24th in blog series on the push to Iraq, from lead-up to cover-up. February is a bush month for the administration, as it works on its war plans and tries to marshal necessary support within the U.S. and among foreign heads of state.

February 1-7, 2002.

 

Feb. 1, 2002 – Rumsfeld again meets with Gen. Franks, requesting a war plan that could be implemented quickly.

 

Feb. 2, 2002 – Neoconservative commentator Charles Krauthammer publishes an op-ed on the State of the Union address, supporting war with Iraq:

 
“Bush adequately covered the domestic scene, but by historical standards, his laundry list was remarkable for its brevity.

Instead, he is using his war popularity to seek support for more war -- far wider, larger and more risky. The pundits were saying that he had to talk about Enron, had to address the recession, had to refocus on the domestic agenda. They were wrong. The president gave a nod to all of them, then went back to what really moves him: the war. Which is why this speech, unlike most State of the Union addresses, will be remembered. It was important. It redefined the war. 

Until now the war had been about Sept. 11. The campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda is a campaign of revenge and justice. That campaign is not yet over, but the war, the real war, is not about last Sept. 11. It is about preventing the next Sept. 11 -- and in particular, a nuclear, chemical or biological Sept. 11.

 
Krauthammer, one of the most enthusiastic and consistent champions of going to war with Iraq, here makes explicit the connection between 9/11 and Iraq that the White House and the Office of the Vice President want made, while not saying that Iraq caused 9/11.

         
The joint resolution Congress passed on Sept. 14 simply authorized the use of force against those who perpetrated Sept. 11. This is seriously shortsighted. The point is not finding a miscreant's fingerprints on the World Trade Center. The point is finding the next miscreant's plans for the next World Trade Center.

We have serious enemies with bottomless hatred and, soon, the weapons to match. Whether they were involved in Sept. 11 is irrelevant. We are in a race against time. We have to get to them before they get to us . . .

Which brings us to Iraq. Iraq is what this speech was about. If there was a serious internal debate within the administration over what to do about Iraq, that debate is over. The speech was just short of a declaration of war.         

It thus addressed the central war question today: After Afghanistan, where do we go from here? Stage Two, now in progress, is the reaching for low-hanging fruit: searching for terrorists in the Philippines, Bosnia, Somalia; pressuring former bad guys like Yemen (or Sudan?) to repent.

But this is all prologue. Stage Three is overthrowing Saddam Hussein. That will require time and planning, during which Stage Two goes forward and gets the headlines. But between this year's State of the Union and next year's, the battle with Iraq will have been joined.        

That was the unmistakable message of this astonishingly bold address. This is not a president husbanding political capital. This is a president on a mission. We have not seen that in a very long time.”

 

Feb. 3, 2002 – Judith Miller brings out another New York Times article boosting aggression against Iraq:

 “A group of prominent Kuwaitis visiting the United States has delivered an unusual message of support for American policy and values . . .        

Muhammad Jassem al-Saqer, a former publisher and now chairman of the Kuwaiti Parliament's foreign affairs committee, applauded President Bush's vow to act against Iraq, Iran and North Korea for developing weapons of mass destruction. He called Iraq "the richest and most dangerous state in the region" and said his conversations with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and other senior officials in Washington had convinced him that President Bush was determined to act against Saddam Hussein.”

(“A NATION CHALLENGED: DIPLOMACY; In Visit to U.S., Kuwaitis Support Action on Iraq,” A12)

 

Feb. 3, 2002 – The U.S. Marines move headquarters from Hawaii to Bahrain, near Iraq.

 

Feb. 5, 2002 – The CIA Directorate of Operations issues a second intelligence report on the purported Iraq-Niger uranium agreement. INR analysts continue to doubt the report, and an INR analyst asks CIA whether the source could submit to a polygraph (Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, 38). This is apparently the first time the Niger uranium item surfaces again after fall 2001, and CIA issues its second report again citing a “foreign government service” but without naming it, quoting it in more detail and providing a “verbatim text.” (SSCI Report, 37) The purportedly recent Iraq-Niger transaction broadly resembles an unsuccessful attempt by Iraq to engage in commerce with Niger back in 1999.        

 

Feb. 7, 2002 – Gen. Franks presents the war plan called “Generated Start” to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice and others, telling Bush that the best months to invade Iraq are between November and February. Bush asks whether the U.S. could invade earlier “if we had to.”

 
Same day – White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer announces that Cheney will be traveling to the Middle East, at Bush’s behest, on March 10. Cheney will be making the rounds of heads of state in Arab countries and Israel to enlist support for an assault on Iraq.

 
Cheney’s departure on March 10th will kick off Cheney’s part in the administration campaign to link Iraq indelibly with 9/11 on March 11, 2002, the six-month anniversary of the September 11 attacks.