, had yet to deliver his
report -- two weeks later he would tell the Security Council that it
would take not "years, nor weeks, but months" to complete "the key
remaining disarmament tasks" -- the President is impatient, even
anxious, for war. "This is like Chinese water torture," he says of the
inspections. "We have to put an end to it."

Even in discussing Aznar's main concern, the vital need to give the war
international legitimacy by securing a second UN resolution justifying
the use of force -- a resolution that, catastrophically, was never
achieved -- little pretense is made that an invasion of Iraq is not
already a certainty. "If anyone vetoes," the President tells Aznar,

    "we'll go. Saddam Hussein isn't disarming. We have to catch him
right now. Until now we've shown an incredible amount of patience.
There are two weeks left. In two weeks we'll be militarily ready....
We'll be in Baghdad by the end of March."

The calendar has already been determined -- not by the inspectors and
what they might or might not find, nor by the diplomats and what they
might or might not negotiate, but by the placement and readiness of
warplanes and soldiers and tanks.

When did war become a certainty? The gradations of the President's
attitudes are impossible to chart, though as far back as the previous
July, the head of British intelligence, Sir Richard Dearlove, on his
famous consultations in Washington, had detected "a perceptible shift
in attitude." As Dearlove was quoted reporting to the British cabinet
in the most famous passage in the Downing Street Memo:

    "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove
Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of
terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed
around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route...."1

It is on this point -- the need of the Europeans to have a UN
resolution justifying force, and thus a legal, or at least
internationally legitimate, war, and the deep ambivalence among Bush
administration officials about taking "the UN route" -- that much of
the drama of the Crawford transcript turns, making it into a kind of
playlet pitting the sinuous, subtle, and sophisticated European,
worried about the great opposition in Europe, and in Spain in
particular, to an American-led war of choice with Iraq ("We need your
help with our public opinion," Aznar tells Bush), against the blustery,
impatient, firing-straight-from-the-hip American cowboy. Bush wants to
put out the second resolution on Monday. Aznar says, "We'd prefer to
wait until Tuesday." Bush counters, "Monday afternoon, taking the time
zone differences into account." To Bush's complaint that the UN process
was like "Chinese water torture," Aznar offers soothing understanding
and a plea to take a breath:

    "Aznar: I agree, but it would be good to be able to count on as
many people as possible. Have a little patience.

    "Bush: My patience has run out. I won't go beyond mid-March.

    "Aznar: I'm not asking you to have indefinite patience. Simply that
you do everything possible so that everything comes together."

Aznar, a right-wing Catholic idealist who believes in the human rights
arguments for removing Saddam Hussein, finds himself on a political
knife edge: more than nine Spaniards in ten oppose going to war and
millions have just marched through the streets of Madrid in angry
opposition; he is intensely concerned to gain a UN resolution making
the war an internationally sanctioned effort and not just an
American-led "aggression." Bush responds to his plea for diplomacy with
a rather remarkable litany of threats directed at the current temporary
members of the Security Council. "Countries like Mexico, Chile, Angola,
and Cameroon have to know," he declares, "that what's at stake is the
United States' security and acting with a sense of friendship toward
us." In case Aznar doesn't get the point, he describes to the Spaniard
what each nation will suffer if it doesn't recognize "what's at stake":

    "[Chilean President Ricardo] Lagos has to know that the Free Trade
Agreement with Chile is pending Senate confirmation, and that a
negative attitude on this issue could jeopardize that ratification.
Angola is receiving funds from the Millennium Account that could also
be compromised if they don't show a positive attitude. And Putin must
know that his attitude is jeopardizing the relations of Russia and the
United States."

What is striking about this passage is not only how crude and clumsy it
is, with the President of the United States spouting threats like a
movie gangster -- he presumably wants the Spaniard to convey them
directly to the various leaders -- but how ineffective the bluster
turned out to be. None of these countries changed their position on a
second resolution, which, in the event, was never brought before the
Security Council to what would have been certain defeat. Bush, in
making the threats, did the one thing an effective leader is supposed
always to avoid: he issued an order that was not obeyed, thus
demonstrating the limits of his power. (The Iraq war itself, meant as
it was to "shock and awe" the world and particularly U.S. adversaries,
did much the same thing.)

Along with bluster comes stern self-righteousness. Aznar asks whether
"there's a possibility of Saddam Hussein going into exile" -- "the
biggest success," he tells the President, "would be to win the game
without firing a single shot" -- and Bush answers that there is: the
Egyptians

    "say he's indicated that he's willing to go into exile if they let
him take $1 billion and all the information that he wants about the
weapons of mass destruction."

And would such exile, asks Aznar, come with a "guarantee" (presumably
against prosecution or extradition)? "No guarantee," declares Bush.
"He's a thief, a terrorist, a war criminal. Compared to Saddam,
Milosevic would be a Mother Teresa." Though it's hard to evaluate
whether Saddam was really willing to leave Iraq -- the Egyptians,
Saudis, and others who were then touting the possibility all had an
interest in seeing Saddam leave and the Sunni power structure remain in
place -- it is inconceivable that he would do so without some sort of
guarantee, a possibility Bush forecloses.

What is most interesting in this passage, and indeed in the entire
transcript, is what it reveals about Bush's attitudes and character.
One moment he blusters and threatens, the next he speaks reverently and
self-righteously about how he is guided by "a historic sense of
responsibility":

    "When some years from now History judges us, I don't want people to
ask themselves why Bush, or Aznar, or Blair didn't face their
responsibilities. In the end, what people want is to enjoy freedom. Not
long ago, in Romania, I was reminded of the example of Ceausescu: it
took just one woman to call him a liar for the whole repressive system
to come down. That's the unstoppable power of freedom. I am convinced
that I'll get that resolution."

He did not get it, of course. Despite his strong conviction, neither
Chile nor Angola nor Russia proved ready to change their votes, threat
or no threat. There is a difference between being sure and being right.
Bush's conviction, here as elsewhere, came not from an independent
analysis of the facts -- of the interests and intentions of the nations
involved -- but from the wellspring of faith. He has confused rhetoric,
however uplifting, and reality. Aznar, the sophisticated European,
comments wryly on this. It is the most Jamesian moment in the playlet
of Crawford; one can almost see the subtly arched eyebrow:

    "Aznar: The only thing that worries me about you is your optimism.

    Bush: I am an optimist, because I believe that I'm right. I'm at
peace with myself. It's up to us to face a serious threat to peace."

It is worrying, as Aznar remarks, to rely on optimism grounded only in
belief. The Spaniard knows that gaining that second Security Council
resolution, and thus the critical international legitimacy for the war,
will be very hard; in many nations, launching a war against Iraq,
particularly before the UN inspectors have finished their work, is
deeply unpopular. Faith cannot replace facts, nor can a historic sense
of mission. Both may be personally comforting -- they plainly are to
George W. Bush -- but they don't obviate the need to know things.

Bush came to office a man who knew little of the world, who had hardly
traveled outside the country, who knew nothing of the practice of
foreign policy and diplomacy. Two years later, after the attacks of
September 11 and his emergence as a self-described "war president," he
has come to know only that this lack of knowledge is not a handicap but
perhaps even a strength: that he doesn't need to know things in order
to believe that he's right and to be at peace with himself. He has
redefined his weakness -- his lack of knowledge and experience -- as
his singular strength. He believes he's right. It is a matter of
generations and destiny and freedom: it is "up to us to face a serious
threat to peace." For Bush, faith, conviction, and a felt sense of
destiny -- not facts or knowledge -- are the real necessities of
leadership.

So Bush is confident -- confident about winning the second resolution
and thus international legitimacy; confident, because "we're developing
a very strong humanitarian aid package," that "there's a good basis for
a better future" in a "post-Saddam Iraq." In fact, of course, at the
very moment he is telling these things to the Spanish prime minister in
Crawford, Texas, the postwar planning in Washington is a shambles,
consisting of little more than confusion and savage internecine warfare
between the Defense and State Departments.

The plan for governance in "post-Saddam Iraq" does not exist, all
discussion of it having been paralyzed by a bitter dispute between
officials in the Pentagon, State Department, and CIA that the President
will never resolve. The Iraqi "civil society" that he tells Aznar is
"relatively strong" will soon be decimated by the prolonged looting and
chaos that follows on the entry of American troops into Baghdad. The
"good bureaucracy" he boasts about in Iraq will shortly be destroyed by
a radical de-Baathification ordered by the American proconsul that he
almost certainly never approved. The Iraqi army that he decides in
early March will be retained and used for reconstruction will instead
be peremptorily dissolved, to catastrophic effect.

If these radical departures from the President's chosen plan have
dampened his optimism and faith -- or indeed have even led him to try
to discover what happened -- there is no evidence of it. When Bush's
latest biographer, Robert Draper, asked him why the Iraqi army had not
been kept intact, as the President had decided it should be, Bush
replied, "Yeah, I can't remember. I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy,
what happened?'"3

"This is the policy, what happened?" As a subtitle for a history of the
Iraq war, one could certainly do worse. Prime Minister Aznar is gone
now, having been fatally weakened by his support for the Iraq war and
the failure to obtain United Nations support for it; almost exactly a
year after the war began, jihadists targeted the Madrid train station,
killing nearly two hundred Spaniards and sending the prime minister to
electoral defeat. Tony Blair, the star of the Downing Street Memo, is
gone as well, his popularity having never recovered from his staunch
support of the war. George W. Bush, on the other hand, nearly five
years after he launched the war, remains confident of victory, just as
he was confident he would win that second UN resolution. There is no
sign that his confidence is any more firmly rooted in reality now than
it was then. Instead of reality we have faith -- in himself, in the
deity, in "the unstoppable power of human freedom." He stands as lead
actor in his own narrative of history, a story that grows steadily
paler and more contested, animated solely by the authority of official
power. George W. Bush remains, we are told, "at peace with himself."

Footnotes:

1. Dearlove's consultations had taken place on July 20, 2002, in
Washington and at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and he
reported to a meeting of the British "war cabinet" at Ten Downing
Street three days later. See Mark Danner, The Secret Way to War: The
Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War's Buried History (New York Review
Books, 2006), pp. 6-7 and pp. 88-89.

2. And not just for George Bush. The mystique of leadership -- of faith
over facts -- pulled others along in its wake. Condoleezza Rice, for
example, makes a curious appearance in the discussion, assuring the
President and the Spanish prime minister that she has "the impression"
that Hans Blix, whose report is due the following week, "will now be
more negative than before about the Iraqis' intentions." In fact, quite
the opposite: Blix will tell the Security Council that "the key
remaining disarmament tasks" can be achieved not in "years, nor weeks,
but months." Here is what Blix told the Security Council on March 7,
2003:

    "How much time would it take to resolve the key remaining
disarmament tasks? While cooperation can and is to be immediate,
disarmament and at any rate the verification of it cannot be instant.
Even with a proactive Iraqi attitude, induced by continued outside
pressure, it would still take some time to verify sites and items,
analyse documents, interview relevant persons, and draw conclusions. It
would not take years, nor weeks, but months. Neither governments nor
inspectors would want disarmament inspection to go on forever. However,
it must be remembered that in accordance with the governing
resolutions, a sustained inspection and monitoring system is to remain
in place after verified disarmament to give confidence and to strike an
alarm, if signs were seen of the revival of any proscribed weapons
programmes."

Blix's conclusions were not only not "more negative than before about
the Iraqis' intentions"; he suggests that inspections of all the
suspect sites could be completed in a matter of months. President Bush,
needless to say, is not willing to wait for months, or even for weeks,
for the additional inspections to be completed. What would have
happened if he had been? On the one hand, the administration's
willingness to delay might have secured a deal whereby additional
countries would have supported "all means necessary" to deal with
Saddam. On the other, the inspectors, given more time, would have
discovered no weapons, likely leading the administration to argue that
the inspections themselves were useless -- not that the weapons didn't
exist. But the momentum for war would have been blunted.

3. According to the New York Times account of this exchange:

    "Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of
Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein -- era military,
'The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen.'

    "But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush's former Iraq
administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army's
dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush
said, 'Yeah, I can't remember, I'm sure I said, "This is the policy,
what happened?"' But, he added, 'Again, Hadley's got notes on all of
this stuff,' referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security
adviser."

See Jim Rutenberg, "In Book, Bush Peeks Ahead to His Legacy," The New
York Times, September 2, 2007, and Robert Draper, Dead Certain: The
Presidency of George W. Bush (Free Press, 2007), p. 211.


[Mark Danner, who has written about foreign affairs and politics for two
decades, is the author of The Secret Way to War, Torture and Truth, and
The Massacre at El Mozote, among other books. He is Professor of
Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and the James
Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs, Politics, and the Humanities
at Bard College. His writing on Iraq and other subjects appears
regularly in the New York Review of Books. His work is archived at
MarkDanner.com. His most recent book is "Torture and Truth: America,
Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror." ]

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. 


