334 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT REPORT 10.3 “PHASE TWO” AND THE QUESTION OF IRAQ

President Bush had wondered immediately after the attack whether Saddarn Hussein’s regime might have had a hand in it. Iraq had been an enemy of the United States for 11 years, and was the only place in the world where the United States was engaged in ongoing combat operations. As a former pilot the President was struck by the apparent sophistication of the operation and some of the piloting, especially Hanjour’s high-speed dive into the Pentagon. He told us he recalled Iraqi support for Palestinian suicide terrorists as well. Speculating about other possible states that could be involved, the President told us he also thought about Iran.

Clarke has written that on the evening of September 12, President Bush told him and some of his staff to explore possible Iraqi links to 9/11. “See if Saddam did this,” Clarke recalls the President telling them, “See if he’s linked in any way.” While he believed the details of Clarke’s account to be incorrect, President Bush acknowledged that he might well have spoken to Clarke at some point, asking him about Iraq. Responding to a presidential tasking, Clarke’s office sent a memo to Rice on September 18, titled “Survey of Intelligence Information on Any lraq Involvement in the September 11 Attacks.” Rice’s chief staffer on Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad concurred in its conclusion that only some anecdotal evidence linked lraq to al Qaeda. The memo found rio “compelllng case” that Iraq had either planned or perpetrated the attacks. It passed along a few foreign intelligence reports, including the Czech report alleging an April 2001 Prague meeting between Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer (discussed in chapter 7) and a Polish report that personnel at the headquarters of Iraqi intelligence in Baghdad were told before September 11 to go on the streets to gauge crowd reaction to an unspecified event. Arguing that the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak, the memo pointed out that Bin Ladin refented the secularism of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Finally, the memo said, there was no confirmed reporting on Saddam cooperating with Bin Ladin on unconventional weapons. On the afternoon of 9/1l, according to contemporaneous notes, Secretary Rumsfeld instructed General Myers to obtain quickly as much information as 335 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT REPORT possible. The notes indicate that he also told Myers that he was not simply interested in striking empty training sites. He thought the U.S: response should consider a wide range of options and possibilities. Tihe secretary said his instinct was to hit Saddam Hussein at the same time–not only Bin Ladin. Secretary Rumsfeld later explained that at the time, he had been considering either one of them, or perhaps someone else, as the responsible party. According to Rice, the issue of what, if anything, to do about Iraq was really engaged at Camp David. Briefing papers on Iraq, along with many others, were in briefing materials for the participants. Rice told us the administration was concerned that Iraq would take advantage of the 9/11 attacks. She recalled that in the first Camp David session chaired by the President, Rumsfeld asked what the administration should do about lraq. Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz made the case for striking lraq during “this round” of the war on terrorism. A Defense Department paper for the Camp David briefing book on the sategic concept for the war on terrorism specified three priority targets for initial action: al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Iraq. It argued that of the three, al Qaeda and Iraq posed astrategic threat to the United States. Iraq’s long-standing involvvement in terrorism was cited, along with its interest in weapons of mass destruction.. Secretary Powell recalled that Wolfowitz– not Rumsfeld–argued that Irdq was ultimately the source of the terrorist problem and should therefore be attacked. Powell said that Wolfowitz was not abl.e to justify his belief that lraq was behind 9/11. “Paul was always of the view that Iraq was a problem that had to be dealt with,” Powell told us. “And he saw this as one way of using this event as a way to deal with the lraq problem.” Powell said that President Bush did not give Wolfowitz’s argument “much weight.” Though continuing to worry about lraq in the following week, Powell said, President Bush saw Afghanistan as the priority. President Bush told Bob Woodward that the decision not to invade Iraq was made at the morning session on September 15. Iraq was not even on the table during the September 15 afternoon session, which dealt solely with Afghanistan. Rice said that when President Bush called her on Sunday, September 16, he said the focus would be on Afganistan, althought he still wanted plans for Iraq should the country take some action or the administration eventually determine that it had been involved in the 9/11 attacks. At the September 17 NSC meeting, there was some further discussion of “phase two” of the war on terrorism. President Bush ordered the Defense Department to be ready to deal with Iraq if Baghdad acted against U.S. interest with plans to include possible occupying Iraqi oil fields. Within the Pentagon, Deputy Secretary Wolfow/tz continued to press the case for dealing with lraq. Writing to

Rumsfeld on September 17 in a memo headlined “Preventing More Events,” he argued that if there was even a 10 percent chance that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11, attack, maximum pri- 336 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT REPORT ority should be “placed on eliminating that threat. Wolfowitz contended tha the odds were “far more” than 1 in 10, citing Saddam’s praise for the attack, his long record of involvement in terrorism, and theories that Ramzi Yousef was and Iraqui agent and Iraq was behind the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. The next day, Wolfowitz renewed the argument, writing to Rumsfeld about the interest of Yousef’s co-conspirator in the 1995 Manila air plot in crashing an explosives-laden plane into C1A headauarters, and about information fom a foreign government regarding Iraqus’ involvement in the attempted hijacking of a Gulf Air flight. Given this background, he wondered why so little thought had been devoted to the danger of suicide pilots, seeing a “failure of imagination” and a mind-set that dismissed possibilities. On September 19, Rumsfeld offered several thoughts for his commanders as they worked on their contingency plans. Though he emphasized the world wide nature of the conflict, the references to specific enemies or regions named only the Taliban, al Qaeda, and Afghanistan. Shelton told us the administltion reviewed all the Pentagon’s war plans and challenged certain assumptic underlying them, as any prudent organization or leader should do. General Tommy Franks, the commanding general of Central Commal, recalled receiving Rumsfeld’s guidance that each regional commander should assess what these plans meant for his area of responsibility. He knew he would soon be striking the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. But, he told us, now wondered how that action was connected to what might need to be in Somalia, Yemen, or Iraq. On September 20, President Bush met with British Prime” Minister Tony Blair, and the two leaders discussed the global conflict ahead. When Blair asked about Iraq, the President replied that Iraq was not the immediate problem. Some members of his administration, he commented, had expressed a different view, but he was the one responsible for making the decisions.

