hello, everyone. welcome to the washington times for this special episode of history. as it happens, i'm martin di caro. today we're going to talk about the iraq war. 20 years on, on march 20th, 2003, president george w bush announced the united states was invading iraq to get rid of saddam hussein and his weapons of mass destruction, weapons that did not exist. the war killed thousands of american soldiers and contractors and hundreds of thousands of iraqi people. we were not greeted as liberators. why? well, our guest today for this special episode of the podcast is the dean of us foreign policy historians melvyn leffler,

welcome. thank you. i'm delighted to be here to discuss this really important topic with you. welcome to the washington times, professor emeritus of history at the university of virginia and the author of confronting saddam hussein. george w bush and the invasion of iraq. so the book was published to coincide with the anniversary of the war. but you've been working on this book a quite a while. you seemed reluctant, as you stated in your preface, to take on this project to begin with. why? well, i was reluctant for two reasons. first, i was trying to finish up work that i was doing on the evolution of the cold war topic of which i've written a great deal about. and secondly, and most importantly, i was reluctant to take it on because it was really contemporary history and the availability of primary source documents would be very limited.

i'm a historian who has spent his career in the archives with hundreds and hundreds of archival boxes of documents. and i knew for certain that i would never have access to such documents. in writing this type of a book. and so i was very reluctant to undertake it until i met a former member of the bush administration who talked to me about the possible kitty of setting up interviews. and i can discuss that further, if you like. that's a key to the book. absolutely. what is the danger of relying on interviews with and memoirs written by participants who, of course, have an interest in trying to paint this episode in our history in the most positive possible light? there's tremendous danger of just relying on interviews and memoirs. i was aware of that from the very beginning.

i was conscious of the fact that the people i'd be interviewing if i had the opportunity to interview them were far better at spinning me than i would be at probing them. i understood that they had spent their careers talking to news media and knowing how to handle difficult, challenging questions. so i made a commitment to myself that if i pursued this book, i would continue my reliance on as many archival documents as i could possibly secure. i knew that i would never have systematic access to the archives, but i also benefited over time by the fact that the national secure the archive, which is an institution committed to securing the declassification of records, the

national security archive was was able to bring about the declassified location of hundreds, perhaps some thousands of of documents. of course, nothing like the totality that that really exists. i also benefited greatly by the fact that the british parliament mandated an investigation of the question of why did tony blair take great britain into the war in iraq on the side of george w bush? so there was a formal parliamentary investigation called the chilcot inquiry. and the result of that inquiry were thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of interviews with every single top british official, including hundreds of pages with tony blair and foreign secretary jack straw. but also in the midst of those

insta interviews, every time a government official like tony blair would say, i got a memorandum from jack straw on such and such a date that said such and such. the inquiry was able to investigate in committee, was able to secure the declassification of those documents and over time in 2014, 15, 26, all those documents went up on a website. so there is a lot of information about when jack straw talked to, for example, secretary of state powell or blair's national security adviser or david manning. we talked to condi rice, george w bush's national security adviser. you could find out a lot of information that way. history of meetings and conversations and teleconferences, etc. . the classification process takes

decades. sometimes documents are never declassified, depending on what we're talking about. you think another ten, 20 years we might have the full documentary record or close to it when it comes to iraq? no, no, i don't think so. i myself submitted many mandatory declassification requests in order to get notes of various meetings of the national security council principal adviser is like powell and rumsfeld and and rice and the deputy national security advisers almost all my mdr mandatory declassification request notes were either denied in full or redacted or i still not have gotten the results of them. if in the future, i'm sure that the formal transcripts of the national security council meetings will be declassified

over time, maybe ten, 15 years from now. you write a sequel, but most, most importantly, leigh, in terms of understanding the decision making process for iraq, one really needs to get a comprehensive, systematic grasp of the intelligence records. it would be phenomenally useful if researchers could, for example, get the presidential daily briefs that were presented to to president bush every single day. those were voluminous each day. well, there they occur every day. they vary in numbers of of pages during the the weeks and months after 911. there was presented to the president every day, something that was called the threat matrix, which enumerated the scores of threats that had been

assessed just the previous day. and george w bush was presented with this document, with with his briefer and with the director of the central intel, prince george tenet. and they would go over all the threats that came in on the privy es day and try to assess the salience of these threats. if we could have a sense of what that was day by day, that would help us tremendously in terms of understanding the subsequent decisive actions that were taken or not taken. your aim in this book was to explain why things happened the way they did. it was not to write an indictment of george w bush and his administration, nor to let him off the hook. and i praise you for that. when i picked up the book confronting saddam hussein, i wanted to learn two things definitively to the extent possible, because let's admit emotions are still a little raw. 20 years is not a lot of time. anniversary is have a way of focusing our memories back on

unpleasant events, and we're still living with the consequences of this disastrous war. today. so i had to clear my mind, approach this with an open mind and i want to learn two things, primarily among other things when and why. when was the decision to invade iraq made, and why? for what reasons? and let's start with when, because it has become an article of faith for some people to say the decision was made pretty much right after 911. we're going to war in iraq. you say definitively that was not the case. that's correct. in fact, a lot of people believe that the decision to go to invade iraq and bring about regime change in iraq was actually made even before 911. and that is to say that the neocons in the administration, like paul wolfowitz, joined the administration in with the intent to bring about regime change through an invasion of

iraq. that's those notions exist in the literature. and and a lot of regime change was there, but not going to war for it. well, that's that's the issue. i mean, there was a written article commitment, a legislative commitment to to bring about regime change, a piece of a resolution passed by congress under bill clinton that, you know, the the administration itself endorsed to bring about regime change. that was a rhetorical commitment. and in essence, with some financial support behind it to to assist exile groups in inside the united states. but what i found in my research, because i systematically looked at this proposition, was that there was no agreement prior to 911 whatsoever ever to really do anything concrete, to bring about regime change in iraq.

