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They Weren’t Stupid and They Weren’t Criminals

April 7, 2023
Notes
Transcript

Eric and Eliot host Melvyn P. Leffler, the Edward Stettinius Professor of History at the University of Virginia to discuss his new book, Confronting Saddam: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq. Mel describes why he decided to write the book and his findings that Bush rather than a cabal of neoconservatives was that key decision maker and that he adopted a strategy of coercive diplomacy to deal with the ongoing threat of Saddam’s regime. He discusses the Bush team’s motivations which he ascribes to fear, power, and hubris. He provides a critique of the decision-making and discusses the difficulty of writing contemporary history and alternative courses of action that Bush ought to have considered.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/bush-911-and-roots-iraq-war

https://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Saddam-Hussein-George-Invasion/dp/0197610773/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1YI8C4LFC6B4E&keywords=mel+leffler+book&qid=1680643956&sprefix=Mel+Leffler%2Caps%2C128&sr=8-2

Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at [email protected]

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This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:06

    Welcome to Shield of the Republic Secret Podcast sponsored by the Bulwark and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, and dedicated to the proposition articulated by Walter Littman during World War two that has wrong and balanced foreign policy is the essential shield of our Democratic Republic. Eric Edelman, counselor at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments, a Bulwark contributor and a nonresident fellow at the Miller Center. And I’m joined by my partner in this enterprise, Elliot Cohen, The Robert E. Ozgood professor of Strategy at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in the Arleigh Burke Chair of Strategy at the Center for strategic and international studies. Elliot, how
  • Speaker 2
    0:00:46

    are you?
  • Speaker 3
    0:00:47

    I’m doing well. I’m a little bit frustrated. I’m staring at a stack of books I want to read and I don’t know where to begin. But I did just read a wonderful book by our guest today. He didn’t choose the title I would have chosen.
  • Speaker 3
    0:01:01

    The title I would have chosen is they may have been wrong, but they really weren’t criminals or idiots.
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:07

    Well, that brings us to our guest. Our guest is is Melvin Lefler the Edward Statides, professor of history at the University of Virginia. I think it’s fair to say that Mel is the most distinguished historian of American foreign relations alive today. He is the author of numerous books, including the Illusive Quest about American foreign policy, but between the two wars, a subject we discussed with Bob Kagan a few weeks back. He’s also the author of preponderance of Power, a very important book on the origins of the Cold War, the author of the specter of communism, safeguarding Democratic capitalism, and for the soul of mankind about the Reagan Gorbachev years.
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:50

    And now the author of the correct title, Elliott, to the contrary, notwithstanding, is Confronting Saddam, George W. Bush, and the invasion of Iraq. Mel, it’s great to have you welcome. I’m delighted to be with you. It’s a real pleasure
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:04

    to speak to to both of you about what I consider a really important topic that’s generated a lot of controversy. Well,
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:10

    let’s get started with Edwin tell our listeners why it is that you decided to write this book and what are your findings that they should be aware of?
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:20

    Well, I decided to write this book mainly because I like to write about the most important developments in the history of American foreign policy. So Ron DeSantis, my first book was about, you know, why Republican officials chose to pursue a different policy than with Sony in diplomacy. My second book was about you know, why did the cold war start? My third real book was about, you know, why did the cold war end? And living through the events of two thousand one, two thousand two, two thousand three, I had the feeling that I was living through a transformative moment in the history of American foreign policy and I thought it would be right to write about that, but I also thought at the time that I would never be able to access the types of documents that I had used from my previous efforts.
  • Speaker 2
    0:03:22

    So I knew I could submit MDR requests and FOIA requests mandatory declassification requests and freedom of information requests. But I also knew that the prospects of really getting real documents were unlikely. I was lucky that thanks to contacts like like you, Eric, I was able to establish communication with many key policymakers and most of them, but not all agree to interviews that in my own judgment turned out to be extraordinarily fruitful. The one key policy maker I did not talk to was president Bush himself, who despite my requests, he or his aides turn me down. So I’m writing this book or I wrote this book because I thought it was an incredibly important moment in the history of American foreign policy.
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:23

    And I still think it is, and we can talk about, you know, why I I so think But as for the results of the book or the major findings of the book, let let me state three or four or five of the most important. First, I argue that president Bush himself was the most important consequential decision maker. This goes against the grain of a great many studies and even films which depict Vice President Cheney or the neo cons as the like Paul Wolfowitz as the key decision makers. I found it very, very clear that president Bush was the decider as he liked himself to say he was in fact the key decision maker on policies regarding Iraq. Secondly, what’s very important is that I found that the principal motivation, the major motivation for invading Iraq or concerns about American national security.
  • Speaker 2
    0:05:37

    President Bush did not invade Iraq in order to promote freedom or democracy. I argue that once he decided to invade Iraq, he himself did hope to nurture freedom and democracy, but that was not the motivation. Is I focus a huge amount of attention on the importance of fear and threat perception. And we can discuss aspects of of of those perceptions in a in a few minutes if you wish. But my argument links the perception of threat with the sense of power within considerable amount of hubris.
  • Speaker 2
    0:06:27

    These three factors fear, power, hubris, account for the invasion of Iraq. Fears about national security, power the sense that the United States had the military capabilities to deal with the threat that the United States perceived. And you bring the belief that an invasion would be welcomed by Iraqi’s and that the United States could achieve its objectives rather rather eat easily. So a second major major finding is that what we often hear that there was a messianic, missionary fervor that led to the invasion of Iraq with the anticipation and hope that the United States would transform the entire Middle East. Those were not the key motivations in my account.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:29

