United States President George W. Bush's resolve to overthrow Iraq's Saddam Hussein by use of military force if necessary was set last autumn without a formal decision-making meeting or the intelligence assessment that ordinarily precedes such a serious decision.
Before the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, Bush will lay out his case for "regime change" in detail and in public for the first time. However, according to USA Today, the Superpower leader decided that Saddam must be ousted over ten months ago. The debate within the Bush administration ever since has been regarding the means to accomplish that end.
USA Today based its report on interviews with officials at the White House, State Department, Pentagon, intelligence agencies, Congress and elsewhere.
According to the daily, the process emphasizes Bush's confidence in his own judgment and his hard-line policy instincts. It shows, according to the daily, his reliance on a tight circle of aides, his inclination for secrecy and his preference for unilateral action.
"There wasn't a flash moment. There's no decision meeting," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said. "But Iraq had been on the radar screen - that it was a danger and that it was something you were going to have to deal with eventually ... before Sept. 11, because we knew that this was a problem."
Members of Congress were not consulted, nor were key allies. The concerns of high-ranking military officers and intelligence analysts, some of whom remain skeptical, weren't fully aired until afterward.
Whether Saddam was involved in the September 11 attacks on US cities, and the evidence on that is still unclear, was not the main question. Instead, within days after the attacks on New York and Washington a year ago, the US leader and his senior aides turned their eyes on Baghdad as the biggest future threat. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