in fact, policy makers discussed what to do with regard to saddam hussein prior to 911, and they simply couldn't resolve what to do. the pros and cons of various tactical actions were very complicated, and they could not agree on it. so nothing was nothing whatsoever had been resolved prior to 911. after 911. the some policy makers like paul wolfowitz and donald rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, suggested to president bush that he turned his attention to iraq. but i show in my book that initially president bush rejected those reject those notions. it was just days after 911 where this happened. and i believe president bush did tell them, listen, if you're going to talk to me about an iraq al qaida nexus relationship, whatever, you've got to find some evidence for

it. wolfowitz then directed feith douglas feith to set up an office which was called the office of special plans inside the pentagon, not the kindest sounding name, kind of an nefarious sounding name. office of special plans to look for this evidence. and so there were people early on trying to find something on saddam. and i think that's why some people today, even at the time, thought the war was decided pretty early here. no. yes. i mean, there are many people who focus on the creation of the office of special plans, and that did happen inside the office of the secretary of defense. but the most important thing for you and for readers to know about this is that the cia and president bush's briefers told him in the days after 911 that saddam hussein had nothing to do with 911.

i have agreed with them and i have found no evidence to suggest that president bush believe that saddam hussein had anything to do with 911. however, he was told and it is a fact that the iraqi regime, led by saddam hussein, was gloating over 911 express satisfaction and gratification that 911 had happened. saddam hussein's newspapers in baghdad published published articles more or less praising the fact that 911 had occurred and that the united states deserved this. no other government, i think, around the globe expressed gratification and pleasure with 911. so top policymakers in the united states were and were immediately in formed about saddam hussein's praise of of

the event. and this was one of the factors that drew policymakers attention to iraq in the aftermath of 911. of course, there were other very important factors. his history with weapons. i mean, he did use chemical weapons in the past in the war with iran in the 1980s. he attacked the kurds in the north of the country. well, most importantly. in order to understand why attention gravitated to iraq, why the president attention gravitated to iraq in the weeks and months after 911. you need to understand the confluence of several critical events. first of all, one needs to understand that there was enormous apprehension in policymaking circles about the likelihood of a follow on attack in the united states. there was a widespread belief

that another attack was imminent, that another attack of significant dimensions, maybe even greater dimensions, would occur. so that's the evidence of an impending subsequent attack was omnipresent. second, you need to understand that when american forces moved into afghanistan, when american special forces moved into afghanistan, and along with the northern alliance, displaced the government, the taliban government in kabul and forced al qaeda terrorists to flee from their training camps. evidence was found in those training camps that al qaeda was indeed seeking weapons of mass destruction and hoping to

develop chemical and biological weapons or to acquire them. there was incontrovertible evidence of that that emerges in october, november or december of 2000 at one at the same time, i'm talking about a confluence of events here. at the same time. one needs to recall that in the united states, there was a great fear of anthrax, that that envelopes and letters containing anthrax spores circulated in the mail. several postal workers were killed. these envelopes turned up in in the senate office building a congressional buildings were closed down. the supreme court itself was forced to move its deliberations to another location. in the middle of october. the there were a sense was

inside the white house that went off suggesting that there was a toxic substance inside the white house. all of this suggested that there was the likelihood or possibility of a biological or chemical attack taking place in the united states. at the same time, we're talking about a confluence of circumstances at the same time, there were reports, intelligence reports coming in that saddam hussein was either restart or accelerating his biological and chemical weapons programs. we now know in retrospect that much of this information was ill informed, was coming from suspects, informers, but we, a person who was who was codenamed curveball. but at the time, of course, what's important is that at the time this was not known. and so you had informed actions

coming in suggesting that saddam hussein was involved in restarting or accelerating these programs, programs that we knew he once had had. and had been and and weapons that he had been willing to use against his own people. so it's these this confluence of of circumstances that led president bush in late november, early december, to say that we need to prepare war plans for iraq should it be necessary to take action. one of the things we now know that we we really didn't know until recently was how exasperated president bush was over the fact that when he came into office, there was no war plan to deal with the taliban and al qaeda in afghanistan.

and, in fact, after 911, when he was eager to take action in afghanistan, he was extruded narrowly exasperated by the fact that there were no plans to deal with the situation. the defense department and the central intelligence agency hurried to develop some type of improvised idea to to deal with the with the taliban, to disrupt the training camps of al qaeda. but no such plans existed. what is clear now is that bush wanted to have a plan in place to deal with iraq should he find it necessary to do so. but it did not mean one of the things i emphasize in my book is that it did not mean that he was committed to going to war. the attention on iraq intensifies after the taliban

falls in afghanistan and basically go now, what's next in our war on terror? so they've already declared a war on terror. they're creating a set of circumstances of their own. they're putting the country on war footing. but the final decision is, what, january, february of 2003, shortly before the invasion actually begins, is when george bush says go right. that that is pretty much true. nobody can really tell you when the final decision was made. this was a process that. yeah, it's it's it's a long process. one of the problematic aspects of the decision making process was that there never were meetings that either discussed one the pros and cons of invading iraq to begin with. the fundament all of this issue of should we invade iraq or the prospective benefits outweighing

the the prospective lie abilities. such a meeting in which these things in which these issues should have been discussed were never systematic, fully discussed, nor was there a formal meeting of any sort in which the there was resolution about now we're going to war in iraq. such a meeting took place in late february between bush and his top military people in which he asked them, you know, our our war plans. this is in late february when a lot of a lot of our american combat troops had already been deployed and vessels deployed. and he does, which makes it look like war is inevitable. you don't write it makes it look like war is inevitable. and perhaps it was by late february 12, 2003, for a lot of other reasons as well, that at that time, president bush did convene his top military people

and say, are we ready? are you ready? and they say, yes, of course, we're of course we're right. no one question the fundament tolls, as if, you know, whether the united states had a right to preemptively invade another country, whether they lied about the intelligence or not. your argument is that they did not lie. we'll get to that in a moment. we'll return to some of the public statements that were made. so i think we've tackled when but the why here is also very important for what reasons and you downplay the role of ideology and or missionary zeal, i think is the term you use in your book when they were and you just touched on this a little bit about some of the decision making process here, the reasons why you say fear, excessive confidence in american power and hubris, not spreading democracy, not ideology, not some other factors. well, i discussed the basic motives for going war. motive, motive. so different than goals.

the base, the overriding motive for going to war was fear about the a prospective attack again in the united states, fear about american national security short term and long term. there were two aspects to to this fear. there was the short term aspect in which president bush clearly was worried that saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction, his chemical or biological weapons, might find their way, their way into the hands of terrorists, perhaps al qaeda terrorists or other other terrorists. he was concerned, certainly very concerned about that prospect. he was also concerned, as were many of his leading advisers, about the intermediate and long

term problem, that if sanctions failed, if the eggs listing in if the existing regime theme of sanctions and containment fail failed, and if saddam hussein restarted or excel or rated his programs of weapons of mass destruction, which he had been very much committed to in the 1980s and 1990s, if he did these things in the end to medium term, he would develop weapons of mass destruction. and with those weapons, he would be able to, in the words of american policymakers, blackmail the united states. in other words, the very presence of weapons of mass destruction, chemical or biological or in the or after five or ten years nuclear weapons, the very presence of those weapons would force the united states to self deter in a

crisis in the middle east and american policymakers did not want to face the prospect that they would be paralyzed in the long run by the presence of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a dictator like saddam hussein. so there's this short term fear of another attack, of a prospective attack inside the united states and an intermediate term fear that american power will be circumscribed or constrained in the intermediate and long term. about you know, i want to backtrack briefly about the decision when he made that decision to to to go ahead with the invasion and we'll return to the lie issues. that was when inspections were actually taking place. they weren't. so the entire satisfaction of the western world. but there were still inspections going on. saddam what i meant to say. saddam wasn't entirely cooperating, but nothing was

coming up. they weren't finding any actual weapons. and that was used as evidence that he actually was hiding something rather than give us some pause, maybe we should wait a little bit longer. so when you say that, you know, the president didn't rush to war, he is accused of rushing in those final weeks instead of allowing the full inspection regime to play out as if saddam is about to prove us wrong. he actually doesn't have these weapons. your response to that? well, one can argue that, and that is an argument often made and one can legitimately say that legitimately say that in february and march of 2003, there was a rush to war. that's different than saying in september of 2001, there was a a rush to war timeline. but it but even in what's important to know is that in january and february 2003, as the inspectors was engaged in

their investigations inside iraq, as as you suggested, and they were not finding evidence of of of the of the weapons. nonetheless, none the less, the chief of the inspectors, hans blix, reported again and again that he did not think that saddam hussein had made what he considered, what hans blix considered, quote and, quote, a strategic decision to really cooperate and collaborate. it is true, as you are suggesting, and it has and has often been written, that hans blix became exasperated with american impatience. that is true in a moment. hans blix became very impatient and angry with the united states for eventual early going to war.

in march of of 2003. but what is also true and very often stated was that hans blix believed that the only way to get saddam hussein to cooperate was through the use of military intimidation. hans blix was not opposed to the deployment of american forces. he believes that that was absolute, the indispensable to get saddam hussein to cooperate. indeed. indeed, almost everyone at the time observed is everywhere, would assumed that saddam hussein would not cope, would not allow inspectors back, would not reveal what materials he had, if he had them, would not disclose the materials unless threatened with the use of force. so hans blix said again and again in january and february he

used the term saddam hussein. and president bush are, in essence, playing a game of chicken with one another. and it's uncertain how long this game can continue. and it's clear that president bush and his top advisers felt that saddam hussein was toying with them, that he was defying them, that despite the fact that things weren't being being found, he wasn't cooperating with with the u.n. inspectors, even to their own satisfaction. and key members of the bush team, including the president himself, felt they still had to go through this process. not all of them were on board with process, but they still know. i mean, that's one of my key themes in my book, of course, is that president bush is the key decision maker, not cheney, not rumsfeld, not the neocons like wolfowitz and president bush. did want this process to go on.

