How did America come to the brink of war and who are the people who brought it there? Conor O'Clery examines the path to war
In August last year US President George Bush was advised that war with Iraq could destabilise the Gulf region, jeopardise friendly regimes in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, suck the air out of everything else America was doing, and cost more than Washington could afford.
The advice came from his Secretary of State Colin Powell. "It's nice to say you can do it unilaterally, except you can't," he told the president.
Seeing that his commander in chief was determined to confront Iraq, Powell argued that there was a better way than the unilateral approach advocated by colleagues like Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"You can still make a pitch for a coalition or UN action to do what needs to be done," he advised, according to Bob Woodward in Bush at War. So from its beginnings last summer, the debate within the Bush administration was not about whether, but how, to deal with the Iraqi leader and bring about regime change.
Taking out Saddam to protect Israel's interests in the region was something that had been advocated by neo-conservatives during the Clinton years, and a number of their leaders, like Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Under-Secretary of Defence Douglas Feith and Pentagon adviser Richard Perle now held positions of influence within the administration. Their case had been reinforced powerfully a year earlier when the attacks of September 11th caught the US unawares.
The president vowed it would never happen again. The argument that the only way to prevent another and possibly more devastating attack on Americans using chemical or biological weapons was by acting pre-emptively against any threatening regime was written into the Bush doctrine, published in early autumn.
Its essence was that the international strategies that kept the peace in the Cold War were unsuited to the 21st century war against terrorism. Iraq was also unfinished business, and personal for the president; after all Saddam was also someone who "tried to kill my Dad".
In early September two things happened almost simultaneously. Vice-President Cheney delivered to the president an updated plan for an invasion. And on September 12th, in an address to the UN, the president promised to seek a new resolution to hold Saddam to account.
His way of dealing with the split in the administration was apparently to follow both diplomatic and military courses simultaneously.
Shortly afterwards, Powell dined in New York with a group of foreign ministers including France's Dominique de Villepin, who was insisting that a second resolution would be needed to authorise any war. US officials told the New York Times that Powell said to de Villepin: "Don't vote for the first unless you are prepared to vote for the second," and that the French minister agreed.
On November 8th, Resolution 1441 was passed by the 15-member UN Security Council, with Ireland, then an elected member, among those insisting that a second resolution would be necessary.
Ireland's Ambassador Richard Ryan emphasised that the resolution ensured a "sequential process" and that "as far as Ireland is concerned, it is for the council to decide on any ensuing action".
The unanimous vote for the resolution was a triumph for Colin Powell and US diplomacy. The drive for UN backing also helped the administration to persuade Congress to authorise force. Everything seemed to be going the American way. But the landscape soon changed. Saddam - to the chagrin of many US officials - began co-operating. In early December Iraq provided a 12,000-page report to the Security Council which did not fully address the concerns of weapons inspectors but raised the prospect of eventual full disclosure.
The Americans had calculated that inspectors would be rebuffed or that they would quickly find weapons of mass destruction but the dynamics of the process were working differently.
The rush by the US to discredit the Iraq report enhanced suspicions in the UN that America was bent on war no matter what.
They were strengthened further by the way the US seized on any criticisms of Iraq by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix as a case for war, and by Bush's exaggeration of the case against Saddam by citing unproven links with al-Qaeda.
In mid-January Blix issued a timetable for inspection work culminating in disarmament tasks to be set Iraq in March. US official said they could not wait that long. Their hand was now on display. The French were furious at being pulled into 1441 on the argument that the US was open to persuasion and that the inspections would box in Saddam and make him less dangerous.
On January 20th de Villepin "sand-bagged" Powell by telling reporters at the UN, after a session on terrorism, that "Nothing, Nothing" justified war against Iraq.
Powell's response was his slide-show presentation against Iraq at a February 5th Security Council meeting, which was judged impressive but not totally convincing by most other council members.
In order to provide cover for Tony Blair, Bush's only significant ally, the White House reluctantly agreed in February to seek a second resolution to authorise force.
America began to pressurise other council members, but the tactics backfired. It was seen as unedifying for a great power to arm-twist small nations to act against the will of their voters.
Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld compounded anti-American resentments with his remarks about "old Europe" and his comparison of Germany to Libya and Cuba for arguing that inspections had resulted in effective containment and effective disarmament.
Powell who argued inside the administration that in the end France would agree that Saddam was delaying and that it would not oppose a second resolution for war. Condoleezza Rice agreed. They were wrong. They made another miscalculation, that Russia could be encouraged to put pressure on France to bring it to heel but Russia had had enough of US slights in recent years, from trade restrictions to NATO expansion. The US was also mistaken over Turkey, which failed to give the US support.
Critics of Powell have pointed out that before the 1991 Gulf War his predecessor, James Baker, visited Turkey several times to get its support, but Powell did not once visit Ankara. Nor did Powell travel to Europe much, visiting only Davos in recent weeks as suspicions festered in European capitals about US motives.
"Policies were executed in a provocative way that alienated our friends," said Richard Holbroke, Clinton's ambassador to the UN. Confirmation that the diplomatic process had ended and that Powell had failed came with the appearance of Dick Cheney, who only rarely makes public appearances, on the American television talk shows on Sunday.
Throughout it all, Vice-President Cheney had continued to act as war counsellor to Bush. He was disdainful about France rather than outraged. This is what he had predicted all along, that America would have to go it alone.
Conor O'Clery is North America Editor