    Third major aspect of my book was that policymakers actually believe, sincerely believe that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. I point out that they exaggerated their own certainty about that finding. They did exaggerated, especially in key Speeches by the Vice President and by Conde Rice, the National Security Advisor. They did exaggerate, but I show that they sincerely believe that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Elliott, this leads to your comments, jocular as it was at the beginning that, yes, I do think You could sum up a lot of my book by saying that they may well have done the wrong thing, but they were not stupid and they were not criminals.
  • Speaker 2
    0:08:29

    And the reason I argued that they were not stupid in believing that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was one Almost all intelligence agencies around the world believe that many Iraqis, most Iraqis believe that Saddam Hussein still had chemical and and or or biological weapons. And most of all, officials believe that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction because they believed that they had learned the lessons of history. As a historian, I was empathetic to this argument What they had learned was that Saddam had developed weapons of mass destruction in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties. Indeed, he had been in fluctuated with weapons of mass destruction in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties. He developed them.
  • Speaker 2
    0:09:23

    He used them. He used them not only in a war of aggression against Iran, but he also used them to suppress his own people, both the Kurds and the North, and the and the shea in the south. He then lied about his weapons of mass destruction, and he concealed his weapons of mass destruction, and Americans also knew that they had hugely underestimated how much progress he had made on weapons of mass destruction in nineteen eighty eight, eighty nine, ninety, and ninety one. So as a result of those factors, they believe that notwithstanding that they did have information that the evidence that they had was unreliable and not conclusive. They still thought they had very good reason to believe that Saddam was saying had weapons of mass destruction.
  • Speaker 2
    0:10:20

    A fourth important part conclusion of my book was that war planning did not mean that president Bush had made up his mind to go to war. War planning began in December of two thousand one and continued for more than a year. But I demonstrate that president Bush himself did not believe that the inauguration of war planning meant that he had made up his mind to go to war. In fact, war planning as I illuminate in the book was part of a strategy of coercive diplomacy. A strategy of coercive diplomacy that he actually that president Bush worked with Tony Blair to implement.
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:06

    I would say those are the major generalizations of the book. You
  • Speaker 1
    0:11:11

    know,
  • Speaker 3
    0:11:12

    that’s a it’s a wonderful summary in the book, which but let me just stipulate at the beginning. I think it’s a terrific book. Know, Eric and I both have somewhat different angles on this. Eric was really in the bowels of the beast. I was on the defense policy board.
  • Speaker 3
    0:11:25

    So I’ve got one angle there, which I may wanna ask you about later on. But I’m I suppose I’m most curious about you as an historian approaching a, you know, very dramatic recent event, which people still feel strongly about. So my first question I’d like to ask you is, did you your conclusions different from the ones that you suspected when you went into this? I mean, did you have some null hypothesis that were starting with and they were either confirmed or disproven or do you just kind of go in with a blank slate in terms of what you think you’re gonna find?
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:59

    I did not have really strong personal beliefs of my own. I think I had read a great deal. So I was very familiar with the literature and and the generalizations about this. I think I suspected that the NeoCon’s had more of a role than I found to be the case. I think I suspected that democracy promotion and a missionary fervor were more consequential than I think they turned out to be.
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:38

    But I did think when I began, that that the policymakers will sincere in their beliefs that that sit on the same head head weapons of mass destruction. Although I did suspect that there was hyperbole as there always is when presidents are trying to mobilize public opinion. I think those were the general beliefs. I didn’t have any sense at all, frankly, of so called strategy of coercive diplomacy, although that phrase was occasionally used at the time. I think it’s become a much more frequent explanation of what went on subsequent to the developments.
  • Speaker 2
    0:13:20

    It’s it’s it’s true. I mean, it’s clearly true that that Conde Rice talked about the policy as coercive diplomacy starting in early two thousand and two. But I was not really aware of that. And so That whole part of my book was illuminated by the research, the documents, and the discussions I carried on. And
  • Speaker 3
    0:13:46

    just one question before I give you back to Eric on this. I get the impression that early reviews have had more than their share of vial. And I’m just wondering if you could comment on the reaction to the book because I think the fact is that the conventional wisdom in intellectual circles and in foreign policy circles and certainly Democratic circles, but even in Republican circles these days is this is incredible, folly. These people were either criminal or idiots. And you really do challenge that.
  • Speaker 3
    0:14:18

    Howard Bauchner:
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:18

    I do, and I would say overall, honestly Elliot, the reactions for the most part have been positive in terms of the formal reviews of the book. I had one negative review of the book and and I don’t think that it was a fair minded review and I can talk about it if you wish. But the reaction to my book is really complicated by the fact that the book does two things in my opinion. It’s an empathetic account of the policy makers. It takes their perceptions and emotions seriously.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:10

    And frankly, I’m empathetic with their with the perception of threat. So all the people who believe that the policymakers were lawyers or had bad intentions from the moment they came into office or that there was no good reason to want to get rid of Saddam, who’s saying, all the people who believe that are unhappy with my book. And many of them are my liberal friends who expected me to take a similar view, but I honestly did not find the evidence to to support that. I would have been inclined to argue that if the evidence suggested that. On the other hand, if you if you read my book, it’s also relentlessly critical of the policy makers themselves.
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:05