president bush was committed to this these notions of coercive diplomacy. i want to ask you about of course, of diplomacy, what that is, because that's the that's the tact they chose to take after the initial days that we've been discussing here, when they decided to focus on iraq. we've been discussing for what reasons? it wasn't missionary zeal, it wasn't ideology. it was realism and fear of another attack. i should say, by the way, as we discussed this, since often the discussions about what happened after 911 focus exclusive only on iraq, one should keep in mind that policymakers in the administration were not just interested in iraq. policymakers were interested in the existence of terrorists. in many places around the globe. they were very focused on indonesia. they were focused on on the

philippines. they were preoccupied extremely preoccupied that pakistan any weapons not find their way into the hands of terrorists. so one should keep in mind that iraq was not the exclusive focus of policymakers. they were focused the global war on terror was happening in many, many places. now, they did decide in january or in february of 2002 to embark upon this course of coercive diplomacy with regard to iraq and the idea it made that, to me, coercive diplomacy made war more likely, not less, although that could be my memory looking back on things. well, well, one. one can readily say that. i agree with that. coercive diplomacy didn't make war more likely. if if saddam hussein did not

cooperate. and one of the themes of my book and what's important to realize in this whole story is that saddam hussein is an important part of the story. there is contingency here. i purposefully start my book with a chapter of saddam hussein because it is important for readers and observers to understand who this man was, what he had done in order to really grasp the fears and apprehensions of american policymakers. so they didn't expect him to cooperate, though. that's one of the contradictions here. well, wanted him to go along with what they were demanding of another sovereign country. well, they were they were uncertain if if he would if he would cooperate, the no. one believed he would cooperate. but unless threatened with military force, that was a

given. so the so then there was the issue if threatened with military force, will he cooperate? and this is an important part of my book and one that is not usually discussed elsewhere, because it depends a lot. my information came from british records. tony blair spoke to president bush about the fact if we go to the u.n. , if we engage in the diplomacy at the u.n. and if we get another resolution in and if it is backed. backed by force, and then if saddam hussein actually agree, as tony blair said to president bush, we need to take yes for an answer. tony blair did not expect. yes. no. that hussein would say yes. nor did president bush expect hussein to say to saddam hussein

to say yes. but they acknowledged to one another and their national security advisers talked to one another about this, that if saddam hussein actually did say, yes, if he did cooperate with the new resolution, if he did disclose and or relinquish his alleged weapons of mass destruction, then we would have to live with this regime. but we would never get to know this unless we unless he was threatened with force. whether he would agree or not was up to saddam hussein. and so he could have agreed. he could have been more forthcoming at an earlier moment. hans blix wants. it to be more and ultimately he couldn't give up what he didn't have. ultimately, he couldn't give up what he what he couldn't have. but he could have been much more forthcoming in terms of the bluff cooperation.

well, yes. i mean, and that's one of the interesting aspects of this whole episode is that saddam hussein ultimately did not have at this moment in time for weapon the weapons of mass destruction, but almost everyone believed that he did in cluding most of his own military officials. and most of his own advisers believe that he that he had what means of mass destruction. he had such a record of deception and conceal ing that nobody really knew for sure, even his own advisers, whether had weapons of mass destruction or did not have weapons. they were stunned late in the game when he told them to start cooperating with the inspectors. right. and and very careful studies. more careful than than mine who have looked into this illuminate. the fact that when he tells his

top military people and his top scientific people to cooperate, they don't know if they actually should cooperate. if he really means that they should cooperate, not to cooperate and if they do cooperate, they sort of think, well, others are cooperate because the others know they should not cooperate. so it's part of this impact that saddam hussein has, not only on adversaries abroad, but on the people who work for him. i mean, one has to understand, when we try to put employer i know he was not a good employer. they were afraid of him. of course. of course they were. they had good reason to be intimidated by him. you paint a more sympathetic portrait of george w bush than have his harshest critics. you say he wasn't a warmonger. he wasn't stupid, wasn't lazy, not a puppet of his advisers. he was the decider.

he was engaged. he asked a lot of questions, although he didn't probe too deeply on some things. yet i still came away from reading your work confronting saddam hussein convinced that bush was almost totally ignorant of the history and culture of the middle east, and also intellectually lazy about the world. he didn't understand why there so much anti-americanism in the region. he subscribed to a simple worldview, a dichotomous worldview. you're with us or against us. one of the turns of phrase that lives on from that era of freedom or dictatorship, good versus evil type of worldview. you know, no wants to live in democracy. rather no one wants to live in a dictatorship. so natural. why wouldn't iraqis be willing to live freedom western style freedom? he also didn't understand the motivations. and you make this clear in your book. he didn't understand the motivations of the terrorists themselves. he didn't really know a lot of about al qaeda or osama bin laden. what can you say about bush's mindset and that how that

contribue suited to this disastrous mistake? well, there are many, many things that could be said about george w bush in this respect and my the themes of my book relate to fear. as you said earlier. power and hubris. and you and your hubris and it's incredibly important to understand the interaction of of these three factors. so many of the many of the qualities you just enumerated fall under the the subject matter of hubris in my book. yes. george george w bush believes that, you know, all people wanted to be free. all people wanted to have democratic institutions. he believed he did believe that american soldiers would be

welcomed with chocolates and flowers as a threat as iraqi exile leaders in the united states told him, some of whom were con men. ahmed chalabi was pardon me, ahmed chalabi was a con man. right. i mean. well, i would maybe want call him the. those are your words and your you're entitled to them. actually, george bush did not want chalabi to take over iraq. one of the interesting aspects is that he was actually opposed to that. but that's that's a side you need to go. that's just a sideshow. but but you you are absolutely right. and i tried to make clear in my book that there was a great deal of hubris that contributed to venture to the decision to invade iraq. most importantly, what you did not mention was the or the

