After 9/11: A General’s Account of the Iraq War Decision and Seven-Country Memo

About 10 days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon, and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld.

And one of the generals called me, and he said, "Sir, you gotta come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy."

He said, "No, no." He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq."

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."

I said, "Well, did they find some information 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."

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, "I just got this down from upstairs," meaning the Secretary of Defense 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."

I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir."

I said, "Well, don't show it to me."