    I believe that they engage poorly in the decision making process. They did not weigh sufficiently costs and consequences before deciding on a strategy and certainly before deciding to invade. And most of all, I think I show very systematically and I think compellingly that the planning for phase four, the post war stabilization phase, was totally inadequate and that the execution of the policy was almost unforgivable in the sense of poor coordination, contradictory goals, and policymakers who frankly were pursuing very different ends from from one another and the president did not really clearly impose his will on the decision making process. And so ultimately, I think both Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld and President Bush must be criticized for for a poor process and poor planning and poor execution. So the people in the administration obviously and many of their supporters are very unhappy with that critical part.
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:26

    So, you know, I’m subject to criticism from both sides. People who don’t like my empathy and people who don’t like my criticism.
  • Speaker 3
    0:17:34

    I’ll just say, if I could just make one quick comment then over to you, Eric. You know, it it often seems to me that that distinction between policy and execution is really important. And, you know, policymaking takes place in this fog of uncertainty where, you know, everything looks terrible. There are no really good choices out there. There are a lot of bad choices.
  • Speaker 3
    0:17:56

    And so it’s in the nature of a bit of a gamble. But what really does matter, I think, is execution and follow through and all that sort of stuff. And frankly, even though I was part of the administration, I would completely agree with that part of your assessment. I think I might some of the areas where I’d put blame might be a bit different, but that’s a separate matter. But over to you, Eric, So, Mel, I know you’ve heard this.
  • Speaker 3
    0:18:20

    You’ve heard it from me, but you’ve heard it from
  • Speaker 1
    0:18:22

    a number of others, which is among all the books that have been written, and I can’t say I’ve read all of them, but I have read more than my share of the books written about the decision making leading up to the war yours is the one that best captures the experience I lived through, you know, from two thousand one to two thousand three and before because I was involved in government in earlier phases as well. And I do think that’s really a tribute to you as historian. And but your empathy, obviously, as your comments a second ago, show, did not, in any way, get in the way of your critical faculties because you’ve got a lot of criticism, some of which I agree with, some of which I I agree with less. The lack of phase four planning, I think, is, you know, absolutely crucial here because it, you know, so much flows from that And that it seems to me is a failure that really needs to be laid at the feet of the US military, which I think has not perhaps been introspective enough about its role in this. I mean, a lot of the focus has been on civilians.
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:34

    In the civilian decision making, but the, you know, so called, phase four stabilization operations at the conclusion of combat, planning for it was the responsibility of the CENTCOM commander. Tommy Franks, and he flatly refused to do that. You know, so I know you’ve used very heavily in in your book the, you know, massive two volume history of the war by the of the of the United States Army’s role in the war. That the army has published, which is, you know, I think, a a useful source. But I I think it only begins to scratch the surface really of some of the areas where, you know, the military was not, you know, particularly capable in in carrying this policy forward.
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:23

    And is that a fair criticism in your view?
  • Speaker 2
    0:20:27

    I I think it’s a fair criticism, and I I do state in the book very clearly that Tony Frank’s like secretary Rumsfeld, had no real interest in the phase four stabilization phase. I also think that the planning for phase four, the military planning for phase four was tremendously complicated by the frequent change in key military people. So you know, for the the head of the land forces. Right? The new head of the land forces was put in just in the fall of two thousand two.
  • Speaker 2
    0:21:07

    He changes some of the some of the military plans that had been evolving. And and there is work going on. In fact, I just recently received email message from a colonel Benson who was a key planner in Kuwait working on the post war stabilization phase on Eclipse two, and he congratulated me on on the book, but he also wanted to clarify some of the issues about the post war planning. And of course, one of the things he he pointed out to me, which I don’t state in the book, was that once the fighting was over, and Rohmesfeld Secret Podcast Rohmesfeld appointed Sanchez, General Sanchez, to take command, Sanchez, then decided to rewrite the plan eclips too. And according to Colonel Benson in his message to me, this is not my book, but in his in his message to me, I don’t think he would shy away from by saying this, that there was then no agreed plan for at least many months.
  • Speaker 2
    0:22:42

    So one of the problems is Eric, in terms of answering your question about the responsibilities or or or how to assign responsibility between civilians and military. I think the civilians and the military here are really interdependence on one on one another because You know, the the I I my sense is that President Bush and Rumsfeld met constantly with Frank’s and others to discuss the combat, but they didn’t really focus themselves on the post war. So France probably had little incentive to focus on it. Although it clearly was his responsibility. And the planners knew they had to work on a phase four But then there’s a change in military leadership in terms of the command.
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:44

    And there’s no real focus. And I show Eric in the book itself looking at the after action reports of key military units that in their own recordings of what went on is that they moved into Iraq in which I say they had no plans. The units themselves had no clear plans about what they should be doing once the adversary surrendered and the regime was toppled they did not know what to do. Right. Well, and yeah.
  • Speaker 2
    0:24:27

    I I just for one second, Elliot,
  • Speaker 1
    0:24:29

    if I could, because I wanna make it clear that I’m not just trying to throw shade on on, you know, our military colleagues. The reality is we ended up with a war plan ten o three Victor, the final plan, which was a a regime change, regime decapitation plan. And that really imposed on us, I think, a responsibility to put in its place something else, whatever that something was. And I think the policy process failed to do that before we we ended up at at war. And we can go into more detail about, you know, how that happened and why.
  • Speaker 1
    0:25:07

    But I think it was a terrible failing of the process that we did not get there. If
  • Speaker 3
    0:25:12

    I could, I I would just add a a comment that’s I think the issues I mean, I agree that it was a failure of the policy process. I think that’s actually should be widely shared. It’s not just rumsfeld. And Frank’s, it probably does go to the NBC staff. Yes.
  • Speaker 3
    0:25:27

    Who have a role in all this. But I think there’s also a profound institutional aspect to this, which is the United States Army really did not want anything to do with military governance, certainly did not want to think about counterinsurgency, kind of problems, I mean, this was, you know, this was a military that particularly after an army rather than particularly after the first Gulf War said, that’s what we want our wars to be like. Know, the Air Force informs them for a while. We have a dash and ground campaign for a few days, maybe a couple of weeks. And that’s it.
  • Speaker 3
    0:26:03

    And, you know, I The the culture was not there to say, you know, if you take down the country, you’re going to have to prepare to run it. And in that respect, by the way, I think it’s very different than say if you look at the American US Army during World War two, which already in nineteen forty three is understanding that you’re gonna have some period of military government government and you better have civil affairs units that are ready to do it. I mean, this this gets down into the weeds. But look at how the army treats civil affairs units, which were the people you want to actually do military coverage. They were all in the reserves.
  • Speaker 3
    0:26:37

    They were all in the reserve component. Absolutely. Yeah.
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:39

    I totally agree with that, but it also underscores a key part of the planning process that I’m critical of in the book and that strikes me as more and more important. And that is when the war planning began Elliott. Rumsfeld and General Frank’s stated very clearly their basic assumption, goals, regime change, WMD. That’s the way it was stated. Virginia change, WMD.
  • Speaker 2
    0:27:17

    Note, nothing about democracy, freedom, nation building, reconstruction, not not nothing about that. Now there was a discussion as I point out in the NSC in August of two thousand and two in which Candy Rice passed around a a paper that I believe her staff wrote that I don’t know who who exactly wrote it. And it was about goals, goals. And if I recall correctly, the number one goal on that paper was something like, you know, promoting democracy. It immediately engendered, according to memoirs, according, especially Doug Feitzman war, criticism from secretary Rumsfeld in which he apparently, he said any such paper must start with a goal that relates to our interests, not with what’s going on inside a rock.
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:29

    And according to Doug Fife, and other memoirs just led to extensive discussion and rewriting. And basically, some paper was agreed upon, that a revised paper was agreed upon in which democracy was much further down. It was more like ending tyranny rather than promoting democracy. But the basic point that that Doug Feige says in that memoir, and I think other people have confirmed was that there was no real agreement. A paper, you know, was processed, but there was no real agreement and there is no indication anywhere that president Bush himself impose himself at that point in time and say, Yes.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:17

    If we go into a rock, the goal is promoting democracy. And I want all of you to begin working on that. That doesn’t seem to have been said at all. And I believe this lack of clarity on goals, which is different than motives. But the lack of clarity about goals was an incredible part of the process.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:39

    I mean Secret Podcast Rumsfeld says explicitly about himself. That he didn’t really care about what happened inside Iraq. Once he knew that the regime of Saddam Hussein was no Ron DeSantis he had assurance that there were no weapons of mass destruction or that we had gained control of those weapons of mass construction. That’s what he cared about. Yeah.
  • Speaker 3
    0:30:05

    But but there’s still a failure there, isn’t there? Because A tremendous failure. Well, I mean, but a somewhat different failure maybe than one might think. And that, you know, it it’s not that the choices either decapitate the regime get rid of the fined and neutralize the WMD or promote democracy. I mean, even if you think that, yes, you wanna knock off the regime, get rid of WMD, and you don’t care about democracy.
  • Speaker 3
    0:30:31

    You have to have some sort of regard for how do you maintain order until you disengage. I mean, that that’s for me the real and some sort of theory of how you’re going to end up disengaging from this. And that for me is the thing that I continue to find baffling I also I wanted to pursue one of the thing. I mean, one of the things that really it struck me at the time because I had little windows into it, and strikes me even more in retrospect is, you know, here you had a team where several of the principals really hated each other. I mean, Powell and Rumsfeld where it’s not just them, but Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, and Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, They may have been friends in the past, but boy were they at daggers drawn, Doug Feige, the under secretary for policy, Mark Grossman, the under secretary for political affairs really don’t get along.
  • Speaker 3
    0:31:28

    And there’s just no sense that either the president or the national security adviser is exercising discipline. I mean, it just I’m I’m I in retrospect, I find it more and more puzzling. And I was wondering if you had any insight. First, if you agree with that characterization, you might not. And then second, why do you think that happened?
  • Speaker 3
    0:31:49

    I do totally agree with
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:51

    that characterization. And I am critical of the president and of Kandi Rice and her deputy at the time, Steve Hadley, for not imposing more order or in the case of of Candy Rice and Steve Hadley, perhaps not totally adequately informing the president of just how much acrimony what was go what was going on? Interestingly, The paper record doesn’t do much to illuminate why there was such poisonous relationships. Some of the oral histories make it clear that there was, and of course, the memoirs make it clear. And Elliott, in in many of my interviews, I asked the people, you know, why was there such poisonous relations amongst people who previously had really known each other extremely well in summer form from what I could understand were once really pretty close personal friends and yet there was unbelievable ranker.
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:04

    And when I asked that question, I was puzzled by the responses, which were frequently, people shook their shoulders and said, I’m not quite sure. I don’t know exactly what what happened. Now, later on, you know, when there were all sorts of issues with regard to the leaks, with regard to Valerie Plumb, and then it becomes clearer why people were so hostile to one another. But this ranker that you’re alluding to Elliot, emerges quite early in the process and is is really hard to explain, but it has a very poisonous impact on the policy process self and especially on the execution of policy. Many people in interviews complained that Conde Rice and Steve Hadley were too focused on Ron DeSantis.
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:16