memory firmly implied based in the mindset of all these advisers, especially people like condi rice and -- cheney, who had participated in the end game of the cold war. what they what all these policy makers had in their minds vividly in their minds, was that the cold war ended with the berlin wall toppled with east germans enthusiastically parading in the streets with east europeans, with poles and hungarians embracing the possibility of freedom and democracy and their notion was the notion of american policymakers was we had waged the cold war for 40 years successfully, and the return on that was and that part of the

world that had had to live behind the iron curtain. millions of people took to the streets. and and so that the policy makers, president bush, -- cheney, condi rice, paul, i think they all did firmly believe that the united states soldiers would be welcomed, that iraq iraqis would embrace them. and i emphasize in the book that they did not understand. they did not grasp the degree to which iraqis were extreme least suspicious of american intentions. they did not really understand the degree to the kurds in the north of iraq. had deep reasons to suspect the credibility of the united states because the united states had betrayed the kurds many times in the past. they did not understand the

degree to which the shia in the southern parts of iraq were told a total is suspicious of the united states because bush's own father, when president in 1990 and 91 had more or less encouraged the shia to rise up and then did nothing. when saddam hussein exterminated them. and then the sanctions as well. and so there was a great a great deal of reason to understand why iraqis would not necessarily truly be enthusiastic about an american invasion. but at the same time, one should understand and and one should keep in mind, iraqis did want to get rid of saddam hussein. you know, it wasn't that they were opposed to the removal of saddam hussein. that's right. the sanctions as well, which responsible for the deaths of one hundreds of thousands of iraqis, based on some estimates, including many, many children.

iraqis were aware that madeleine albright went on television, was asked about these sanctions. is it worth the price? all these children who are dying as a result? and she said, yes. march 16th, 2003. -- cheney is on meet the press with tim russert. the read we get on the people of iraq is there's no question but what they want that they want to get rid of saddam hussein. well, that was true. and they will welcome us as liberators. he said that. welcome. we'll be welcomed as liberators several times in that interview. one of the immortal or i should. yeah, well, that that will live on forever. that i i'm one should not immediately think that the disorder and anarchy inside iraq reflected. and anti americanism. what happened what happened inside iraq in march.

and april and may and june of 2003. the events that i cover very carefully were reflections of the inability of the united states to really establish order inside iraq. and the initial this order inside iraq was not was not anti americanism. the looting wasn't an insurgency. yeah, there was the insurgency that we all have in our minds grew in incrementally over time, catalyzed by the fact. sorry to interrupt, melvin, but catalog ized by the fact that the united states, our troops were killing so many iraqis. well, it drove a lot of people into the arms of the insurgents. well, of course, america can. actions and repression worsened the situation.

but there was also immediately the real compelling factor inside. iraq in march, i should say, in april. and may and june of 2003, was that this order and strike and looting amongst iraqis and one of the major preoccupation of iraqis, one of the reasons for their disillusion, which they state again and again with the united states, was the failure of the united states army to preserve order and stability the antipathy to the united states mounts because of the very in ability of of of americans to preserve the order. that's right. that all the way down sworn to and then in in in addition to that as i explain in my book, the united states partakes in

several critical decisions with regard to the disbandment of the iraqi army and the de-baathification, one of the top ranks of the civilian the iraqi civilian agencies. those decisions, which are difficult decisions, wind up alienating different sectors and and and different segment of the iraqi population and incrementally disaffected iraqis who who are who are affected by these very decisions moving gravitate into an insurrectionary movement. but that happens in a dynamic way over over time too and takes on a life of its own. and shia and sunni turn on each other. sunnis turning on sunnis. it was it was a debacle. one word about the lack of

order. i was going to say all the all the way down to something as simple as trash removal. i mean, nothing was functioning in iraq. there wasn't running water. there wasn't. well, one of the most important things was almost all the almost all the ministries were immediate we looted and burned the word of everything. exactly. everything so back to coercive diplomacy briefly. we touched on it before. it's a key point of your book. this seemed to fit bush's. briefly, this is diplomacy backed up by the threat of force. correct. and intensifying those threats. right. ratcheting up the pressure as time goes by. if you're not complying with u.s. demands. so as john dower wrote in his great book, cultures of war, i still think of these two sentences from a book i read. i don't know, ten, 15 years ago, most wars easy to initiate proved difficult and costly to end language, and rhetoric themselves become a prison and the machinery of destruction has

its own momentum. in a sense, the bush administration entrapped itself. you know, when i read the the comments the interviews, the speeches and the news conferences off the page, the words off the page, i do get the impression that they were trying to be cautious. they weren't rushing to war. they wanted to give diplomacy a shot. but when i've gone back and now watched some of these speeches and rallies and interviews, such as on meet the press, it hits you differently. it's more bellicose, it's more threatening. and as dower said, language and rhetoric themselves become a prison. of course, later, global war, right? you've called it an axis of evil, right? of course, yes. the words become more threatening and they were intended to become more threatening because coercive the policy was designed to intimidate saddam hussein and to force him either disclose or

relinquish his weapons of mass destruction or to flee or to encourage an assassination against him. so, yes, those those words were were designed to intimidate. that's what coercive diplomacy was about. but then again, saddam hussein had the head agency of his own. he could have acted differently during during this process. and he chose not to. but you are absolutely right. at the same time. and this is why it's complicated. there are different issues here, but you are absolutely right in saying that these actions to pursue of coercive diplomacy, given the fact that saddam hussein did what he did in traps the united states and the policymakers themselves state as explain toward the toward the end of the book, they themselves

