Richard N. Haass and Katie Couric
didn’t scratch. People believed after 9/11
the United States needed to do
something to change the course of
history, and teach the terrorists and their
sympathizers that they weren’t going to
have their way. Success in Afghanistan
wasn’t seen as big enough to do that. Iraq
was seen as the opportunity to make this
large and historical point.
“There was a big itch that the success in
Afghanistan didn’t scratch. People believed
after 9/11 the United States needed to do
something that would change the course
of history.”—Richard N. Haass
KC: If Osama bin Laden had been
captured, would that have scratched
the itch?
RH: No, I don’t think so. Afghanistan
wasn’t big enough. It didn’t have big
symbolic, historical import. Americans
had no history with Afghanistan other
than the latter years of the Cold War.
It didn’t resonate. Even if you could
have improved Afghanistan after the
Taliban, people felt it wouldn’t have
repercussions beyond its borders. Iraq
had historical resonance given the
previous Iraq war. But most important
it was seen as something that would
transform the most difficult region of
the world, the Middle East.
KC: You begin your book with an incident in which you walked into Condi
Rice’s office and expressed concern
about the second Iraq war and you
were essentially told that the train had
left the station. Compared with your
experience with the first Iraq war, how
stunning a statement was that?
RH: By then—this was July of
2002—I’d had inklings that the decision
making had gone pretty far. People who
worked for me—I was the head of the
policy planning staff in the State
Department at the time—were saying
the people at the National Security
Council [NSC], Cheney’s people and
people at the Pentagon were all too
cocky. So I took advantage of my next
regular meeting with Condi to find out
where things were and try to be heard,
because I had strong views about it.
Things had gone much farther than
I thought. It’s never comfortable
being told, “Don’t bother, it’s too late,”
particularly on something like this
where I felt I never really had a chance.
KC: It seems that the State
Department was sidelined, almost
emasculated, and that the voices from
the White House to the Pentagon were
drowning them out. How did they
become so powerful?
RH: There wasn’t a formal national
security decision-making process. This
president clearly didn’t want that. He
had a much less formal process in
which advocates could advocate, but
there were few moments when they
were all brought together to have a
rigorous debate.
KC: Was that a lot different than the
first President Bush?
RH: About as different as you get. Bush
2 wanted an NSC that was less formal.
He had the NSC he wanted, but not the
NSC he needed. What a president needs
from a national security process, or any
decision-making process, is something
that protects him from himself, that
assures that just because someone is a
stronger advocate or he feels more
closely aligned with this individual, that
shouldn’t drive the decision. I came
away thinking that this administration
never leveled its own playing field.
KC: Who were the strongest voices on
the second war? Wolfowitz, Cheney,
Rumsfeld? Who were the people really
driving the engine behind this?
RH: Everybody around the president,
including the president himself. Other
than a few individuals at the state
department who had some doubts, the
entire balance of the administration
favored it. Taking into account just how
evil Saddam was, the fraying of the
sanctions regime, the difficulties with
the inspections process and what we all
believed was a fact—that the Iraqis still
had weapons of mass destruction—the
decision to go to war wasn’t outrageous.
I just thought it was wrong. In my view
it was 60/40 wrong—and you don’t fall
on your sword over 60/40 decisions. It’s
different than when you’re 90/10 or
when you feel so strongly that you can’t
live with the other decision. Now, had I
known then that the Iraqis didn’t have
weapons of mass destruction, this
would’ve elevated it to 90/10 or worse.
But I didn’t know that.
KC: There were some naysayers like
Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, and
there must have been other people in
the intelligence community—
RH: Never once did I hear from any
intelligence analyst in all my years in government, “The Iraqis don’t have weapons
of mass destruction, this is wrong.” It
didn’t occur to me, I’ll be honest. I was
influenced by the mindset. When I read, I
think it was in October 2002, the nation-
