threat the United Nations was born to confront.” Bush challenged the Security Coun-
cil to take stronger action against Iraq than it had in the past, but he also made clear
that the United States would act even if the Security Council did not. “The Security
Council resolutions will be enforced—the just demands of peace and security will be
met—or action will be unavoidable,” he said. “And a regime that has lost its legiti-
macy will also lose its power.”
At this same time, Bush began pushing Congress to enact a resolution giving him
explicit authority to go to war against Iraq. He insisted that he did not need such
authorization because under the Constitution he already had it as commander in chief
of the armed forces. Even so, he wanted political support for such a momentous under-
taking. In pressuring Congress, Bush gave a nationally televised speech from Cincin-
nati on October 8 laying out the potential threat from Iraq in stark terms. Citing past
reports from UN weapons inspectors and other, unspecified sources, the president stated
categorically that Iraq possessed large quantities of biological and chemical weapons and
was “reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.” Bush acknowledged that “we don’t
know exactly” how far Iraq’s nuclear weapons program had advanced, but he gave this
ominous warning: “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—
the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
Congress responded quickly to Bush’s grave warnings of the need for immediate
action. Two days later, on October 10, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly
approved a resolution (H J Res 114) giving the president authority to use force against
Iraq, and the Senate acted the following day, again by a broad bipartisan majority.
Bush signed the measure into law (PL 107-243) on October 16.
With congressional support in hand, Bush insisted on action by the United Nations.
There, U.S. diplomats, led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, had been negotiating for
several weeks on the wording of a resolution demanding that Iraq allow the return of
weapons inspectors or face the consequences. The key question concerned whether the
resolution should specify what those consequences might be. The United States wanted
a resolution explicitly warning Iraq that it would be punished if it refused to cooperate
with the UN weapons inspections. France, which since the late 1990s had been sympa-
thetic to Iraqi appeals to lift economic sanctions, wanted a two-step process in which
the Security Council would demand that Iraq allow the return of the inspectors and
would decide only later on what punishment Iraq would face if it refused.
These diplomatic negotiations produced a compromise early in November that
recited a long list of grievances against Iraq, demanded the return of the weapons
inspectors, and warned Iraq of “serious consequences” should it balk. Although it
served as a warning to Iraq, the language of the resolution was vague on two main
counts: it did not set benchmarks for measuring Iraqi cooperation or lack thereof, and
its warning of consequences did not provide the explicit authorization for war that the
Bush administration had sought in the event Iraq failed to cooperate. Even so, Bush
hailed the measure as posing the “final test” for Iraq. The council adopted Resolution
1441 on November 8 by a unanimous vote, which meant that it had garnered sup-
port even from the three nations that had been most reluctant: France, Russia, and
Syria (the only Arab nation then serving on the council).
In a blustery letter delivered to the United Nations on November 13, Iraq reluc-
tantly agreed to the resolution but insisted that the U.S. allegations about its weapons
were “fabrications.” UN inspectors began arriving in Iraq on November 18, and on
488 IRAQ AND THE GULF WARS