state our credibility is now vested in getting rid of saddam hussein. he's toying with us. and we cannot allow because if we if we do, our allies in the region, our perceived friends in the region, like the saudis, we'll lose in us once again. they will think that we didn't have the will to out the the the envy of iraq and the destruction of saddam hussein's regime. we had our troops stationed in kuwait, too, and the weather was about to turn right. well, those of those are factors that, you know. well, i want to make clear to our viewers, our listeners. at no point in your book do you say justified an invasion. what you're trying to do is explain why things happened and what our leaders believed at the time. so on that point about whether this lying you might remember there were some bumper stickers from those days, lied, people

died. a rather simplistic way of looking at things. this is where i feel dishonesty did play a role. -- cheney at some point in 2002, i don't have the precise date, but it was before the invasion, said simply stated, this was an interview or i think in a speech -- cheney simply stated, there is no doubt that saddam hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. there is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. that sentence or two sentences would have been fine if you said it's possible. but he said there is no doubt and the administration knew there were doubts. let's return to curveball. he was an iraqi exile living in germany who later admitted that he basically made up everything about saddam's chemical. it was he was a fantasist. he he was able to get german intelligence, interview him somehow. i'm not i'm not know. i don't know the whole story.

his name was rufford al janabi, but at the time, there were questions about veracity. so the questions about curveball and his presentation i'm sorry, his claims wound up in colin powell's presentation, but the doubts about curveball, it's extremely important to keep in mind that the doubts about him emerge in incrementally and the the credibility of his information is not widely questioned until long into this process of late 2000 to early 2003. so it's it's it's in appropriate to say that, oh, people knew that curveball was misinforming them. yes, there were doubts. one of the important things i argue in my book, and you're perfectly right in stating that

policymakers were not certain that the information compellingly demonstrated that saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction. but these policymakers were all experienced people. they knew that, quote, intelligence never is dispositive. there's always questions about the veracity and credibility of intel, of intelligence. but what they did know, what they did know and what they said again and again, we know that saddam hussein can develop weapons of mass destruction that he had used. he had used weapons of mass destruction against iran and against his own people, that he had lied the weapons of mass destruction and that he had

conceal them. they knew those things as facts. and that he probably wanted them again. and that and they were convinced that he wanted them again, exactly as you said. so, yes, they're uncertain about the credibility and the reliability of the intelligence. and so they are they are getting an which people are arguing about, as i say, illuminating my book. but what they know in their mind is which was wrong, but they know in their minds, is that this guy, once had it used it and is capable of doing things of that sort again. so one of the themes of my book, one of the extrapolations that's really important, is that policymakers need to reexamine fundamental assumptions. the fundamental assumption here was that saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction. i demonstrated in the book that top policymakers all believe

that, as richard haass, the head of the policy staff, who was sort of against the war, he said he stated in his own memoir, i never met an intelligence analyst during my years in government who told me saddam hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. european governments did. so policymakers need to reexamine fundamental assumptions. those that's easy to say, correct yeah, that's easy to say. how often do you reexamine your fundamental assumptions? how often do i examine my fundamental assumptions? we don't, because we sort of think our fundamental assumptions are fundamental and therefore we don't need to reexamine them. and you have a responsibility to protect the. so it's a climate after. so it's easy. easy to say that. it's easy to say reexamine fundamental assumptions, but it's really hard to do. and yet that's one of the takeaways of book.

policymakers need to reexamine fundamental assumptions because their fundamental assumption in this case was wrong. basing a war, you know, there's no greater responsibilty, 80 or larger decision any government can make than sending our citizens off to fight a war. one more point about intelligence and then we'll we'll wrap up with some more general thoughts about american foreign policy, which you have been writing about for many decades. you know, i introduced you as the dean of u.s. foreign policy. i read specter of communism in college. i was assigned that book in the mid 1990, and it's still relevant and it still sells the saddam al qaeda connection. -- cheney said in multiple television interviews that mohammed atta, who was one of the hijackers, met an iraqi intelligence agent in prague. he said that this was confirmed with an interview. tim russert. it wasn't confirmed. a month later, the fbi ascertained that atta was in florida at the time. cheney went back on tv later

that year and repeated this again. you've said that cheney was not the decider here, but he was still an influential voice. he gave a speech to the veterans of foreign wars, a major speech that he basically freely. he wasn't supposed to give that speech where he essentially declares war on saddam hussein, even though he is in the power to do that. yeah, well, actually, president bush indirectly reprimands -- cheney for giving that for giving that speech. and one should not assume, as i show in my book, that -- cheney is a key decision maker and i mean, this relationship between al qaeda and saddam hussein is a relationship ship that is constantly being examined and by the intelligence agencies and and and by top by top policymaker. and they often come to the conclusion that there is no

collaborative relationship between saddam hussein and al qaida. but they also suggest the theories, possibilities. saddam hussein, his regime, his service might be involved in various types of trade exercises or provide or providing weapons. there's ambiguity and uncertainty that. that is the ambiguity and uncertainty that in years in policymaking, they knew that there was, quote, no collaborative relationship. and i show that president bush, when he's presented with with this evidence, says good try. he says to scooter libby, when scooter libby, cheney's top assistant, is making argument that that al qaeda and saddam hussein are linked to one another in august of 2002. and president bush says, good try, keep digging. but he himself. president bush is is not

convinced, but he is worried. he is worried. very worried about. the possibility that saddam hussein may have chemical and biological weapons and that those weapons might find their way into the hands of terrorists or perhaps al qaeda terrorists, perhaps other terror. there were some al qaeda dudes operating in a part of northeastern iraq that was outside the controls in the no fly zone of saddam hussein. but that ambiguity was never expressed. looking back on it now, to my satisfaction, the american people satisfied? no, because i mean, one more quote from cheney. the cheney hall of fame here, if you will. another interview with tim russert a few days before the invasion. we know saddam is trying once again to produce nuclear weapons. we know he has a long standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including al qaeda. the al qaeda. we know he has a long standing relationship with al qaida.