    Actually that criticism emanated from different camps of the administration, both Both people who worked for secretary Powell felt that way and people who worked for vice president, Cheney felt that way and people who worked for secretary Rumsfeld often talked about there was too much focus on consensus nothing ever got concretely done. Now even if some of risers and had these subordinates, agreed with that. But to tell you the truth is as as the two of you probably know very very well, but maybe your listeners don’t Steve Hadley and Conde Rice really resent that criticism. They don’t believe that they were overly focused on Ron DeSantis. And they often say they were happy to pass on, you know, divergent options to president Bush who could readily make the decision who was a tough guy and could readily make the decision.
  • Speaker 2
    0:35:22

    I believe that’s more characteristic of what happened in Bush’s second administration than in what happened during the years of two thousand one, two thousand two, two thousand three, that that I focus on. And I’m just speculating and this is not in my book. It’s just a speculation. That Kandi Rice herself maybe did not want to let the president know just how much acrimony there was because maybe she feared that he himself would hold her responsible for that rancor or assume that she should be taking care of the problem and she didn’t want the president to know how much of that was going on. But I must say and it’s really important in understanding the policy process that secretary Rumsfeld contempt for Conde Rice was so transparent in the snowflakes that he actually sent to her.
  • Speaker 2
    0:36:29

    Now, I’ve studied other administrations and I know very well that policymakers are often in disagreement and come to dislike one another intensely. But they don’t say it to one another’s faces how much they dislike one one another. And secretary of Rumsfeld I pointed out in in one snowflake actually writes to her and says, If you do this again, the Secret Podcast defense says to the national security adviser. If you do this again, I’m gonna report you to the president. I’m gonna explain, you know, to the president.
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:04

    And it’s like having a third grade kid in which the teacher says the third, but if you talk in class again, I’m gonna call your parents and tell them. And, you know, there it was disrespect inherent in that that was palpable. And I I I think that spect actually gravitated through the ranks of the defense department during this first administration. Eric, you were there, you could at least in the second administration in the defense department. In the first, you’re you’re in the vice president’s office.
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:45

    But in the in the office of the secretary of defense, in two thousand two, two thousand three, I think that contempt reversated down because rep repeatedly, other policymakers throughout the bureaucracy complains, for example, bitterly about the way Doug Fife dealt with them and felt that he often obstructed the policy make making process. And and, you know, I’ve spoken at length to to Doug Feife. And I hate to have to say that I think that’s true because I really like him personally. But I I have a sense that those complaints about him probably are reasonably accurate. And I discussed some of that in in the one of the concluding chapters of the book.
  • Speaker 2
    0:38:42

    You
  • Speaker 1
    0:38:43

    know, one of the things
  • Speaker 3
    0:38:46

    that
  • Speaker 1
    0:38:46

    may be hard for people to actually appreciate or believe, is that even if you’re in the middle of this milestone, it’s sometimes hard to figure out exactly what’s going on. It’s certainly the case that we had well beyond in the Bush forty three administration as you say, Mel, the normal scratchiness that exists between Secret Podcast of state and national security advisers or secretaries of defense. And I mean, I lived through, you know, a lot of this. I mean, you know, SiVance and this big Brysinski, you know, did not get along. I mean, Henry Kissinger had enormous battles with Mel Laird and later with with Jim Schlesinger.
  • Speaker 1
    0:39:29

    Schultz and Weinberg. Schultz and Weinberger, which I live through as a special assistant to Schultz, you know, loggerheads for much of their tenure, I mean, it’s a subject we discussed at at length with Phil Taubman, who’s just written a biography of of Secretary Schultz. What we had in bush forty three was well beyond that. I mean, it’s it’s it was really not just personality clashes. It really as you say, Mel, it leached down and and became kind of bureaucratic tribalism.
  • Speaker 1
    0:40:02

    I confess I was subject to that? I mean, and it started before nine eleven? I mean, it started very early in the administration. Some of it had to do with a lot of leaking going on, you know. And it was I think the leaks were coming from everywhere.
  • Speaker 1
    0:40:19

    Although, you know, when you asked people, everyone said, well, we didn’t leak that. So it was always, you know, it was state or it was DOD or was the NSC or it was, you know, OVP. So and, you know, and I knew I wasn’t talking to anybody in the press at all, you know, because vice president Sometimes it
  • Speaker 3
    0:40:36

    was opened. Do you remember Larry Wolderson going but this
  • Speaker 1
    0:40:39

    is chief
  • Speaker 3
    0:40:40

    of staff to call him Powell going openly after Paul Woolfowitz, who was the deputy secretary of defense. What did he call him a Bolshevic or a Trossky address? I mean, it was It was outrageous.
  • Speaker 1
    0:40:51

    Yeah. No. There was a lot of it. And, I mean, I think, you know, I I I mean, we could figure I can sort of say who, you know, where I think the blame, you know, lays preponderantly. But the truth is it was it was ubiquitous.
  • Speaker 1
    0:41:03

    It was ever it was all throughout the administration. And it was incredibly debilitating.
  • Speaker 2
    0:41:08

