The Foreign Service Journal, February 2005

al issues, having served on the House Intelligence Committee and as Secretary of Defense to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. Even more important, despite all the baggage that Cheney picked up dur- ing the first term — such as his Halliburton ties and exaggerated claims about Iraq’s arsenal — he also had something else that proved deci- sive: the president’s confidence. Powell and Cheney have always had different world views. In early August 1990, when Iraq conquered Kuwait, Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Cheney, the Defense Secretary, was his boss. Cheney and Powell sat down to discuss options for dealing with the Iraqi outrage in Kuwait. Should Saddam Hussein’s army be removed by force? Cheney believed there was no other choice because to do nothing would embolden Saddam to attack Saudi Arabia next. Powell, mindful of the costs of reversing Saddam’s conquest, counseled simple containment of the dictator. As recounted in their 1995 book, The Generals’ War , Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor quote Powell as telling Cheney and other officials: “We must start with policy and diplomatic overtures. We can’t make a case for losing lives over Kuwait.” Cheney wanted Powell to develop options for using force against Iraq. “Powell kept dodging the issue,” Gordon and Trainor reported. “Finally, Cheney’s irri- tation boiled over. Dropping his familiar first-name address, he barked, ‘I want some options, General!’” Iraq, Round Two Twelve Augusts later, Cheney and Powell were to square off again, with Cheney as vice president and Powell as Secretary of State. Powell again was the sub- ordinate, and again, the issue was Iraq, with the stakes even higher than the first time. The issue was the degree to which the possible nexus between Saddam’s Iraq and al-Qaida in the post-9/11 environment posed a danger to the United States. Given the stockpile of unconventional weapons that Iraq was perceived to have at the time, Cheney said the United States must take action against Iraq quickly. Powell urged caution, warning that a “go it alone” approach against Iraq could destabi- lize friendly countries in the Middle East and siphon energy from the war on terrorism. Powell advocated a broad coalition to deal with Iraq; Cheney, fearing catastrophic attack while diplomats dithered, was opposed. Cheney, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saw renewed U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq as a waste of time; Powell favored them. In the end, Powell pre- vailed, convincing Bush to seek a Security Council res- olution against Iraq, starting with revived U.N. inspec- tions. What may have been the defining moment of Powell’s stewardship at Foggy Bottom occurred on Feb. 5, 2003, in his speech to the Security Council. There the most reluctant warrior in Bush’s hierarchy of advisers made the case for war against Iraq. He cited Saddam’s foot drag- ging on inspections, his supposed arsenal of unconven- tional weapons and his 12-year record of flouting U.N. disarmament resolutions. Ultimately, Powell could not get the Security Council to approve a war against Iraq, so the United States led a “coalition of the willing” in March to uproot the dictator. It has been small comfort to Powell that subsequent events vindicated the cautious approach toward Iraq that he had espoused. In particular, aides say, it has pained him that the weapons stockpiles he alluded to in his February 2003 U.N. speech never materialized. He never wavered in defending the policy, but he may have hurt himself with the White House in other ways. Powell, either directly or indirectly, presumably was the source of unflattering passages about Cheney and other administration figures in Bob Woodward’s book, Plan of Attack. For instance, when Cheney tried to con- vince Powell that intelligence reports established a link between Iraq and al-Qaida, Powell dismissed the vice president’s evidence as “worse than ridiculous,” Woodward wrote. The phrase was Woodward’s, not Powell’s, but it certainly gave Powell’s rivals ammuni- tion to portray him as less than a good soldier and to lobby for his early departure from the administration. For Powell, his conflict with Cheney was part of an F O C U S F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 33 Vice President Cheney may have been Powell’s biggest problem. George Gedda, a regular Journal contributor, covers the State Department for The Associated Press.