Franks told us that he was pushing independently to do more robust planing on military responses in lraq during the summer before 9/ll–a request President Bush denied, arguing that the time was not right. (CENTCOM also began dusting off plans for a full invasion of lraq during this period, Franks said.) The CENTCOM commander told us he renewed his appeal for further military planning to respond to Iraqi moves shortly after 9/11, both because he personally felt that lraq and al Qaeda might be engaged in some form of collusion and because he worried that Saddam might take advantage of attacks to move against his internal enemies in the northern or southern parts of lraq, where the United States was flying regular missians enforce Iraqi no-fly zones. Franks said that President Bush again turned down the request.

Having issued directives to guide his administration’s preparations for war, on Thursday, September 20, President Bush addressed the nation before a joint session of Congress. “Tonight,” he said, “we are a country awakened to 337 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT REPORT danger.’ The President blamed al Qaeda for 9/11 and the 1998 embassy bombings and, for the first time, declared that al Qaeda was “responsible for bombing the USS Cole.” He reiterated the ultimatum that had already been conyed privately. “The Taliban must act, and act immediately,” he said.”They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate.” The President added that America’s quarrel was not with Islam: “The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.” Other regimes faced hard choices, he pointed out: “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. President Bush argued that the new war went beyond Bin Ladin. “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there,” he said. “It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” The President had a message for the Pentagon: “The hour is coming when America will act, and you will make us proud.” He also had a message for those outside the United States. “This is civilization’s fight,” he said. “We ask every nation to join us.” President Bush approved military plans to attack Afghanistan in meetings with Central Command’s General Franks and other advisers on September 21 and October 2. Originally titled “Infinite Justice,” the operation’s code word was changed–to avoid the sensibilities of Muslims who associate the power of infinite justice with God alone to the operational name still used for operations in Afghanistan: “Enduring Freedom.” The plan had four phases.

• In Phase One, the United States and its allies would move forces into the region and arrange.to operate from or over neighborhing countires such as Uzbekistan and Pakistan. This occurred in the weeks following 9/11, aided by overwhelming international sympathy for the United States.

• In Phase Two, air strikes and Special Operations attacks, would hit key al Qaeda and Taliban targets. In an innovative joint effort, CIA and Special Operations forces would be deployed to work together with each major Afghan faction opposed to the Taliban. The Phase Two strikes and raids begon on October 7. The basing arrangements contemplated for Phase One were substantially secured–after arduous effort–by the end of that month.

• In Phase Three, the United States would carry out “decisive operations” using all elements of national power, including ground troops, to topple the Taliban regime and eliminate al Qaeda’s santuary in Afghanistan. Mazar-e- Sharif, in northern Afghanistan, fell to a coalition assault by Afghan and U.S. forces on November 9. Four days later the Taliban had fled from Kabul. By early December, all major cities

338 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT REPORT had fallen to the coalition. On December 22, Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun leader from Kandahar, was installed as the chairman of Afgahanistn’s interim administration. Afghanistan had been liberated from the rule of the Taliban.

In December 2001, Afghan forces, with limited U.S. support, engaged al Qaeda elements in a cave complex called Tora Bora. In March 2002, the largest engagement of the war was fought, in the mountainous Shah-i-Kot area sourth of Gardez, against a large force of al Qaeda jihadists. The three-week battle was substantially successful, and almost all remaining al Qaeda forces took refuge in Pakistan’s equally mountainous and lightly governed frontier provinces. As of July 2004, Bin Ladin and Zawahiri are still believed to be at large.

• In Phase Four, civilian and military operations turned to the indefinite task of what the armed forces call “security and stability operations.”

Within about two months of the start of combat operations, several hundred ClA operatives and Special Forces

soldiers, backed by the striking power of U.S. aircraft and a much larger infrastructure of intelligence and support efforts, had combined with Afghan militias and a small number of other coalition soldiers to destroy the Taliban regime and disrupt al Qaeda. They had killed or captured about a quarter of the enemy’s known leaders. Mohammed Atef, al Qaeda’s military commander and a principal figure in the 9/11 plot, had been killed by a U.S. air strike. According to a senior CIA officer who helped devise the overall strategy, the CIA provided intelligence, experience, cash, covert action capabilities, and entree to tribal alies. In turn, the U.S. military offered combat expertise, firepower, logistics, and communications. With these initial victories won by the middle of 2002, the global conflict againt Islamist terrorism became a different kind of struggle.