that wasn't true. and i think cheney knew it. but i can't prove that. well. policymakers here, if you're talking two days before before the war, they're mobilizing american opinion for the war. it doesn't explain those those quotations aides don't explain why the decisions that were made just a few days. there's this a difference between what is influencing policymakers and what they are saying to the public in order mobilize support behind a particular policy, as is all as is always the case. how has u.s. foreign policy changed since 2003? are you still out of this? are you talking about compared to today? well, yeah, just over the last 20 years of. do you see any major changes in your. well, of course. of course.

the quagmire, war and debacle in iraq had huge impact over the subsequent years in terms of president obama's willingness to get involved in various types of insurgencies. it led to a great deal of caution in terms of what to do in in syria, in libya. it it affected what the united states would do in in afghanistan and certainly what it did subsequently in iraq. so it the the debacle and the quagmire in iraq, the insurrectionary activity had a huge impact on america's willingness to use its power in subsequent situation, which many people would say was a good lesson, i mean, a good lesson of the war was to grasp the limits

of your power. and that is an important, important lesson. the united states doesn't have the power didn't have the power to build democracy in iraq or in syria. although there is rlm ments of democratic institutions important ones in iraq today, partly as a result of what the united states did. that doesn't justify what happened. but so they may have gotten grasping the limited s of your power is an important lesson, but it's easy to say that. what does it mean to grasp the limits of your power? it's important to know you can't everything you want to do, but it doesn't really explain. when you should use your power. when you listen to president biden's remarks about ukraine, it doesn't sound like the established meant the foreign policy establishment. both major parties questioned the fundamentals about american

hegemony. well, i think when you listen to president obama, do you appreciate biden? listen. listening, talking about the president in ukraine, i would suggest to you that he's learned a lot from this situation. and one of the important takeaways from my book is the importance of policymakers as defining priorities and and in this case, in iraq, president bush never really clarified priorities. i would say that one of the lessons that president biden has learned is that in this situation in ukraine and overriding priority is to avoid a nuclear war with russia. and so the steps you want to take are going to be limited but influential in helping the

ukrainians without provoking a major conflict with russia. your point about bush in oh three, yet they never resolved the contradictions in his priorities. do we want regime change? do we want disarmament? can we bring about regime change without going to war? there was some inconsistency there which i think, you know, led to the led to the expectation among many that this is just all about a pretext for war. your book does challenge that notion. to what extent was the global war on terror? if i can call it in the past tense? to what is the global war on terror? a continuation of u.s. foreign policy. post 1945? well, first of all, i mean, let me link that to the question you just asked. one of the important things to realize is that during this period of late nineties and after 911, the folk use of

american foreign policy was on non-state actors, on terrorists, on counterterrorism. that for roughly a decade or 15 years became the major preoccupation. why was that the case? that was the case because the united states had, in effect, achieved hegemony after the end of the cold war. there was no great power competition. so the preoccupation for good reasons, legitimate reasons, was with terrorism and counterterrorism and non-state actors. what's changed in the world mightily over the last ten or 15 years? is that we have a resurgence of traditional geopolitics. we have the resurgence of geopolitical rivalries among great powers. one of the consequences of this period with iraq and with

counterterrorism is that it did divert from the rise of china and from the revanche ism of russia during during these years. but geopolitics today is hugely different than. geopolitics during this during this era. but there still are continuities. i mean, in the of communism you write about it's been a while since i've read the book, but you should read it again. everybody should read it. you wrote how the us knew it had a major advantage over the ussr in many areas. post 45, but we still don't want to say inflated the threat. well, i will say inflated the threat. you can watch harry truman or listen to harry truman's 1947 speech about communist domination of the world. this is the speech. the truman doctrine is enunciated and he talks about needing aid for greece and turkey. you could also read truman's speech as an admission he knew

that socialism was going to be something that people in the so-called developing or third world, it would appeal to people in the third world. and the u.s. had something to do about it. so inflating the threat, communism, looking on it again with the of hindsight, but even at the time were people post-9-11 who said we're inflating the threat to our country of islamic terrorism and that, you know, preemptive invasions is not the right way to go about doing this. that wasn't so much a question as a word salad. but, you know, take that on, if you don't mind. well, there there was tremendous fear of another attack after 11. and in my view it was a well-founded fear of another terrorist attack, whether that fear needed to gravitate into a war against is a different question. and i think retrospect, if you

assess the prospective benefits against the prospective costs or liabilities you would decide not not to do not to go to war in iraq, but the fact people were preoccupied with fear was alleged amid apprehension at the time. now in terms of the continuities of american foreign policy, one of the things i wrote long ago, before i long before i wrote this book was that, in fact, bush's national security strategy reflected basic continuities in american foreign policy. the idea of establishing military very supremacy was not new idea. i mean, ever since beginnings of the cold war, the united states sought to have military supremacy, except for a very brief time when it was pursuing detente. but basically, the desire of

