First Stop, Iraq

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Powell was trying to do just that. On Aug. 5, he and Rice had dinner with Bush in the White House. Powell argued that if Saddam was to be disarmed, it was best to do so with the backing of the international community. The Security Council, Powell said, was ready to force Saddam to accept weapons inspectors for the first time since 1998. Bush was hearing the same argument from old colleagues of his father's, like Brent Scowcroft, Rice's predecessor and mentor, and from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was due to visit Camp David at the end of the month. On Aug. 26, in Crawford, Texas, Bush held a meeting of the National Security Council over a secure videoconference system. Powell argued that taking the Iraq issue to the U.N. would maintain international support and close off no options. Reluctantly, Cheney and Rumsfeld agreed. Bush would make the case at the U.N. in September, challenging the Security Council to enforce its resolutions on Iraqi disarmament. But Cheney pushed back. Without informing Powell, he decided that his speech to the V.F.W. convention in Nashville would set out the hard-line case against Saddam--including Cheney's judgment that the return of inspectors would be a "false comfort" and provide "no assurance whatsoever" of Iraq's compliance with U.N. resolutions. He spoke openly of what the U.S. would do after a regime change in Iraq--implying that it was prepared to go to war to get Saddam out.

Cheney wasn't free-lancing. He and Bush had settled on the fine print of the speech together. For the two men, the position that the Administration now held had a certain logic. Multilateral support for action against Saddam in the U.N., they thought, would come only if the Security Council was convinced that the U.S. would go it alone if it had to; inspections would work only if they were backed up by a credible threat of force if Saddam did not come clean on his weapons. After Bush's speech, Powell and his team set about drafting a text--Security Council Resolution 1441--that would promise Saddam "serious consequences," meaning war, if he passed up a last chance to disarm. The negotiations were tough. The French were determined that if Iraq was found to be in breach, the Security Council should meet again before going to war. On Nov. 2, as he was waiting to escort his daughter down the aisle at her wedding, Powell received a call from Dominique de Villepin, the French Foreign Minister, and the two men settled on the outlines of a compromise. Six days later, the Security Council voted unanimously in favor of Resolution 1441. The mood at State was ebullient; the Security Council, said a senior official, had "found Iraq guilty and offered it a probation." Powell, say State Department sources, was convinced that if it came to the crunch and Saddam violated 1441, France and every other significant nation would back the U.S. in a vote for war.