    Actually, Eric, I’ll just say that in in the oral history that secretary of State Powell, General Powell, and Richard Armintage did together with the Miller Center Oral History Project. Colin Pell talks about how he felt a part from the other boys in the in the administration. And he felt that way he suggests from almost the the very beginning. And and my sense is that that partly I don’t write this in the book, but my sense is that in part, his his own sort of aloofness and his sense of self wound up making it difficult for others who were not his subordinate. It’s his subordinate.
  • Speaker 2
    0:42:05

    It’s loved him. That’s for sure. Yeah. I sure it’s loved him. But for others, I think it became hard to engage with him and he himself from the interviews I conducted and from the oral interviews that exist elsewhere, he himself seemed wary to
  • Speaker 1
    0:42:26

    engage
  • Speaker 2
    0:42:28

    in substantive discussion with many of his colleagues in the administration thinking perhaps that he could bring his reservations or concerns directly to the president. But at the same time, he rarely asked for direct meetings with the president, and they did not happen very frequently. We know we know about two or three that were very important when they did happen. But I think it’s probably a little perplexing. I’m not positive this is a true statement, but I think it’s perplexing how relatively infrequently for Secret Podcast state power met directly with president Bush.
  • Speaker 2
    0:43:20

    And that clearly was a problem when others believe that Secret Podcast of state Powell did not really explain or develop whatever reservations he really had. And when, frankly, on the other hand side of the the circle, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, often did not speak clearly about what he himself believed. Sometimes he spoke directly that he wanted a, and sometimes he spoke directly that he wanted b, and there really were Just unbelievable contradictions between a and b, and you could speak pretty eloquently about either a or b without ever resolving what he really wished, and I think that complicated the process enormously. I don’t think others often knew. What what secretary of defense Rumsfeld really felt about specific
  • Speaker 1
    0:44:20

    issues. Let me add one thing to that, Mel, which is that secretary rumsfeld would frequently come into principles or NSC meetings, and I witnessed this myself. And reverse what his subordinates had agreed to at lower levels, either at the assistant secretary or sub cabinet level in the deputies committee. And basically made it clear that only he spoke for the Department of Defense. Nobody else, not Doug, not not anybody else.
  • Speaker 1
    0:44:47

    Not Paul. Nobody else spoke for the department. And that had a terribly unsettling effect on are, you know, interagency deliberations in part because, you know, George Schulz used to say nothing is ever, you know, resolved in Washington. Everything gets re litigated. But this took it to a completely different level where you couldn’t count on, you know, an agreement reached interagency, you know, surviving a principals committee or an NSC meeting because the secretary might come in and say something totally different.
  • Speaker 1
    0:45:17

    On the other hand, I remember one of secretary Powell’s subordinates telling me, Powell came back from, you know, the latest meeting in the White House who’s really angry. And he said, rums felt snowflakes are killing me. And I went over and I talked to Kandi and she shoved this snowflake in my face. And I need to have memos like that. You know, I I need to be sending memos like that too.
  • Speaker 1
    0:45:43

    And But the truth is as as far as I can tell that never happened, and we had a discussion last week when we did an event UVA for your book, where we were talking about the Bill Burns perfect storm memo, which is frequently cited. So it’s reproduced, I believe, in Bill’s book. About all the terrible things that could happen if we invaded Iraq, but I don’t recall that memo ever coming forward in an interagency setting and being shared with anybody.
  • Speaker 3
    0:46:11

    I think there’s another angle to this as well, which is one is the human relations part of it, that Powell and Rumsfeld and Cheney, we haven’t really talked about. We’re all extremely senior to Kondelez arise. You know, they would have remembered her as sort of a bright young academic who came to the joint staff. For a year when they were already, you know, cabinet secretaries or chairman of the joint chiefs and stuff like that. And I think that made it very difficult for her to really assert authority in the way that say, Brent Scrowcroft, her her mentor.
  • Speaker 3
    0:46:49

    Had. I mean, maybe it was doable, but it was, I think, innately very tough. But I think the other thing is, although, you know, Powell and Rumsfeld were obviously very capable men each and their different ways. Neither of them were really for foreign policy thinkers, conceptualizer, they were kind of practical implementer types. And as a result, I don’t think they were they were inclined to have that kind of conversation, which, you know, might conceivably have taken you to a better place in a chain, I think, is somewhat different in that regard.
  • Speaker 3
    0:47:32

    They were not so inclined. And I think this seek through the bureaucracy. And
  • Speaker 2
    0:47:36

    of course, the point I emphasized in the book and in that discussion at the middle center, was that the perfect snore memo often alluded to as illustrating opposition to the prospective invasion was a truly terrible memo. It was It did not present any clear argument about what was most likely to happen. It was simply as I say in the book a laundry list of all the things that might possibly go wrong. Now, to his credit, assistant secretary, Bill Burns. He was then the assistant Secret Podcast, of course, he’s director of the CIA.
  • Speaker 2
    0:48:21

    But to his credit. He acknowledges that it was a very poor pet memo. What needs to be stated is how important it is to do good staff work. And here, it really was secretary of state Powell’s obligation, in my opinion. To hand that memo back to Bill Burns and to say, write me up something that is really useful, that I can circulate, that, you know, can could really form a basis for discussion.
  • Speaker 2
    0:48:58

    Now he now Secretary of State Pell allegedly had that memo literally in his talk. It. When you had that very important so called pottery bond conversation with president Bush in early August of two thousand and two. When he was talking about all the some of the things that could go wrong and how the president and the United States would be held responsible and he said it’s like a pottery barn. If you break something, you’re gonna be be held responsible that that was an opportunity for the president and for Conde Rice.
  • Speaker 2
    0:49:33