military superiority was not new for it was not a new idea of in the history of american foreign policy, especially since since war two. nor was the idea example of having an open order based on free markets and the movement of capital. these were in many ways a traditional american foreign policies. even the idea of preemption. i argue that people say, oh, this was something really, really new for george w bush. but preemption was not new policy for the united states foreign policy. i mean, when you think about it, when president kennedy imposed a blockade on cuba and was, you know, during the cuban missile crisis, that's an act of war. the united states was taking preemptive action at that period of time. so and president clinton sort of announced in the 1990 that he would be willing to take

preemptive action against, terrorists. so there is a lot of continuity here in the in the history of american foreign policy. one last point i'll make and we'll wrap and i'll add that i may be the only interviewer in washington who reads to his guests, but the listeners of my podcast history, as it happens, know that i often pick up books written historians, and i share some ideas as a historian myself. so i must cite the work of others. john w in his book the violent american century, writes when the administration of george bush responded to september 11 by declaring a global war on terror and launching the disaster its invasions of afghanistan and iraq, it was not really deviating from the thrust of existing policy as so many have argued. the excessive response to the atrocity carried out by al qaeda's 19 terrorists inaugurated the case of the 23 invasion of iraq by massive bombardment intended to shock and all the foe essential, writes dower involved unleashing

a war fighting machine already primed, experienced and overseas interventions, including intensive bombing, covert operations and practices on the dark side, referring to torture. so let's play stump the historian and i'll tell you why i'm reading this quote after i do. so, see if you can say which president said this? it's easy to say that we really have no interests in who lives in this or that valley in bosnia or who owns a strip of brush land in the horn of africa or some piece of parched earth by the jordan river. but the true measure of our interest lies, not in how small or distant these are, or whether we have trouble pronouncing their names. the question must ask is what are the consequences to our security of letting conflicts fester spread? we should not be involved everywhere, but where values and our interests are at stake and where we can make a difference. we must be prepared to do so. i don't know. i know. who said that? i could imagine.

george h.w. bush to any american president saying something like that. that was clinton in 1999, at the end of a decade. that has often been criticized as decade of american foreign policy drift. this was clinton trying to explain what where the united states should get involved in the world now that the soviet is. george, i should tell you, george h.w. bush at the end of his administration, a couple of speeches in which he said almost precisely socially the same thing. i saw. and this was what that quotation often suggests is something that i firmly believe, and that's there turmoil everywhere in the world. and there always will be. but it's vital for american decision makers and for the american people to and determine what constitutes a so-called existential threat. what really is an existential

threat? it's also extremely important as this quotation suggests and i embrace for american policymakers and the american people to carefully assess what constitutes a vital interest where we are or are vital. do we have, like today do we have a vital interest in taiwan? yes or no? i believe very thoughtful can argue that in both ways. but it has no easy answer. but it is imperative, as clinton's quotation suggests, to think hard and long what constitutes a vital interest? what constitutes an existential threat? once you decide if something is a vital or is not, then you can

begin to grapple with what are the appropriate tactics. and some done that effectively. and that's kind of why i brought up the clinton, i thought the early nineties looking on it now was an opportunity to really reassess what the u.s. role should be. the role of u.s. power should be in the world, with the soviet union now gone. and i don't think we did. we basically hit the gas pedal, you know, trumpeted the triumph and went full ahead. now, clinton was trying to explain why we would get involved, tiny little places all over. the issue is, you know what? what constitutes a reassessment? and and what what is it that is desirable to achieve? so many people living the 1990s, like president clinton himself, believed that this was a decade in which democracy was spreading around the globe and. it was spreading, that this was

a decade in which prosper parity was growing around the globe and it was happening, that this was decade in which in which impoverished people in many critical countries like china and india were climbing out of a of fundamental impoverished. so there were many reasons to think in the 1990s that the world that the united states was trying to nurture was indeed a world that not only benefited the united states, but was also benefit other countries. and i think one has to understand and that can't text. and president clinton actually believed, as did george w father, george h.w. bush, that the problem, the cold war, was that american people

were losing interest in the world, that there was a growing isolationism, that there was not enough concern. and with the idea of continuing the effort to promote democracy and prosperity. now, that required the united states to build up its military infrastructure, as it did and whether it required the united to get involved in controversy was in different parts of the world. these were difficult questions to do to decide what constitutes a transformative moment is the fact that you have 911 an and 911 represents a transformative event in the sense that in the sense of making americans not only policy makers but most americans feel extraordinarily

vulnerable. and because americans feel extraordinarily, they are in clawing to support initiative that they might otherwise not support because we haven't been doing enough, we haven't been paying attention and and the important thing is always to decide, well, what constitutes a vital interest that we now need do what is a real. you know, to what extent to threats that now exist after 911 justify. abc c or d the threats that existed after 911 were real. doesn't mean that the united states needed one to have a global war on terror. it doesn't necessarily mean that the united should have invaded iraq. but the facts. but. but. but the fears were real. and what i try to do in my book is both to illuminate why policy

makers felt fearful and then to examine whether they took appropriate in relationship to the fears that existed. and so my book is both very empathetic, but also, as you know, extremely critical. but it raises the basic question of when there is fear, when there is threat perception, what sorts actions are appropriate. and how to calibrate them in ways that maximum benefits and minimize costs. and i'm very critical of the bush administration for not systematically exam costs and consequence answers of a prospective invasion of iraq. it really remarkable how thought went into that part of it. as you say in your book, we must get this story if we're going to

avoid these mistakes. the book is confronting hussein. george w bush and the invasion of iraq melvyn leffler, thank you for being here. thank you. it's my pleasure. i plumb the depths of your mind adequately here and always welcome back on the blog. thanks so much. thank you to everyone who's been listening. this is martin di