                            ***

NY Review of Books - Nov 8, 2007
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20770#transcript

THE CRAWFORD TRANSCRIPT

[Following is the transcript of the conversation between George W. Bush
and José Marìa Aznar in Crawford, Texas, on February 22, 2003. It is an
English translation of the text published in El Paìs on September 26,
2007.]

President Bush: We're in favor of obtaining a second resolution in the
Security Council and we'd like to do it quickly. We'd like to announce
it on Monday or Tuesday [February 24, 2003].

Prime Minister Aznar: Better on Tuesday, after the meeting of the
European Union's General Affairs Council. It's important to maintain
the momentum achieved by the resolution of the European Union summit
[in Brussels, on Monday, February 17]. We'd prefer to wait until
Tuesday.

PB: It could be Monday afternoon, taking the time zone differences into
account. In any case, next week. We're looking at a resolution drafted
in such a way that it doesn't contain mandatory elements, that doesn't
mention the use of force, and that states that Saddam Hussein has been
incapable of fulfilling his obligations. That kind of resolution can be
voted for by lots of people. It would be similar to the one passed
during Kosovo [on June 10, 1999].

PMA: Would it be presented to the Security Council before and
independently of a parallel declaration?

Condoleezza Rice: In fact there won't be a parallel declaration. We're
thinking about a resolution that would be as simple as possible,
without too many details on compliance that Saddam could use as [an
excuse to stall via] phases and consequently fail to meet. We're
talking with Blix [the UN chief inspector] and others on his team, to
get ideas that can help introduce the resolution.

PB: Saddam Hussein won't change and he'll continue playing games. The
time has come to get rid of him. That's it. As for me, I'll try from
now on to use a rhetoric that's as subtle as can be while we're seeking
approval of the resolution. If anyone vetoes [Russia, China, and France
together with the US and the UK have veto power in the Security
Council, being permanent members], we'll go. Saddam Hussein isn't
disarming. We have to catch him right now. Until now we've shown an
incredible amount of patience. There are two weeks left. In two weeks
we'll be militarily ready. I think we'll get the second resolution. In
the Security Council we have the three Africans [Cameroon, Angola, and
Guinea], the Chileans, the Mexicans. I'll talk to all of them, also
Putin, naturally. We'll be in Baghdad by the end of March. There's a 15
percent chance that at that point Saddam Hussein will be dead or will
have fled. But those possibilities don't exist until we've shown our
resolve. The Egyptians are talking to Saddam Hussein. It seems that
he's indicated that he's willing to go into exile if they let him take
$1 billion and all the information that he wants about the weapons of
mass destruction. [Muammar] Gaddafi has told Berlusconi that Saddam
Hussein wants to go. Mubarak tells us that in those circumstances there
are many possibilities that he'll be assassinated.

We'd like to act with the mandate of the United Nations. If we act
militarily, we'll do it with great precision and focus very closely on
our objectives. We'll decimate the loyal troops and the regular army
will know quickly what it's about. We've sent a very clear message to
Saddam's generals: we'll treat them as war criminals. We know that
they've accumulated a huge amount of dynamite to blow up the bridges
and other infrastructure, and blow up the oil wells. We've planned to
occupy those wells very quickly. The Saudis will also help us by
putting as much oil as necessary on the market. We're developing a very
strong humanitarian aid package. We can win without destruction. We're
already putting into effect a post-Saddam Iraq, and I believe there's a
good basis for a better future. Iraq has a good bureaucracy and a civil
society that's relatively strong. It could be organized into a
federation. Meanwhile, we're doing all we can to attend to the
political needs of our friends and allies.

PMA: It's very important to [be able to] count on a resolution. It
isn't the same to act with it as without it. It would be very
convenient to count on a majority in the Security Council that would
support that resolution. In fact, having a majority is more important
than anyone casting a veto. We think the content of the resolution
should state, among other things, that Saddam Hussein has lost his
opportunity.

PB: Yes, of course. That would be better than to make a reference to
"all means necessary" [he refers to the standard UN resolution that
authorizes the use of "all means necessary"].

