Decision to Go to War After 9/11

About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon

and I saw Secretary

Rumsfeld and,

and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to

some of the

people on the joint staff who had used, used to work for me, and one of the

generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you gotta

come in. You gotta come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well,

you're too

busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "You-- We've made the

decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the twentieth of

September.

I said, "We're going to war with Iraq?

Why?"

He said, "I don't know."

He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do."

So, uh, I said, "Well, did they find some information collect--

connecting Saddam

to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that

way. They've just made the decision to go to

war with Iraq." He said,

"I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but

we've got a good military, and we can take down governments." And,

um, he said, "I

guess if, uh, the only tool you have is a hammer,

every problem has to look like a

nail."

So I came back to see him a few weeks later,

and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan.

I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?"

And he said, "Oh, it's worse than

that." He said-- He reached over on his desk

and he picked up a piece of paper, and

he said, "I just..." He said, "I just got this down from upstairs,"

meaning the

Secretary of Defense's office, "today." And he said, "This is a memo

that describes

how we're gonna take out seven countries in five

years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon,

Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran."