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.124On November 8, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimouslyfor a new resolution that threatened   serious consequences  should Iraq notcomply with a new inspections regime.The vote came after several weeksof difficult negotiations over the language of the resolution.In particular,France and Russia provided major obstacles to U.S.efforts to toughen up thelanguage of the resolution.In the end, the unanimous passage of the reso-lution (even Syria, Iraq s neighbor and ally, voted for it) was a major dip-lomatic coup for the United States.125However, the unanimous declaration could not disguise that there was agrowing divergence between the United States and other countries.Somecountries seemed to view a war as justified only if Iraq   flagrantly violated  thenew inspections regime.For Bush, the resolution was a step, but only a step,toward the larger goal of regime change.For the time being, the White Housewas content to wait until Iraq had submitted its list of weapons programs.Iraqhad agreed, grudgingly, to the resolution and promised to allow new UNweapons inspectors into the country on November 18.126On December 8, the United States took possession of Iraq s weaponsdeclaration.The United States was so impatient that it insisted on seeing thereports immediately scrapping plans to have the reports screened for in-formation that might potentially be used to make a nuclear weapon.Iraq sweapons declaration was nearly 12,000 pages long, and   proved  (accordingto Iraq) that it had no prohibited weapons program.The Bush adminis-tration thought differently.Vice President Cheney insisted that the president declare Iraq in   materialbreach  of the UN resolution without even reading the report, so convincedwas he that it was a smoke screen.Rice, Rumsfeld, and Bush, however,agreed that they should carefully inspect the document before making anypublic pronouncements as to its veracity.The UN resolution that was passedthe previous month required a false declaration and a failure to cooperatebefore serious consequences were considered.On the surface, Iraq appearedto be cooperating, even if its report was incomplete and misleading.127While the public debate over the inspections regime raged on, militarypreparations continued in the background, out of the public eye.On No-vember 26, General Franks had sent Secretary Rumsfeld the plan for mo-bilization of troops for war.Franks requested the deployment of 300,000soldiers.However, notifying 300,000 troops that they would be deployed tothe Middle East in a few months could not be done quietly.President Bushstepped in, declaring that he did not want the deployment of forces to limitU.S.options.If 300,000 troops were deployed, diplomacy would be over.Rumsfeld solved the problem by issuing deployment orders in smaller136 Why Leaders Choose Warsegments,   dribbling out  the orders.The numbers that did reach the press,such as the 60,000 soldiers that the New York Times reported on December 8were enough to keep pressure on Iraq without committing the United Statesto war.128Even by the end of December, Bush s private and public comments main-tained two separate and somewhat contradictory notions.Bush told Spanishpresident Jose Maria Aznar that   at some point, we will conclude enough isenough and take him out.He s a liar and he has no intention of disarming. However, in the same breath he used to scoff at the Iraqi weapons statement,Bush insisted that the United States would be   measured in its response.  129On Thursday, December 19, Secretary of State Powell declared Iraq tobe in material breach of the UN disarmament resolution.Powell called the12,000-page declaration a   catalogue of recycled information and flagrantomissions.  Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix was slightly more cau-tious in his assessment, but also agreed that there were   inconsistencies  inthe report, which contained   little new information.  Blix added that thelack of evidence means that   one cannot have confidence that there do notremain weapons of mass destruction.  130On December 21, DCI George Tenet met with Bush and the principalsto present the case for WMD in Iraq [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]