PMA: Saddam Hussein hasn't cooperated, he hasn't disarmed, we should
make a summary of his breaches and send a more elaborate message. That
would, for example, allow Mexico to make a move [he refers to changing
its position, opposed to the second resolution, that Aznar heard
personally from President Vicente Fox on Friday, February 21 during a
travel stop he made in Mexico City].

PB: The resolution will be tailored to help you as best it can. I don't
care much about the content.

PMA: We'll send you some texts.

PB: We don't have any text. Just one condition: that Saddam Hussein
disarms. We can't allow Saddam Hussein to stall until summer. After
all, he's had four months already in this last phase, and that's more
than sufficient time to disarm.

PMA: That text would help us sponsor it and be its coauthors, and
convince many people to sponsor it.

PB: Perfect.

PMA: Next Wednesday [February 26] I'll meet with Chirac. The resolution
will have started to circulate by then.

PB: That seems good to me. Chirac knows the reality perfectly. His
intelligence services have explained it to him. The Arabs are sending
Chirac a very clear message: Saddam Hussein should go. The problem is
that Chirac thinks he's Mister Arab, and in reality he's making life
impossible for them. But I don't want any rivalry with Chirac. We have
different points of view, but I would want that to be all. Give him my
best regards. Really! The less he feels that rivalry exists between us,
the better for all of us.

PMA: How will the resolution and the inspectors' report be combined?

Condoleezza Rice: Actually there won't be a report on February 28, the
inspectors will present a written report on March 1, and their
appearance before the Security Council won't happen until March 6 or 7
of 2003. We don't expect much from that report. As with the previous
ones, it will be six of one and half a dozen of the other.

I have the impression that Blix will now be more negative than before
about the Iraqis' intentions. After the inspectors have appeared before
the Council we should anticipate the vote on the resolution taking
place one week later. Meanwhile, the Iraqis will try to explain that
they're meeting their obligations. It's neither true nor sufficient,
even if they announce the destruction of some missiles.

PB: This is like Chinese water torture. We have to put an end to it.

PMA: I agree, but it would be good to be able to count on as many
people as possible. Have a little patience.

PB: My patience has run out. I won't go beyond mid-March.

PMA: I'm not asking you to have indefinite patience. Simply that you do
everything possible so that everything comes together.

PB: Countries like Mexico, Chile, Angola, and Cameroon have to know
that what's at stake is the United States' security and acting with a
sense of friendship toward us.

[Chilean President Ricardo] Lagos has to know that the Free Trade
Agreement with Chile is pending Senate confirmation, and that a
negative attitude on this issue could jeopardize that ratification.
Angola is receiving funds from the Millennium Account that could also
be compromised if they don't show a positive attitude. And Putin must
know that his attitude is jeopardizing the relations of Russia and the
United States.

PMA: Tony [Blair] would like to extend to the 14th.

PB: I prefer the 10th. This is like good cop, bad cop. I don't mind
being the bad cop and that Blair be the good one.

PMA: Is it true that there's a possibility of Saddam Hussein going into
exile?

PB: Yes, that possibility exists. Even that he gets assassinated.

PMA: An exile with some guarantee?

PB: No guarantee. He's a thief, a terrorist, a war criminal. Compared
to Saddam, Milosevic would be a Mother Teresa. When we go in, we'll
uncover many more crimes and we'll take him to the International Court
of Justice in The Hague. Saddam Hussein believes he's already gotten
away. He thinks France and Germany have stopped holding him to his
responsibilities. He also thinks that the protests of last week
[Saturday, February 15] protect him. And he thinks I'm much weakened.
But the people around him know that things are different. They know his
future is in exile or in a coffin. That's why it's so important to keep
the pressure on him. Gaddafi tells us indirectly that this is the only
thing that can finish him. Saddam Hussein's sole strategy is to stall,
stall, and stall.

PMA: In reality, the biggest success would be to win the game without
firing a single shot while going into Baghdad.

PB: For me it would be the perfect solution. I don't want the war. I
know what wars are like. I know the destruction and the death that
comes with them. I am the one who has to comfort the mothers and the
widows of the dead. Of course, for us that would be the best solution.
Besides, it would save us $50 billion.

PMA: We need your help with our public opinion.

PB: We'll do everything we can. On Wednesday I'll talk about the
situation in the Middle East, and propose a new peace framework that
you know, and about the weapons of mass destruction, the benefits of a
free society, and I'll place the history of Iraq in a wider context.
Maybe that's of help to you.

