December 7—one day ahead of a deadline set by the Security Council—Iraq handed
boxes of documents to them. Iraqi officials said they proved that the country no longer
had any banned weapons.
The next few months, until mid-March 2003, brought the interplay of diplomacy
in the world’s capitals, drama on the ground in Iraq, and the inexorable buildup to
war. The diplomacy involved frantic efforts by the Bush administration to rally sup-
port for war against Iraq over widespread international objections, including from some
of its most important allies. European nations were divided, with some (notably, Brit-
ain, Spain, and several formerly communist countries in Eastern Europe) supporting
the U.S. position, while others (notably, France, Germany, and Russia) were adamantly
opposed. U.S. secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld sarcastically called this a divi-
sion between “New Europe” (the supporters) and “Old Europe” (the dissenters).
In Iraq, weapons inspectors made halting progress, winning limited cooperation
with government officials but still facing some of the same obstacles placed in their
way during most of the 1990s. On January 27, 2003, Hans Blix, the Swedish diplo-
mat who headed the UN inspectors, told the Security Council that Iraq “appears not
to have come to a genuine acceptance, even today, of the disarmament which was
demanded of it.”
In a central event of this period, Secretary of State Powell delivered a ninety-
minute presentation to the Security Council on February 5 citing intelligence
information—including photographs of alleged weapons installations and tape record-
ings of Iraqi officials—that he insisted amounted to irrefutable evidence of Iraq’s bio-
logical, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs. Powell also sought to link the Iraqi
government to the al-Qaida network. Most of the evidence Powell presented to the
Security Council later proved to be false or misleading. For example, only two days
after Powell made the administration’s claims at the United Nations, Mohamed El
Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, disputed those about nuclear
weapons. U.S. officials brushed aside his statements.
Powell’s dramatic presentation garnered headlines around the world, but it failed
to convince wavering countries to support another Security Council resolution
expressly endorsing a war against Iraq. British prime minister Blair had sought such a
resolution to help him overcome domestic opposition to British participation in a war.
France and Russia, among other countries, made clear that they were not prepared to
give a U.S.-led war the legal blessing of the United Nations. The Security Council
thus took no further action.
The military buildup to war proceeded while inspectors worked in Iraq and diplo-
mats debated next steps at the United Nations. During the second half of 2002 and
the first two months of 2003, the United States, Britain, and a handful of their allies
positioned troops in Kuwait and Qatar and on board ships in the Persian Gulf. In
February, Turkey caused a hitch in plans when its parliament refused to allow the U.S.
Army to invade Iraq from Turkish territory. Regardless, by mid-March all the elements
stood in place for the invasion of Iraq that anxious U.S. officials said would complete
the job that should have been done in the Persian Gulf War twelve years earlier (Per-
sian Gulf War’s Aftermath, p. 465).
Following are excerpts from the speech by President George W. Bush to the UN
General Assembly on September 12, 2002, demanding that the United States enforceIRAQ AND THE GULF WARS 489