    Conde Rice was at that meeting to say, Will Saletan see this spelled out. Let’s see a systematic assessment of, you know, all the pieces of furniture or all the pieces of pottery that might be broken and how it might impact upon our prospective decision to invade. She did not ask for a memo and secretary of state Pell did not ask a subordinate to to rewrite that memo. And I don’t think there is a from what I can see in the printed record so far, that’s become accessible. There was no really good assessment of what might happen until maybe January two thousand and three when there are these two national intelligence agency assessments about regional consequences and domestic.
  • Speaker 2
    0:50:35

    I forget what it’s called. There are two studies that are actually done. But there is no indication that these studies received any careful scrutiny at the time and certainly did not read to an options memo It was probably too late in the game for that to happen because it was already January of of of two thousand and three.
  • Speaker 3
    0:51:00

    I’d like to ask just a final questions, and I know we’re out of time, and I want to give the final words to questions to Eric. You know, in a way, it’s a double barreled question because this is partly based on my own experience, but largely just through observation. You know, the era of carefully crafted memoranda driving policy debate, I think, is behind us. Instead, you have a lot of power points, you have a lot of telephone calls, you have a lot of emails, you have the video teleconferences that I remember a lot of I don’t know if any of our conversations were really critical when we were or consequential, Eric, when we were in government, but it seemed to me it was usually the the screen lighting up at the end of the day, and we had a conversation. So it seems to me that that has an effect.
  • Speaker 3
    0:51:53

    That was mostly mental health Yeah. Well, I was I was I was I was your therapist, I think. But, you know, our our mutual friend and colleague, Phil Selicow, I think, has talked about this, about the decline of really comprehensive staff work. So that, I’m curious to know what you think of that whether that sort of breakdown in the the discipline of writing affects policy makers. But it has another consequence, which is for professional historians like you.
  • Speaker 3
    0:52:22

    I mean, how do you go about recovering and reconstructing and analyzing the past, when a lot of the record is gonna be either extremely fragmented or just you know, gone because it’s in phone calls and VTCs and and that that sort of thing. Well, it’s it’s very difficult I think that it’s really important
  • Speaker 2
    0:52:49

    to access and assess as much of the written record as one can possibly get hold of. I, myself, tried to look at as many documents as I could that have been declassified. One of the assessments of my book that was critical suggested that I relied much too much on interviews. Actually, all the claims of my book or virtually all the substantive claims of my book are based on the written documents as well as the interviews. So I think that’s The interviews helped immensely to illuminate and embellish.
  • Speaker 2
    0:53:36

    But even in my account, when I had only a fragmentary record that exists right now. I relied as much as I as much as I could. On the on the on the written documents. I think Elliott that it will be very important to try to get many more documents that that I’ve been able to get. Most of my mandatory declassification requests were denied in full or came back hugely redacted.
  • Speaker 2
    0:54:10

    Some of them, I still not heard from even though they’re four, five, six years old. I think it will be to understand why the United States invaded Iraq, I agree with Philip Zillicom’s opinion that having the daily intelligence reports and the presidential daily briefs to get a sense of the threats as perceived on a daily and weekly basis and linking them to the actual actions that were happening each and every month I think that will be very important. So to answer your question, we must continue to get as many documents as we can. But I also think that the focus on oral histories and on interviews is appropriate. I think I learned a lot from my own interviews I think that the interviews systematically conducted by the Miller Center with members of the administration most of those interviews, not all by any means, but most of them have been now made made available to the public.
  • Speaker 2
    0:55:28

    I I think they are extremely helpful. As I have said many times in in talking to most of the policymakers, I realized that they were far better able to spin than I was to probe. I mean, their masters of answering difficult questions. But nonetheless, to tell you the truth, I learned a lot about simply the quality of the people that I was talking to. And I got a sense of their intelligence, their earnestness.
  • Speaker 2
    0:56:03

    You know, you began this program with a quip belly and about, well, if they weren’t stupid and they weren’t criminals, well, since a lot of people think they were stupid and or criminals. You know, I think it was and a lot of my friends believe they were stupid and and and criminals. I learned a lot from talking to most of most of these people. And I think I think the way we tend to caricature and saturize people is extremely countereffective, you can criticize people because without thinking that they’re criminals or fools. And one of the things that I’ve learned in all my writing on the history of American foreign policy is that decision making is hard.
  • Speaker 2
    0:57:00

    People are faced. Policymakers are faced with terribly difficult challenges. There are usually no clear cut right answers. And the consequences of any particular action are usually pretty imponderable. We can see in retrospect how many things went wrong, but for seeing a lot of that is is very difficult.
  • Speaker 2
    0:57:28

    That does not excuse policymakers from trying. And often in this case, they did not try hard enough, and I blame them for that.
  • Speaker 1
    0:57:38

    Mel, we are running at a time. God, we could go on for hours, I think, on this subject. But let me just ask you one question to close us out. I mean, one of your criticisms is that those of us who were involved in the policy making did not interrogate the intelligence enough that there were some indications that, you know, the the bulk of the intelligence that we had, which spanned, I can say, because I saw a lot of it in the previous administration and the Clinton administration wasn’t very different from what we saw in the Bush administration, but that there were signs that it wasn’t, you know, correct. I guess, I mean, I I I would I think probably descent from that.
  • Speaker 1
    0:58:21