PMA: What we are doing is a very profound change for Spain and the
Spaniards. We're changing the politics that the country has followed
over the last two hundred years.

PB: I am just as much guided by a historic sense of responsibility as
you are. When some years from now History judges us, I don't want
people to ask themselves why Bush, or Aznar, or Blair didn't face their
responsibilities. In the end, what people want is to enjoy freedom. Not
long ago, in Romania, I was reminded of the example of Ceau¸sescu: it
took just one woman to call him a liar for the whole repressive system
to come down. That's the unstoppable power of freedom. I am convinced
that I'll get that resolution.

PMA: That would be the best.

PB: I made the decision to go to the Security Council. In spite of the
disagreements within my administration, I told my people that we should
work with our friends. It would be wonderful to have a second
resolution.

PMA: The only thing that worries me about you is your optimism.

PB: I am an optimist, because I believe that I'm right. I'm at peace
with myself. It's up to us to face a serious threat to peace. It annoys
me to no end to contemplate the insensitivity of the Europeans toward
the suffering Saddam Hussein inflicts on the Iraqis. Perhaps because
he's dark, far away, and a Muslim, many Europeans think that everything
is fine with him. I won't forget what [former NATO Secretary General,
the Spaniard Javier] Solana once asked me: why we Americans think the
Europeans are anti-Semites and incapable of facing their
responsibilities. That defensive attitude is terrible. I have to admit
that I have a splendid relationship with Kofi Annan.

PMA: He shares your ethical concerns.

PB: The more the Europeans attack me, the stronger I am in the United
States.

PMA: We will have to make your strength compatible with the support of
the Europeans. Notes

[1] Dearlove's consultations had taken place on July 20, 2002, in
Washington and at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and he
reported to a meeting of the British "war cabinet" at Ten Downing
Street three days later. See Mark Danner, The Secret Way to War: The
Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War's Buried History (New York Review
Books, 2006), pp. 6–7 and pp. 88–89.

[2] And not just for George Bush. The mystique of leadership—of faith
over facts—pulled others along in its wake. Condoleezza Rice, for
example, makes a curious appearance in the discussion, assuring the
President and the Spanish prime minister that she has "the impression"
that Hans Blix, whose report is due the following week, "will now be
more negative than before about the Iraqis' intentions." In fact, quite
the opposite: Blix will tell the Security Council that "the key
remaining disarmament tasks" can be achieved not in "years, nor weeks,
but months." Here is what Blix told the Security Council on March 7,
2003:

    How much time would it take to resolve the key remaining
disarmament tasks? While cooperation can and is to be immediate,
disarmament and at any rate the verification of it cannot be instant.
Even with a proactive Iraqi attitude, induced by continued outside
pressure, it would still take some time to verify sites and items,
analyse documents, interview relevant persons, and draw conclusions. It
would not take years, nor weeks, but months. Neither governments nor
inspectors would want disarmament inspection to go on forever. However,
it must be remembered that in accordance with the governing
resolutions, a sustained inspection and monitoring system is to remain
in place after verified disarmament to give confidence and to strike an
alarm, if signs were seen of the revival of any proscribed weapons
programmes.

Blix's conclusions were not only not "more negative than before about
the Iraqis' intentions"; he suggests that inspections of all the
suspect sites could be completed in a matter of months. President Bush,
needless to say, is not willing to wait for months, or even for weeks,
for the additional inspections to be completed. What would have
happened if he had been? On the one hand, the administration's
willingness to delay might have secured a deal whereby additional
countries would have supported "all means necessary" to deal with
Saddam. On the other, the inspectors, given more time, would have
discovered no weapons, likely leading the administration to argue that
the inspections themselves were useless—not that the weapons didn't
exist. But the momentum for war would have been blunted.

[3] According to the New York Times account of this exchange:

    Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of
Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein–era military, "The
policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen." 

    But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush's former Iraq
administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army's
dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush
said, "Yeah, I can't remember, I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy,
what happened?'" But, he added, "Again, Hadley's got notes on all of
this stuff," referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security
adviser.

See Jim Rutenberg, "In Book, Bush Peeks Ahead to His Legacy," The New
York Times, September 2, 2007, and Robert Draper, Dead Certain: The
Presidency of George W. Bush (Free Press, 2007), p. 211.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20770#transcript