    I’m not I’m not sure. Had we interrogated the intelligence in any more detail, we would have gotten a different a different answer in part because of what you said earlier. The the fact that Everyone had already had an experience through bush forty one and into Clinton and then bush forty three of Saddam’s history of deceit and deception about his WMD, the cheat and retreat, cat and mouse with the inspectors, what we found from the is two sons in law who defected and then foolishly went back to Iraq to be personally murdered by by Saddam. All of that, I think, as French structuralist would say, you know, overdetermined, you know, where where we where we came out. So I guess my question for you is, if you were not Mel Lefler, Edward Statenia’s professor at UVA, but had been the, you know, undersecretary of state or defense, what policy would you have advocated?
  • Speaker 1
    0:59:22

    In two thousand two and three for dealing with the problem of Saddam. We had this problem. He was, you know, sitting cheek by jowl with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, other oil producing countries, Because he had not been eliminated at the end of the first Gulf War, we had a lot of troops in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It was a big recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. Sanctions regime was deteriorating for sure.
  • Speaker 1
    0:59:52

    We had no inspectors. In the country after nineteen ninety eight. So the uncertainties about the WMD were even higher than they were in the nineties. And in the light of nine eleven, the, you know, willingness to take risk with that was much lower. As you say when you talk about the threat, So what alternative should we have pursued rather than going to war?
  • Speaker 1
    1:00:17

    We know how badly that turned out, but what, you know, what what could we have done differently?
  • Speaker 2
    1:00:22

    Don’t let me off off the hook with with responding to to to your good query. But let me start by by saying, that I think one of the lessons of of this experience is the importance of policymakers re examining basic assumptions. So you’re right, it would have been very hard. But as I point out in the book, there is this extremely disturbing memo that Donald Grumsfeld asks for from his chief of intelligence on the joint staff. And General Shafer, this is I think October two thousand two writes a memo in response to Donald Rumsfeld’s query, you know, what what do we really know about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction?
  • Speaker 2
    1:01:14

    And SAFER writes back General SAFER writes back about a ten page memorandum saying, you know, we know sort of forty percent about his chemical weapons thirty percent of that is bio weapons, you know, twenty percent of that is no p weapons. I’m making not these percentages, but their order order of magnitude. And he concludes it by by saying, I mean, it’s striking. So mister secretary, we really don’t know how much we don’t know. And and Rumsfeld seems to know this is an important memo and he writes a snowflake, quote, end quote, three words.
  • Speaker 2
    1:01:55

    This is big. And he sends that snowflake to General Myers, the chairman of the joint chiefs, but he doesn’t send that snowflake to to Rice or Cheney or or or town. Yeah.
  • Speaker 1
    1:02:07

    I never saw that memo.
  • Speaker 2
    1:02:09

    I’m perplexed by that. This is right. You’re in the vice president’s office then. Right? And And, you know, I I think that was a moment at least for him in which he should have sent around a memo to all the principals and said, look at this.
  • Speaker 2
    1:02:31

    This is comes from the joint staff. I think we need to reexamine what we’re thinking. Now you’re right, Eric, that there’s so much already embedded its heart. But I think one of the lessons is reexamine fundamental axioms at times when when you’re about to do something really important, like invade another country. Now it’s easy for me to say as I’ve said many times.
  • Speaker 2
    1:02:56

    It’s easy for anyone to say, any content. Reexamine fundamental assumptions. How often do I reexamine my own fundamental to assumption. How often do you? I know it’s hard.
  • Speaker 2
    1:03:08

    I know we don’t do it. Let’s not let let let’s be honest about this, but One of the one of the lessons is when you’re about to do something really consequential, you should re examine fundamental assumptions. Now to answer your your sort of a question about, you know, what would I do? I agree with all those things you said containment was sort of breaking down, sanctions weren’t working. The inspections regime unless, unless supported by force was not likely to stay in effect, the no fly zones were being challenged.
  • Speaker 2
    1:03:48

    Well, all of this is true. So what’s what what was the alternative? I would say, Eric, that the alternative, if the consequences had been carefully assessed and seen as uncertain. I think the alternative was to live with all the uncertainties, to continue to live with all the on uncertainties, to keep you know, as many American forces as as as could be deployed in the vicinity without without preparing for an invasion. I know it was getting more difficult because for good reasons.
  • Speaker 2
    1:04:37

    The Saudis didn’t one hour troops there, Saudi Arabia didn’t one hour troops there, and the very fact that we had any troops there was sort of nurturing terrorist opposition and and and Islamic hatred from the United States. And so there was no good answer. But I think the – and there’s no clear, wonderful solution to the question you’re approaching me. But I would say, live with those uncertainties. We always live with them.
  • Speaker 2
    1:05:08

    They’re fraud. But I don’t think Saddam imposed such a threat that we needed to invade the country. He was an evil, horrible, terrible, aggressive human being. There was reason to despise this person and there was reason to support regime change. But that doesn’t mean there was reason to go to war in my opinion.
  • Speaker 2
    1:05:41

    And we exaggerated the threat he posed because he was such a despicable leader. But I don’t think it he posed that sort of a threat to us. Well,
  • Speaker 1
    1:05:58

    Mel, you’re gonna get the last word here today. Thanks for spending so much time with us today. Appreciate your time. And the book is terrific. I commend it to all our listeners confronting Saddam Hussein George W Bush and the invasion of Iraq.
  • Speaker 1
    1:06:12

    Published by Oxford University Press and available to you from wherever you get your books, whether it’s an independent bookstore or online, I encourage all of our listeners to read it. Mel, thank you. Thank you, Mel.
  • Speaker 2
    1:06:25

    Thank you very
  • Speaker 1
    1:06:26

    much.